Bhāsa

Bhāsa is one of the earliest and most celebrated Indian playwrights in Sanskrit, predating Kālidasa. His name was already well-known by the 1st century BCE and he belongs to the late-Mauryan (322-184 BCE) period at the earliest, but the thirteen plays attached to his name are commonly dated closer to the first or second century CE.

"Bhasa" redirects here. For the word for "language", see Bhāṣā. For other uses, see Bhasa (disambiguation).

His plays had been lost for centuries until the manuscripts were rediscovered in 1913 by the Indian scholar Ganapati Shastri. Bhāsa had previously only been known from mentions in other works, like the Kavyamimamsa on poetics from 880–920 AD. In the Kavyamimamsa, Rajashekhara attributes the play Swapnavāsavadattam to Bhāsa.

In the introduction to his first play Mālavikāgnimitram, Kālidāsa wrote: "Shall we neglect the works of such illustrious authors as Bhāsa, Saūmilla, and Kaviputra? Can the audience feel any respect for the work of a modern poet, a Kālidāsa?"

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