The Kaviputras, a pair according to the verse cited from them in the Subhāṣitāvali[2], were apparently also collaborators, a decidedly curious parallel with Somila and Rāmila, as such collaboration seems later rare. The stanza is pretty:
bhrūcāturyaṁ kuñcitāntāḥ kaṭākṣāḥ: snigdhā hāvā lajjitāntāç ca hāsāḥ
līlāmandaṁ prasthitaṁ ca sthitaṁ ca: strīṇām etad bhūṣaṇam āyudhaṁ ca.
[[128]]
‘The play of the brows, the sidelong glances which contract the corners of the eyes, words of love, bashful laughter, the slow departure in sport, and the staying of the steps: these are the ornaments and the weapons of women.’
Strange that so scanty remnants should remain of poets who must have deserved high praise to receive Kālidāsa’s recognition, but the fame of that poet doubtless inflicted on them the fate that all but overtook Bhāsa himself.
2. The Authorship and Age of the Mṛcchakaṭikā
The discovery of the Cārudatta of Bhāsa has cast an unexpected light on the age of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, but has still left it dubious whether or not the author is to be placed before Kālidāsa. That this rank was due to him was the general opinion before Professor Lévi attacked the theory, and it is curious that later he should have inclined to doubt the value of his earlier judgement. The existence of the Cārudatta would explain, of course, the silence of Kālidāsa on the Mṛcchakaṭikā, if it existed in his time. Explicit use of the drama by Kālidāsa or the reverse would be conclusive, but unhappily none of the parallels which can be adduced have any effective force, and from rhetorical quotations we only have the fact that Çūdraka was recognized as an author by Vāmana,[3] for Daṇḍin’s citation of a verse found in the Mṛcchakaṭikā is now clearly known to be a citation from Bhāsa, in whose works the verse in question twice occurs. With this falls the hypothesis of Pischel,[4] who, after ascribing the play to Bhāsa, later fathered it upon Daṇḍin, to make good the number of three famous works with which he is in later tradition credited.
The play itself presents Çūdraka, a king, as its author and gives curious details of his capacities; he was an expert in the Ṛgveda, the Sāmaveda, mathematics, the arts regarding courtesans, and the science of elephants, all facts which could be concluded from the knowledge shown in the play itself; he was cured of some complaint, and after establishing his son in his place, and performing the horse sacrifice, he entered the fire and [[129]]died at the age of a hundred years and ten days. We have a good deal more information of a sort regarding his personality; he was to Kalhaṇa in the Rājataran̄giṇī[5] a figure to be set beside Vikramāditya; the Skanda Purāṇa[6] makes him out the first of the Andhrabhṛtyas; the Vetālapañcaviṅçati knows of his age as a hundred, and gives as his capital either Vardhamāna or Çobhāvatī, which is the scene of his activities according to the Kathāsaritsāgara, which tells of the sacrifice of a Brahmin who saves him from imminent death and secures his life of a hundred years by killing himself. In the Kādambarī he is located at Vidiçā, and in the Harṣacarita we hear of the device by which he got rid of his enemy Candraketu, prince of Cakora, while Daṇḍin in the Daçakumāracarita refers to his adventures in several lives. The fact that Rāmila and Somila wrote a Kathā on him is significant of his legendary character in their time, considerably before Kālidāsa. A very late tradition in the Vīracarita and the younger Rājaçekhara[7] brings him into connexion with Sātavāhana or Çālivāhana, whose minister he was and from whom he obtained half his kingdom, including Pratiṣṭhāna.[8]