Dhanika, poet and commentator, held an official position at the court;[1] Dhanaṃjaya claims, as we have seen, to have profited by conversations with his august ruler; and the work of other authors, to be mentioned below, bears added witness to the literary activity during his reign. Some indication that Muñja himself was regarded as a poet[2] is to be found in the fact that Merutuṅga depicts the captive king as versifying his plaints.[3] That he actually was a writer of verse, however, is clearly established by quotations of some of his lines by later writers and in anthologies. One of his stanzas, for example, is twice quoted by Dhanika in his commentary on the Daśarūpa, the author being given in the one case as ‘Śrī-Vākpatirājadeva’ and in the other as ‘Śrī-Muñja.’[4] Another stanza is reproduced by the later Paramāra king Arjunavarman (who ruled early in the thirteenth century) in his Rasikasaṃjīvanī, a commentary on the Amaruśataka, with the statement that it was composed by ‘our ancestor Muñja, whose other name was Vākpatirāja.’[5] The poet Kṣemendra (fl. 1037–1066 A. D.) quotes three different stanzas by ‘Śrīmad-Utpalarāja,’ in as many of his works.[6] Two of these, found respectively in the Suvṛttatilaka and the Kavikaṇṭhābharaṇa, are not otherwise known; the third, a well-known stanza beginning ahau vā hāre vā, recurs in one of the Centuries attributed to Bhartṛhari, where it is probably to be
- ↑ Cf. page xxxii, below.
- ↑ In connection with Muñja’s literary inclinations it is of interest to note that his nephew, Bhojadeva, was the reputed author of the Sarasvatīkaṇṭhābharaṇa, a rhetorical work of some importance (often referred to in my notes). Muñja is mentioned in one of its stanzas (i. 83, p. 60).
- ↑ Prabandhacintāmaṇi, tr. Tawney, Calcutta, 1901, pp. 34–35.—Verses are attributed to Muñja also in Ballāla’s Bhojaprabandha. For a list of these and a record of their recurrences in other works see Oster, Die Rezensionen des Bhojaprabandha, Darmstadt, 1911, p. 24 (dissertation).
- ↑ See the com. on DR. 4 66, 67. On Muñja’s various names and epithets see above, p. xxi.
- ↑ His words are: asmatpūrvajasaya Vākpatirājāparanāmno Muñjadevasya. See Amaruśataka, ed. Durgāprasād and Parab, Bombay, 1889, p. 23.
- ↑ Suvṛttatilaka 2. 6 (Kāvyamālā, part 2, ed. Durgāprasād and Parab, Bombay, 1886, p. 37); Kavikaṇṭhābharaṇa 2. 1 (Kāvyamālā, pt. 4, 1887, p. 125); Aucityavicāracarcā 16 (Kāvyamālā, pt. 1, 2d ed., 1893, p. 131).
