पृष्ठम्:Sanskrit Literature.djvu/१११

79 HARIŞEŅA AND VATSABHAȚȚI courtiers sighed in relief and gloomy were the faces of his kins- folk and said to him, " Do thou protect all this earth"." Very different is the work of Vatsabhaṭṭi,' no minister of an emperor but a humble local poet, glad to earn a fee by writing for the guild of silk-weavers of a provincial town. What is inter- esting in him is his testimony to the prevalence of the Kavya in his time; the adjective purvā, above, is used as sufficient descrip- tion of his poem, the missing praçasti, eulogy, being so naturally supplied by those familiar with current verse. He asserts that his work was done with effort or care (yatnena), and there is every evidence of the truth. In obedience to the laws of poetics he inserts in his forty-four stanzas descriptions both of Lāṭa and of the town Daçapura, of the seasons, winter and spring, and shows by the use of twelve metres his skill in versification, though the effect is marred by his inability to bring off his results without free use of the weak caesura. His style is the eastern or Gauda, as is clearly proved by his love of long compounds in verse, and by the way in which in one stanza he has fitted the sound of the verses to the altering sentiment, advancing from soft harmonious sounds in describing the gentleness of his hero to discords when proclaiming him dvitdrptapakṣakṣapaṇaikadakṣaḥ, 'peerless in destroying the proud hosts of the foe'. His alliterations, similes, and metaphors all are of types abundant in the Kavya, but his skill is small, and his poem is disfigured by tautologies as in tulyopamānāni, the use of verse-fillers or needless particles as in tatas tu, or prefixes as in abhivibhāti, or words as in samudrānta, while sprçanniva for the necessary neuter and nyavasanta are offences against grammar. But his panegyric is invaluable testimony to the widespread cultivation of Sanskrit poetry and it helps definitely to aid us in determining the date of India's greatest poet. 3. Kalidasa's Life We know nothing whatever of value from later sources re- garding the life and character of Kalidasa.2 Anecdotes are told 1 Buhler, Die indischen Inschriften, pp. 31 ff. 2 On his date see Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Keith, Sanskrit Drama, pp. 143 ff.; Hillebrandt, Kalidāsa (1921). S. Ray (POCP. 1919, i, p. lix) held him to be Agnimitra's court poet (c. 150 B. c.), but K. G. Sankar (IHQ. i. 309 ff.) puts him between 75 and 25 B. C.