Bhasa is one of the earliest and most celebrated Indian playwrights in Sanskrit. However, very little is known about him.

Kalidasa in the introduction to his first play Malavikagnimitram writes - Shall we neglect the works of such illustrious authors as Bhasa, Saumilla, and Kaviputra? Can the audience feel any respect for the work of a modern poet, a Kalidasa?

So we know he lived before Kalidasa and generally the gap is not considered to be more than a couple of centuries. As the general date for Kalidasa accepted generally is the 4th century CE, Bhasa is placed in the 2nd century CE. The plays of Bhasa had been lost for centuries. He fame was known only from mention in other works like the famous text on poetics Kavyamimamsa written during 880-920 AD by Rajashekhara a famous poet, dramatist and critic. In the Kavyamimamsa, he attributes the play Svapna-vasavadatta to Bhasa.

Discovery of his plays

In 1912, the late Mahamahopadhyaya

The plays of Bhasa

Bhasa does not follow all the dictates of the Natya Shastra. This has been taken as a proof of their antiquity as post-kalidasa, no play that did not adhere to the Natya Shastra's rules has been found. Bhasa allows scenes that contain signs of physical violence to be shown on stage in plays like Uru-Bhanga.This is strictly frowned upon by Natya Shastra.

The Uru-Bhanga and Karna-bhara are the only tragic Sanskrit plays in India till modern times. In Uru-Bhanga, Duryodhana the villain of the Mahabharata is shown repenting his past as he lies with his thighs crushed awaiting death. His relations with his

The plays are generally short compared to later playwrights and most of them draw the theme from the Hindu epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana.Though he is firmly on the side of the heroes of the epic, Bhasa treats their opponents with great sympathy. He takes a lot of liberties with the story to achieve this. In the Pratima-nataka, Kaikeyi who is responsible for the tragic events in the Ramayana is shown as enduring the calumny of all so that a far noble end is achieved.

The plays based on Ramayana are

Pratima-nataka: The statues

Abhisheka-natka: The coronation

Six plays are based on the Mahabharata:

Panch-ratra: The five-nights

Madhyama-vyayoga: The middle one

Duta-Ghattotkacha: Ghattotkacha as envoy

Duta-Vakya : The envoy's message

Uru-bhanga: The broken thigh

Karna-bhara: Karna's burden

Harivamsa or Bala-charitra: Hari's dynasty or the tale of Childhood

The Duta-Vakya and Bala-charitra are perhaps the only Sanskrit by a famous playwright with Krishna as the central character.

His other plays are not epic based. Avimaraka is a fairy tale. The unfinished Daridra-Charudatta (Charudatta in poverty) tells the story the courtesan Vasantasena and is interesting for the same story was developed by Shudraka into the more famous Mricha-kataika.

His most famous play Swapna-vasavadatta(Vasavadatta in the dream) and Pratijna-Yaugandharayana (the vow of Yaugandharayana) are based on the legends that had grown around the King Udayana, a contemporary of the Buddha. The first tells the story of how the king lost his kingdom and regained it with the help of his loyal minister Yaugandharayana and the latter of how he married the princess Vasavadatta.

Though his plays were discovered only in the 20th century, two of them Uru-Bhanga and Karna-bhara, have become popular due to their appeal to modern tastes and performed in translation and Sanskrit.

References

• Thirteen Trivandrum plays ascribed to Bhasa( 2 Vols), translated by H.C.Woolner, Lakshman Sarup, 1930