Vajjalaggam

Author(s): M V Patwardhan
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society

Page 19

xviii
VAJJÁLAGGAM
tion must have been about 15 stanzas. But the average length of each section in the Vulgate (with 95 sections and 795 stanzas) is about 8. This means that in the original VL there must have been many more stanzas in many of its forty-eight sections than we have in the corresponding sections in the Vulgate.
(v) Date of the Vajjālagga :
The problem of the date of the VL is to be understood only in the sense of the probable period in which the VL was compiled by the author. An attempt is made here to define the upper and lower limits within which the compilation of the VL can be probably placed.
Upper limit, internal evidence :
The only internal evidence that we get in the VL to indicate its upper limit is the reference to Hāla, King of Pratisthāna on the banks of the river Godā ( = Godāyari), which occurs in st. 4681 and to the work of Susruta on medicine in st. 519. The Hāla referred to in st. 468 is in all probability king Häla, who is identified with king Sālāhaņa or Satavähana or sālivāhana, the compiler of the Gābāsartasai (Gathāsaptaśatījin Prakrit and author of some stanzas included therein. He belonged to the Andhrabhţtya dynasty of kings, who, according to Vincent Smith, ruled over the Deccan from about 231 B.C, to about 225 A.C., and who had their administrative head-quarters at Pratisthāna (Baithana, according to the Greek writer Ptolemaios). According to the Purâņas, Hāla was the eleventh or seventeenth of the thiity kings in that dynasty. According to the Matsya Purāņa, king Sata. vāhana ruled 297 years after the commencement of the Andhrabhrtya dynasty, i.e. approximately in the middle of the first century A.D. Weber (Introduction to the edition of Cāthāsas taśati 1881) discusses the whole question on the basis of the contents and language of the Gathāsaptaśatī, and comes to the conclusion. 1, gta Har Haul 2 PCT ngau
सगं गए वि हाले न मुयइ गोला पइटाणं ।। (सईवज्जा) 2. बालं जराविलांग कलमहुरपलाविणि नियंतस्स ।
विज्जस्स सुसुओ सूसुओ वि सहस त्ति पन्नट्ठो ।। (विज्जवजा). 3. See Weber ( 1881), Introduction, p. XIII.