prince of Vidarbha whose kingdom has been usurped. This had forced the queen Vasundhara to take refuge (with her son and daughter) with Mitravarma, who proved to be a treacherous ally. Thus the queen is compelled to send away the boy to safety. Vishruta takes upon himself to help the boy. He sends back the servant and instructs him to spread a false report that the young prince is dead. He also sends a poisonous garland to the queen which she uses to kill Mitravarma. Then Vishruta arrives in the city with the young boy, restores the kingdom and meets the queen in a temple of Durga. The boy is restored to his rightful throne, and Vishruta marries the princess. The text breaks off in the middle of Vishruta's story. Epilogue Later Vishruta restores the kingdom of Vidarbha to King Bhaskarvarman by leading an expedition against the usurper Vasantabhanu. After the narratives have ended, a messenger arrives from the old King Rajahamsa (father of Prince Rajavahan). The King had been very mournful when the Kumaras had scattered away, but was comforted by a seer who assured him that they would return after sixteen years. This interval has now come to pass. The Kumaras return with an army to Ujjain, and succeed in defeating King Manasara. Various kingdoms are distributed to the Kumaras, which they govern with justice and happiness to all. Authorship and relationship with the Avantisundarī There has been extensive debate about the authorship of the Dashakumaracharita. The author is traditionally regarded as the poet and grammarian Daṇḍin who composed the Kavyadarsha, a manual on poetry and rhetoric, and according to Yigal Bronner, 'there is now a wide consensus that a single Daṇḍin in authored all these works at the Pallava court in Kāñcī around the end of the seventh century'. In the early twentieth century, Agashe doubted this attribution on the grounds that the two works differ very widely in style and tone. Since a poet Dandin (presumably distinct from a prose writer) is also mentioned in sundry ancient Indian texts, he is led to conjecture the existence of at least three distinct Dandins. Since Dandin (literally, a staff-bearer) is also a common adjective for ascetics or religious mendicants, Wilson doubted whether it was the author's proper name at all. On the other hand, in the mid twentieth century Kale accepted that Kavyadarsha and Dashakumaracharita had been written