Contributions to the Bhasa Question
By Otto Stein
Summary
Otto Stein addresses the long‑debated “Bhāsa question”: whether the thirteen Sanskrit plays attributed to the ancient dramatist Bhāsa are authentic and how they should be dated. He laments that Indological evidence is so unreliable that the age of a work cannot be fixed to a century and notes that the persistent tendency to assign works to famous authors obscures their true originimage/file:///home/oai/share/563014_compressed-473-721.pdf. Stein reviews the linguistic and stylistic arguments advanced since the discovery of the plays. Scholars generally accept that Svapnavāsavadatta and Yaugandharāyaṇa are genuine works by Bhāsa and that they survive in relatively unaltered form. For other plays, however, there is little justification for attributing them to Bhāsa. The author criticises arguments based on resemblances in style, metre and repetition of phrases and warns that such comparisons are subjective. He observes that the one‑act tragedy Uru‑bhanga is written in a highly refined kāvya style and may differ from the other plays precisely because it adapts material from the Mahābhārata. Stein proposes several scenarios: either the well‑written plays (like Yaugandharāyaṇa and Svapnavāsavadatta) are Bhāsa’s originals and the others are lost originals or poor imitations; or the extant versions are adaptations of earlier works; or none of the plays are by Bhāsa. To resolve this, he urges scholars to move beyond stylistic comparisons and examine the cultural details in the plays—palanquin usage, court etiquette, legal customs, art and architecture—comparing them with archaeological and textual sourcesimage/file:///home/oai/share/563014_compressed-473-721.pdf. Only through such objective analysis, he argues, can the plays’ dates and authorship be determined.
Conclusion
Stein argues that the plays attributed to Bhāsa cannot be dated or assigned on the basis of subjective stylistic comparisons. While two plays may be genuine, the rest could be adaptations or later compositions. He advocates a more objective approach: analysing cultural details—palanquins, court etiquette, art, law—and comparing them with external evidence. Only by grounding literary analysis in material culture and historical context, he suggests, can scholars answer the Bhāsa question. Until then, the age and authorship of these plays must remain open to debate.