Bhāsa

Bhāsa is one of the earliest and most celebrated Indian playwrights in Sanskrit, predating Kalidasa. His name was already well-known by the 1st century BCE and he belongs to the late-Mauryan (322-184 BCE) period at the earliest, but the thirteen plays attached to his name are commonly dated closer to the first or second century CE. His plays had been lost for centuries until the manuscripts were rediscovered in 1913 by the Indian scholar Ganapati Shastri. Bhāsa had previously only been known from mentions in other works, like the Kavyamimamsa on poetics from 880–920 AD. In the Kavyamimamsa, Rajashekhara attributes the play Swapnavasavadattam to Bhāsa. In the introduction to his first play Malavikagnimitram, Kālidāsa wrote: "Shall we neglect the works of such illustrious authors as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and Kaviputra? Can the audience feel any respect for the work of a modern poet, a Kālidāsa?" Bhāsa's date of birth is uncertain, but his name was already known as a famous dramatist by the 1st century BCE. He belongs to the late-Mauryan period at the earliest and fourth century CE at the latest. Bhāsa's language is closer to Kālidāsa (5th century CE) than it is to Aśvaghoṣa (1st-2nd century CE). Bhāsa's works do not follow all the dictates of the Natya Shastra. This has been taken as a proof of their antiquity; no post-Kālidāsa play has been found to break the rules of the Natya Shastra. Scenes from Bhāsa present signs of physical violence on the stage, as in plays like Urubhanga. This is strictly frowned upon by Natya Shastra. However, these facts alone don't make chronology certain. Indu Shekhar states that, "Whatever the exact date [of Natya Shastra] may have been, it is significant that no direct reference to NS was made before the seventh century," when it became accepted as the subject of attention for many poets, writers, and theorists. In 1912 Mahamahopadhyaya T. Ganapati Sastri came upon 13 Sanskrit plays that were used in the Koodiyattam plays.