पृष्ठम्:Sanskrit Literature.djvu/११५

83 THE RTUSAMHARA of his work. Nor is it the slightest use to argue that Sanskrit poets differed from other poets since they were essentially learned and artificial; the poets mentioned are precisely of the analogous type, men who worked steadily at their art until at their prime they could create structures which make their youthful attempts seem childish folly. In point of fact the Ṛtusamhāra is far from unworthy of Kālidāsa, and, if the poem were denied him, his reputation would suffer real loss. The contention that Mallinātha commented on the other three of his poems but not on this is met effectively by the consideration that its simplicity rendered it poor game for the very learned commentator to deal with. The fact that the writers on poetics do not cite from the poem has an obvious explanation in the same fact; these authors never exhibit the slightest trace of liking what is simple, and they could find in the later poems abundant material to use as illustration. More deplorable still are some of the æsthetical arguments adduced; complaint is made that the poet begins with the summer, whereas the spring was the usual beginning of the year, forgetting that Kālidāsa was not composing an almanac or writing a Shepheard's Calendar. Again, heat or its derivatives (tap) is found seven times in Canto i, as if this did not accord with summer, as does eagerness (samutsukatva) with the rains and longing (utkanth) with autumn. The poet is censured for asserting that the swans excel maidens in beauty of gait and the branches rob their arms of loveliness; later, he was not guilty of such discourtesy. He mixes a metaphor in speaking of clouds as having the lightning as creeper; as we have seen, Vatsabhaṭṭi borrows the phrase, and exploits two other verses of the poem, proving its antiquity and rendering most probable its authorship. It is objected that he uses here only the construction à mulataḥ, in lieu of the ablative, though equally once only in the Kumāra- sambhava he has āmekhalam; the freshness and liveliness of the seven verbal forms (ii. 19) is unparalleled and, therefore, not by Kalidāsa. Even the lack of developed use of figures of speech is adduced against him, and the use of samhara in the title has been questioned as unique. Poets happily do not feel themselves bound to be parrots.¹ ¹ His developed style is seen in his pictures of spring (Kumāras. iii ; Ragh. ix), and summer (Ragh. xvi). G 2