104 Systems of Sanskrit Grammar § 80 - 1 help of the numerous commentaries which came into Each com- existence simultaneously and on all sides. mentary may be looked upon as having centered within itself the literary longings of the country around its place of nativity. And in later times there were made no attempts to improve or supplement the Särasvata, simply because the students of the Sarasvata did not wish to be erudite grammarians, considering grammar only as a means to an end. Only one such attempt by a pupil of Bhattoji has come down to us; but by that time the Kaumudīs and the abridgments of Varadarāja and others had fairly ousted the Särasvata from the field, It is an interesting coincidence that when the British rulers of India were first actuated by a desire to acquaint themselves more thoroughly with the literature and the ancient traditions of their subjects through the medium of Sanskrit, one of the earliest and the easiest of anglo- sanskrit grammars that was written was Wilkin's, the basis for which was just this same Sārasvata. At present the school has very little following. Its study is mainly confined to the provinces of Behar and Benares. The School of Bopadeva 81. The school of Bopadeva.This is a comparatively recent school of grammarians. Consequently there is no tradition of divine revelation attaching to the Mugdha- bodha, the chief text-book of the school, but it is accepted as the work of a real human author called Bopadeva. 82. The date of Bopadeva-Bopadeva was the son of a physician named Kesava and his teacher's name was Dhanesa. Bopadeva's birth-place is said to have been somewhere near the modern Daulatabad in the Mahratta country, then ruled by the Yadavas of Devagiri. Bopa- deva is quoted by Mallinätha (cir. 1350) in his commen-
