15/12/2023
Do you know that the first playwright was Bhāsa, but unfortunately, his plays were found in the year 1909 C.E.
It is quite surprising that the person who is mentioned and praised by well-known playwrights and authors; his plays are found after those playwrights and commentators gave their take and praise on Bhāsa's plays.
In 1909, T. Gaṇapatiśāstrī, a महामहोपाध्याय took a responsibility of cataloguing all the Sanskrit manuscripts. While searching for the manuscripts, he found 13 manuscripts which were actually plays but without the name of author. When the characters were studied it was concluded that the plays were of Bhāsa. These 13 plays had similar pattern of play, so it was definitely penned down by the same writer. These plays were not available to people in the time period of around 14th Century to 19th Century, as the mentions and descriptions of these plays were found in other literature as if that person has watched the performance of the play. But during the same time period, a community of artists चाक्यार used to perform it on stage without knowing about their authorship. These plays were published as authored by Bhāsa in 1913 by T. Gaṇapatiśāstrī at Travancore. Their were many counterviews as well about the plays not being of Bhāsa, but today, this is the widely accepted opinion.
