Because previously no consensus could be established concerning the Bhâsa riddle, the manifold discussions kept going on and most likely will continue in the years to come. If we simplify the issues to a rather large extent, we can discern some main topics in the discussions. In the following sections I give a summary of these topics in order to get more insight into the position of the present study. First of all, however, I sketch the situation before the thirteen Trivandrum plays were discovered.