9*
His drama the Parvatiparinaya comes into consideration.: It lias all the while been an accepted fact that the work proceeded I €rom the pen of the author of the Kadambari. Recently W however a theory has been advanced assigning the, authorship rcot to the old Bana, but to one Vamana Bhatta Bana, a writer of the isth century. Among other <Jata were :—
i ' • .
(i) The old view had its origin in a confusion of names. Both the Banas .were scions of the Vatsa race and both of these were good prose-writers, (ii) Had the earlier Bana composed it, it is most suspicious that not one of the later rhetoricians tefetred to the name of the work or its contents, ; <iii) The drama does not display the same ingenuity of description or freedom of language as Bana does jS in his other works. A comparative view of the
description of Kadambari and Parvati had better be taken, {iv) Except Vamana Bana, no other poet of the name we
have known or heard of.
(v) In a weekly journal of Malabar, a Pandit Ramaparasava by name refers to our drama as a work of Vamana-L • • charya.
These arguments are plausible aixd perhaps convincing too, <}uite probable it is that the assignment of the authorship to the older Bana arose out of misapprehension. However, the impossibility of the older, view has not been conclusively demonstrated. The Parvatiparinaya is not after all a successful ' * 'drama. It barely copies the story of the Kumarasambhava but
1 ** .gives it a dramatic garb. The whole thing seems on its face a
£>urely artificial business. If Vamana were to be the author,
;Vther hand is strictly devoted to Sastric precepts. He would not loose sight of the minutest ceremony. His guest would not be allowed to-hist nuns, ar