Note 5 — V THE PRECURSORS OF KĀLIDĀSA AND ÇŪDRAKA

The play itself presents Çūdraka, a king, as its author and gives curious details of his capacities; he was an expert in the Ṛgveda, the Sāmaveda, mathematics, the arts regarding courtesans, and the science of elephants, all facts which could be concluded from the knowledge shown in the play itself; he was cured of some complaint, and after establishing his son in his place, and performing the horse sacrifice, he entered the fire and died at the age of a hundred years and ten days. We have a good deal more information of a sort regarding his personality; he was to Kalhaṇa in the Rājataran̄giṇī5 a figure to be set beside Vikramāditya; the Skanda Purāṇa6 makes him out the first of the Andhrabhṛtyas; the Vetālapañcaviṅçati knows of his age as a hundred, and gives as his capital either Vardhamāna or Çobhāvatī, which is the scene of his activities according to the Kathāsaritsāgara, which tells of the sacrifice of a Brahmin who saves him from imminent death and secures his life of a hundred years by killing himself. In the Kādambarī he is located at Vidiçā, and in the Harṣacarita we hear of the device by which he got rid of his enemy Candraketu, prince of Cakora, while Daṇḍin in the Daçakumāracarita refers to his adventures in several lives. The fact that Rāmila and Somila wrote a Kathā on him is significant of his legendary character in their time, considerably before Kālidāsa. A very late tradition in the Vīracarita and the younger Rājaçekhara7 brings him into connexion with Sātavāhana or Çālivāhana, whose minister he was and from whom he obtained half his kingdom, including Pratiṣṭhāna.8