THE RAGHUVANÇA 97 names of worthless kings whose harems supplied their sole interest in life. We cannot deny ¹ his authorship of Cantos xviii and xix; no ancient authority questions them, and they are cited, if rarely, by writers on poetics. But their brevity and the utter abruptness of the end, when the widow of Agnivarman, a worth- less debauchee, is awaiting the birth of her child, suggest that we have no more than a rough draft. Yet we would gladly assign to a poetaster meaningless puns on names of kings, as when Pāriyātra is merely said to have exceeded in height the Pāri- yātra mountains, or the incredible tastelessness of the action of a king who hangs his foot out of the window for the people to kiss. Vālmīki, of course, is the chief creditor of Kālidāsa in this poem. Here and there one certainly surpasses the other; though normally the advantage lies with the younger poet, yet there are exceptions. Fine as is Kālidāsa's picture of Rāma's meeting with the sons who know him not, it yet is still more affecting in the leisurely march of the epic, and Kālidāsa has failed to improve on the scene of Sīta's vindication. But his merit shines out in such cases as his description of the return to Ayodhyā; future poets were to imitate it, but not one to equal it. No other epic of Kalidasa has come down to us, and the rela- tion in time of his epics to his dramas is insoluble. The sugges- tion that he is responsible for the Setubandha, which relates the tale of Rāma from the advance against Rāvana and the build- ing of the bridge to Lankā down to Rāvana's death, is excluded by the style, with its innumerable plays on words, alliterations, recondite similes, exaggeration, and its enormous compounds. Its date is uncertain, as of Pravarasena of Kashmir 4 its author or patron we know nothing definite. Still more ludicrous is the suggestion that the Nalodaya is his; that rimed poem of ¹ As does Hillebrandt, Kālidāsa, pp. 42 f. They seem known to the Aihole inscr. (EI. vi. 8 f.) of Ravikirti who boasts his rivalry with Kalidasa and Bharavi. For un- evenness in great poets cf. Aeneid v as criticized by Tyrell, Latin Poetry, pp. 153 f. ² On alleged use of the Padma Purana, see H. Sarma, Calc. Or. Series, 17. Ed. and trans. S. Goldschmidt, 1880-4. Date before Bana, perhaps late 6th cent., Slein, Rajatarañgiṇī, i. 66, 84 f.
- That the Vākāṭaka Pravarasena had anything to do with the poem seems quite
unproved. Ed. and trans W. Yates, Calcutta, 1844; Bhandarkar, Report, 1883-4, p. 16; A. R. S. Ayyar, JRAS. 1925, pp. 263 ff., who ascribes Vasudeva as author also of the 3149 H
