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4i Bhavabhuti's native place appears from the descriptions," says Bhandakar u to have been somewhere near Chanda in the Nagpur territories ; where there are still many families of Maharati Desastha Brahmins of the Black Yajur Veda with Apasthamba for their sutras." He knew the Vedas. The atheistic Sankhya and theistic Yoga philosophies were aot unknown to him. He was well conversant with the Sutra literature. Unlike the other dramatists he develops the marriage of Malati and Madhava on lines peculiar to his own study. He follows Gautama who holds the mind and the eye as the sole guides in choosing a girl. He is a vedrc bard with vedic ideas and expressions, which almost unconsciously find their way into his writings. Jnananidhi was his Guru, which name looks like one assumed by persons when they enter into the monastic order and devote themselves to the study of the Supreme Spirit. He probably initiated our poet into the mysteries of the Vedanta. Bhavabhuti was perhaps a wanderer in his youth. uFrom his native region stern and wild, the poetic child had imbibed that appreciation of nature in her wild magnificence which distinguishes him from all other poets." In his middle life he attached himself to the court of Kanou j and there standing by the prince Yasovarrnan in all his vicissitudes accompanied him to Kashmir. On his way he visited many of the Buddhist viharas and observed various kinds of Pashanda worship and the practice of human sacrifices offered to Chamunda, to some of which he alludes in his works. In his own day he enjoyed a high reputation f©r his learning and was honoured by his contemporaries by the title of Srikautha, as one 4 ^ffr°Tf*T4 33T ^
His draws are generally represented at the festivities of Hi$ 0w«t relatives and friends, who admired his great maditya of Ujjain, not Harsha Vardhana of Kanotaj^