Note 2 — INTRODUCTION.1

Bāṇabhaṭṭa, its author, lived in the reign of Harshavardhana of Thāṇeçar, the great king mentioned in many inscriptions,2 who extended his rule over the whole of Northern India, and from whose reign (A.D. 606) dates the Harsha era, used in Nepal. Bāṇa, as he tells us, both in the ‘Harsha-Carita’ and in the introductory verses of ‘Kādambarī,’ was a Vātsyāyana Brahman. His mother died while he was yet young, and his father’s tender care of him, recorded in the ‘Harsha-Carita,’3 was doubtless in his memory as he recorded the unselfish love of Vaiçampāyana’s father in ‘Kādambarī’ (p. 22). In his youth he travelled much, and for a time ‘came into reproach,’ by reason of his unsettled life; but the experience gained in foreign lands turned his thoughts homewards, and he returned to his kin, and lived a life of quiet study in their midst. From this he was summoned to the court of King Harsha, who at first received him coldly, but afterwards attached him to his service; and Bāṇa in the ‘Harsha-Carita’ relates his own life as a prelude to that of his master.