The other romance attributed to Dandin is Avantisundari- katha' which also unfortunately has come down to us in incomp- lete form², as is evidenced by its anonymous summary(Kathāsāra) in verse, which though itself incomplete carries the tale further up to the beginning of the story of Upahäravarman." According to the colophon of the katha, the name of the work is Avanti- sundari and that of its author, Acarya Dandin. In the intro- duction to the main narrative, it has been stated, in a manner similar to that followed by Bana in his Harşacarita, that the story was narrated by Dandin at the instance of his friends." That the work belongs to Dandin is further confirmed by a reference to, and a quotation from, the work as Dandin's in the Nāmasaṁgrahamālā of Appaya Dikşita (middle of 16th century)* 1. A fragment of the work, which was based on a very defective MS discovered from Kottakkal in Malabar, was published in 1924 by M. R. Kavi. This ed. covered only 25 pages in print. It was with reference to this ed. that Keith (HSL, pref., p. xvi) remarked that it should never have been published from one mutilated MS. But the new ed. of the work, published from Trivandrum in 1954, is based on a far fuller MS, though fragmentary, and runs to 246 printed pages, carrying the story to the episode of Kadambari; see below, pt. III, ch. III 2. The colophon mentioning the work as complete is evidently a mistake of the scribe who not having found the continuation took the portion for a complete work. The extant work covers nearly half the story in PP, the subject-matter of which is identical; cp. pt. III 3. The ASKS, which is a faithful summary of ASK covers the extant portion of ASK in 658 verses (up to V. 141) and runs to VIII. 125 where it breaks off. Cp. pt. III, ch. III. The writer of ASKS has been conjectured by S. Kuppuswami Sastri to be one Pañcaśikha who used (acc. to Bhoja's SPr. XI, Josyer ed. II, p. 674) the word ananda in the last stanza of each canto as a distinctive mark, which we notice in ASKS, but his work, acc. to SPr. itself, is Südrakakatha (and not ASKS which is obviously a different work); cp. G. Harihara Sastri: ASKS, intro., p. iii 4. ASK p. 17; ASKS, I. 57-63; II. 1-2; cp. Hcar. p. 92 5. Cp. transcript of the MS in Madras Govt. Oriental MSS Lib., p. 58: निरस्तापल्लवेषु काञ्ची नाम नगरी इत्यवन्तिसुन्दरीये दण्डिप्रयोगात्; cp. ASK p. 8 : नयसंभावनानापल्लवेषु (पल्लवेषु) राजा बभूव, and p. 6: raft V. Raghavan (AOR, V, pt. 2, pp. 459-61) places the quotation in DKC, VI (sub-story of Gomini), p. 159
