KADAMBA1U. XXXI with the story of human sorrow and divine consolation, of death and the passionate longing for a union after death that goes straight from the heart of one who had himself felt the pang and nursed the hope, to us who are of like frame with him.* One of the greatest flaws of Bana's writings is that they H abound in puns on words and recondite allusions. The reader is often at a loss, amidst the array of double-meaning words, bold and fanci- ful allusions, to grasp the exact meaning of the author. Though this is a blemish according to modern ideas of criti- cism, ancient India thought otherwise. These by-ways of puns were called Vakrokti ( crooked speech ), which was raised to the position of an Alamkara. Subandhu, we have seen above, boasts of his skill in puns on each letter. Anothor serious blemish is that in the Kadambari wc meet with a defect in constructive art, which is due to the device of weaving stories within stories. The reader is unable to carry in his head the bewildering turns and convolutions of the story and the confusion of curses and counter curses. The fact that the greater part of the story is put in the mouth of a parrot is a serious drawback to the verisimilitude of the work. Bana seems to have had very little sense of proportion. In his descriptions of Mahas'veta and the temple of Chandika lie tires the reader by dwelling too much on every detail. The patience of the reader is exhausted by the overloading of single words with epithets and of the epithets to these epithets. It sometimes so seems that the poet cares only for the gorgeous description of the evening, morning, moonrisc or the limbs of the heroine and leaves the plot to take care of itself. It is necessary to say a few words about Baiia's son. It may be at once admitted that tbe highest praise is due to the dutiful son of Bana for having creditably performed his self-imposed task. He possesses not a few of the excellences of his father. He has almost the same command over the
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