Vajjalaggam

Author(s): Jayvallabh
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 20

INTRODUCTION
(on p. XXIII) that the work of Hala can be placed at the earliest in the third century A.D. According to Laber (loc. cit. p. 35 ff.) the VL contains 76 of the stanzas occurring in Hala's Gāthāsaptasati', which must have served as a model and inspiration to the author of the VL, in respect of the number of stanzas collected by him in his anthology, although so far as the topic-wise grouping of the stanzas in the form of vajjās is concerned, the author of the Vajjalagga could not have regarded Hala's collection as his model. The Suśruta (i.e, Suśruta's work on medicine) mentioned in st. 519 of the Vajjalagga refers undoubtedly to the Suśrutasamhita, an ancient well-known work on Indian medicine and surgery composed by Suśruta, who according to Winternitz2 "probably lived in one of the early centuries of the Christian era, not far removed from Caraka (another authority on Indian medicine, belonging to the second century A.D.)"
Upper limit, external evidence:
It was Dr. R. G. Bhandarkar, who first called attention to "some verses from the Gaüḍavaho" of Vakpatirāja, as having been observed by him in the VL. Dr. Bhandarkar does not how ever specify these verses from the Gaüdavaho. When I carefully examined the Gaüḍavaho from this point of view, I could come across only one stanza (No. 722) which corresponds to st. No.
xix
1. The occurrence of 76 stanzas from the Gathāsaptasati in the VL cannot by itself prove the posteriority of the latter te the former, for the author of the VL could be supposed to have derived them from some other source, and not necessarily from the Saptasati.
2. Loc. cit. Vol. III. p. 547.
3. Roport on the search for Sanskrit Manuscripts in Bombay Presidency, 1883-84. p. 17.
the