Mattavilasa Prahasana / drunken holy man loses his skull-bowl
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 78). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Insufficient evidence
Date or witness: Early 7th century CE (composition; approximate)
Region: Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India
Workbook date-sort bounds: 600 CE to 630 CE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
A drunken ascetic accuses a Buddhist monk of stealing his begging bowl; a petty material quarrel becomes pompous religious disputation.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
A royal author's Sanskrit farce survives and was transmitted as a dramatic text.
What remains uncertain
Neither ordinary audience adoption nor a specific phrase, character or scene acquiring an independent social life is demonstrated. Royal authorship and comic subject matter do not answer that question.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria