Vishakhadatta
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Vishakhadatta
Vishakhadatta ( was an Indian Sanskrit poet and playwright. Although Vishakhadatta furnishes the names of his father and grandfather as Maharaja Bhaskaradatta and Maharaja Vateshvaradatta in his political drama Mudrārākṣasa
Mudrarakshasa
The Mudrarakshasa , a historical play in Sanskrit by Vishakhadatta in late 4th or early 5th century narrates the ascent of the king Chandragupta Maurya to power in Northern India.-Origin:...

, we know little else about him. only two of his plays, the Mudrārākṣasa
Mudrarakshasa
The Mudrarakshasa , a historical play in Sanskrit by Vishakhadatta in late 4th or early 5th century narrates the ascent of the king Chandragupta Maurya to power in Northern India.-Origin:...

and the Devichandragupta are known to us.

Mudrarakshasa

Mudrārākṣasa
Mudrarakshasa
The Mudrarakshasa , a historical play in Sanskrit by Vishakhadatta in late 4th or early 5th century narrates the ascent of the king Chandragupta Maurya to power in Northern India.-Origin:...

("Rákshasa's Ring") is Vishakhadatta’s only surviving play, although there exist fragments of another work ascribed to him. The titles of Vishakhadatta’s father and grandfather do indicate one point of interest: that he came from a princely family, certain to have been involved in political administration at least at a local level. It seems very possible, in fact, that Vishakhadatta came to literature from the world of affairs.

Stylistically he stands a little apart from other dramatists. A proper literary education is clearly no way lacking, and in formal terms, he operates within the normal conventions of Sanskrit literature
Sanskrit literature
Literature in Sanskrit begins with the Vedas, and continues with the Sanskrit Epics of Iron Age India; the golden age of Classical Sanskrit literature dates to late Antiquity . Literary production saw a late bloom in the 11th century before declining after 1100 AD...

, but one does not feel that he cultivates these conventions very enthusiastically for their own sake. It would be a travesty to suggest that one can detect in his writing a clipped, quasi-military diction as it would be to think of Kālidāsa as an untutored child of nature simply because he shows himself less steeped than Bhavabhūti
Bhavabhuti
Bhavabhuti was an 8th century scholar of India noted for his plays and poetry, written in Sanskrit. His plays are considered equivalent to the works of Kalidasa...

 in philosophical erudition. But it is fair to say that Vishakhadatta’s prose passages in particular often have a certain stiffness compared to the supple idiom of both Kālidāsa
Kalidasa
Kālidāsa was a renowned Classical Sanskrit writer, widely regarded as the greatest poet and dramatist in the Sanskrit language...

 and Bhavabhūti
Bhavabhuti
Bhavabhuti was an 8th century scholar of India noted for his plays and poetry, written in Sanskrit. His plays are considered equivalent to the works of Kalidasa...

. In relative, rather than absolute, terms his style includes towards the principle of “more matter and less art.”

There have been other cases of contributions to Sanskrit literature
Sanskrit literature
Literature in Sanskrit begins with the Vedas, and continues with the Sanskrit Epics of Iron Age India; the golden age of Classical Sanskrit literature dates to late Antiquity . Literary production saw a late bloom in the 11th century before declining after 1100 AD...

 by men of action - for instance, the three plays ascribed to the celebrated monarch, Harsha
Harsha
Harsha or Harsha Vardhana or Harshvardhan was an Indian emperor who ruled northern India from 606 to 647 AD. He was the son of Prabhakara Vardhana and younger brother of Rajya Vardhana, a king of Thanesar, Haryana...

 (vardhana). The ascription is plausible, and the plays are talented and worthy pieces. But unlike the Mudrārākṣasa
Mudrarakshasa
The Mudrarakshasa , a historical play in Sanskrit by Vishakhadatta in late 4th or early 5th century narrates the ascent of the king Chandragupta Maurya to power in Northern India.-Origin:...

, they adhere closely to conventional literary ideals. Harsha
Harsha
Harsha or Harsha Vardhana or Harshvardhan was an Indian emperor who ruled northern India from 606 to 647 AD. He was the son of Prabhakara Vardhana and younger brother of Rajya Vardhana, a king of Thanesar, Haryana...

 no doubt wished to show that he could write as well as he could rule: yet in the last resort, one suspects that he would have been more interesting to know as a man than as a dramatist. We do not know whether Vishakhadatta, on the other hand, if he was some kind of politician, was as such either original or successful; but as a playwright, he is both.

Devichandragupta

Only the fragments of the Devichandragupta (Devi and Chandragupta) are survived in the form of quotations in the Natyadarpana of Ramachandra and Gunachandra, two works of king Bhoja
Bhoja
Bhoja was a philosopher king and polymath of medieval India, who ruled the kingdom of Malwa in central India from about 1000 to 1050 CE. Also known as Raja Bhoja Of Dhar, he belonged to the Paramara dynasty...

: the Shringaraprakasha and the Sarasvatikanthabharana, and the Natakalakshana Ratnakosha of Sagaranandi. By collating the quotations from these works, the storyline of this text has been reconstructed.

Devichandgraputa is a play which tells how Ramagupta was cheated into signing a humiliating treaty with a Saka ruler and as result he had to let go off his wife Dhruvadevi. His younger brother, Chandragupta, the protagonist of the story takes the task upon himself to avenge this humiliation and not only kills the Saka ruler but also his elder brother Ramagupta and takes charge of Gupta empire and also marries Dhruvadevi.

English translations

The Clay Sanskrit Library
Clay Sanskrit Library
The Clay Sanskrit Library is a series of books published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation. Each work features the text in its original language on the left-hand page, with its English translation on the right...

 has published a translation of Mudrārākṣasa
Mudrarakshasa
The Mudrarakshasa , a historical play in Sanskrit by Vishakhadatta in late 4th or early 5th century narrates the ascent of the king Chandragupta Maurya to power in Northern India.-Origin:...

by Michael Coulson under the title of Rákshasa's Ring.

Alternative theories

The name Vishakhadatta is also given as Vishakhadeva from which Ranajit Pal concludes that his name may have been Devadatta which, according to him, was a name of both Ashoka and Chandragupta..
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