Essay name: Bhasa (critical and historical study)
Author: A. D. Pusalker
This book studies Bhasa, the author of thirteen plays ascribed found in the Trivandrum Sanskrit Series. These works largely adhere to the rules of traditional Indian theatrics known as Natya-Shastra.
Page 181 of: Bhasa (critical and historical study)
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161
no clear evidence that can aid us in placing with any
degree of
a drama with the technical peculiarities of the C盲rudatta.
a dramasurance, chronologically or topographically.
"But the priority of the Carudatta version would
explain, and satisfactorily explain, all the other differences
between the two plays. It would explain the presence of
archaisms in the Prakrit of the Carudatta. It would
explain why many of the verses of the Mrcchakatika
are free from the flaws of the corresponding verses of
the C膩rudatta; the grammatical corrections one may be
justified in regarding as an indication of an increasingly
insistent demand for scrupulous purity of language. The
hypothesis would lastly explain the reason for the
differences in the incidents of the action of the play. All
this is legitimate field of 'diaskeuasis', and is readily
intelligible.
"Let us now examine the other possibility, and try
to explain the divergences on the assumption of the
priority of the Mrcchakatika version.
"The question of the technical differences between
the plays has been dealt with already. It was submitted
that this part of the evidence was inconclusive; it
supported neither one side nor the other.
66 We will proceed to the next point, the Prakrit.
On the assumption of the priority of the Mrcchakatika
version, it is at first sight not quite clear, how the
Carudatta should happen to contain Prakrit forms
older than those found in (what is alleged to be) a still
older play. But a little reflection will suffice to bring
home to us the fact that it is not impossible to account
for th
anomaly. We have only to regard the C膩rudatta
as the version of a different province or a different literary
tradition, which had not accepted the innovations in
Prakrit that later became prevalent. In other words we
have to assume merely that the Prakrit neologisms of the
Mrcchakatika are unauthorized innovations and that the
C膩rudatta manuscripts have only preserved some of the
Old-Prakrit forms of the original Mrcchakatika. This
does not, however, necessarily make the Carudatta
version older than the Mrcchakatika version. The
C膩rudatta would become a recension of the M峁沜chakatika
with archaic Prakrit. Thus the Prakrit archaisms of
