Dandin, the poet, as distinct from Acarya Dandin and Dandin, the prose writer. It may be important to note in this connection that the poetess Gangadevi eulogises Dandin, the Acarya, as a poet of a high calibre," indicating thereby that Acarya Dandin is the same as Dandin, the poet. Again, the colophon of the Avantisundarikatha, mentioning its author as Acarya Dandin, points to the tradition of recognising Dandin and Acarya Dandin as identical. On the other hand, Dandin, the Acarya, has been referred to simply as Dandin also by later poets and writers on Poetics, and not always as Acarya Dandin, as Agashe thought. The discovery of Avantisundarikatha in 1919 has given the whole problem a new turn. Now, when we have already got the required number of works of Dandin as referred to by Rajasekhara, some difficulty is felt as to how to accommodate a fourth book in the list. We shall refer to this question later while discussing the works of Dandin. Suffice it to say here that the difficulty is not at all real. The main ground on which S. K. De and, following him, some other scholars do not accept the common authorship of the Daśakumāracarita and Avantisundarikatha, and for that reason, Dandin's authorship of the latter is the great divergence of style between the two works. While refuting the view of some scholars that the Daśakumāracarita originally formed a part of Avantisundarikathā and that the extant portion of the latter is the original prelude to the story of Rajavahana and his friends, De remarks that if they are indeed by the same author and formed part of the same work, one should expect an evenness of style in the two, unless it is presumed without good. 1. MV I. 10; cp. below also. 2. Cp. Vijjaka (in Sarig. No. 108) वृथैव दण्डिना प्रोक्तं सर्वशुक्ला सरस्वती; cp. KA I. 1:
- Siyabas-lakara I. 2; Namisādhu on
RKAI I. 2; Pratihärendurāja in KASS p. 23; Abhinava in AB VI; Pratap., I. 10 f.; DhAL III. 7; Manikyacandra on KPr. (Mysore ed., p. 292), Vägbhata in Kävyänušasanavṛtti, p. 31. Viśvanatha (SD VI. 336) mentions him both as Dandin and Dandyācārya. Jagaddhara on Mälat. refers to him as Dandin as many as six times. 3. First published in 1924. A fuller MS of the work has been published in 1954 from Trivandrum; see Bibliog.
