to accept the attribution, hesitated to declare the same due to some of the aforesaid objections which we have just answered. The Avantisundarikatha is regarded by some scholars as
- the lost, and now recovered, prelude to the Dasakumaracarita,
Thus it is suggested that Avantisundarikatha is the first portion of the whole story, the Dašakumaracarita in its genuine form (without the Purvapithika) is the middle part and there was one ucchväsa for the Uttarapithika. It is said that the Avantisundari- kathā was broken to fragments long ago with its earlier portion preserved in Kerala. When the earlier part-was not available and the Purvapithika was prefixed to the work, it came to be called Daśakumaracarita, the stories in it being divided into ucchvāsas, The theory owes its existence to the fact that both the works deal with the common theme (the story of Rajavahana and his friends), the extant portion of the Avantisundarikatha treating the earlier part and the authentic text of the Daśakumara- carita, the later part thereof. The Avantisundarikathā takes the story half-way towards the real Dasakumāracarita of Dandin, and breaks off near the point where the prince Rājavāhana enters the chasm with Mätanga to help him win his love, Mandakini, leaving his friends behind. Its verse summary carries the tale still further and reaches as far as the middle of the story of Upahäravarman, as we find it in the Daśakumāra- carita, presenting unmistakable points of resemblance with the latter. The fact has been made the basis for the belief that Daśakumāracarita is a continuation of the Avantisundarikatha, the gap in story between the two works caused by the loss of manuscript being supplied by the summary of the latter. The theory gets some support from the fact that Rajasekhara speaks only of three works of Dandin, which, according to the scholars now, are Kavyadarśa, Dvisaṁdhanakavya and Avantisundarikatha. 1. Cp. V. Raghavan in JKUML, vol. VII; SPr. pp. 836-7; Kane: HSP pp. 97, 98-9; G. Harihara Sastri: ASKS, intro., pp. i-iv; S. K. Pillai: ASK, pref., p. 4 2. Cp. G. Harihara Sastri: ASKS, intro., pp. ii and iii-iv
