PREFACE.
The Nágánanda, the sister-play to the Ratnávalí, was edited in Calcutta in 1864, by an old student of the Sanskrit College, Mádhava Chandra Ghosha. MS. copies of it are rather scarce, and Professor Wilson does not mention it in his notices of untranslated plays at the end of the "Hindu Drama." By Dr Hall’s assistance, however, I procured two copies from the North-west, and these, with one or two MSS. from Bengal, enabled the editor to print an accurate text. Mr Boyd, a Cambridge pupil of mine, has now prepared an English translation; and I have been asked, by way of preface, to give some account of the date and authorship of the book.
The play is several times quoted, like the Ratnávalí, in the Sáhitya-darpana (pp. 89, 184, 189, and 249), and in the Daśa-rúpa (pp. 64, 65, 74, 178).[1] Dhananjaya, the
- ↑ I do not distinguish between the text of the Daśa-rúpa and the Commentary, as I feel sure that if Dhananjaya, the son of Vishnu, the author of the one, was not the same person as Dhanika, the son of Vishnu, the author of the other, they were at any rate brothers, and so the chronological value of the two remains unaltered. There is no hint given of any difference of authorship, and the two works read everywhere as if they were from the same pen, like the
