We are left, therefore, to accept the view that the author who wrote up the Cārudatta, and combined with it a new play, thought it well to conceal his identity and to pass off the work under the appellation of a famous king. Lévi’s suggestion that he chose Çūdraka for this purpose because he lived after Vikramāditya, patron of Kālidāsa, and wished to give his work the appearance of antiquity by associating it with a prince who preceded Vikramāditya, is clearly far-fetched, and insufficient to suggest a date. Nor can anything be deduced from the plentiful exhibition of Prākrits, which is not, to judge from Bhāsa, a sign of very early date; while the use of Māhārāṣṭrī Prākrit would be, if proved, conclusive that he is fairly late. Konow’s effort to support Çūdraka’s connexion with Pratiṣṭhāna by this use is clearly untenable. There is more plausibility in the argument from the simple form of the construction of the drama; the manner of Bhāsa is closely followed; thus in Act IX the absurd celerity with which the officer of the court obeys the order to bring the mother of Vasantasenā on the scene, and secures the presence of Cārudatta, is precisely on a par with Bhāsa’s management of the plot in his dramas. The scenes of violence, in which Vasantasenā is apparently killed and Cārudatta is led to death, are reminiscent of Bhāsa’s willingness to present such scenes, but they do not depart from the practice of the later drama as in Bhavabhūti’s Mālatīmādhava. The Çakāra and Viṭa are indeed figures of the early stage, but they are taken straight from Bhāsa and prove nothing. The position of the Buddhist monk is more interesting, but here again it is borrowed, though developed, and we find Buddhism respected in Kālidāsa and Harṣa. The arguments based on the apparent similarity with the Greek New Comedy are without value for an early date, for they apply, if they have any value at all, to the Cārudatta of Bhāsa. We are left, therefore, with no more than impressions, and these are quite insufficient to assign any date to the clever hand which recast the Cārudatta and made one of the great plays of the Indian drama. [267] 3. THE MṚCCHAKAṬIKĀ