KAVYA IN INSCRIPTIONS 49
ksatrapa Rudradaman, grandson of the Ksatrapa Castana, known to Ptolemy as Tiastanes of Ozene, Ujjayinl, is written in prose {gadyam kavyam) and shows in a most interesting manner the development from the simple epic style to that of the Kavya. Grammar is obeyed, but epic licence is found ; patina, for patyd, is thus explained, and vtgaduttarani is a Prakritism for vincad-, which the epic, though not the grammar, permits ; epic again is the pleonasm in Parjanyena ekarnab/tutayam iva prihivydm krtdydm, ' when the storm had turned as it were all earth to ocean '. But in anyatra samgrdmesu, ' save in battles ', we have a pure error. From the epic style a distinct departure is made in the use of compounds ; Dandin, doubtless following earlier authority, bids them be used freely in prose, and approves of their being long. The inscription prefers compounds to simple words, and at the beginning presents us with a compound of nine words with twenty-three syllables ; the description of the king produces even a finer effort of seventeen words of forty syllables. The length of the sentences vies with that of the compounds ; one attains twenty-three "Granthas, each of thirty-two syllables. Of the figures of sound (gabdalamkaras) alliteration is freely used as in abhyastandmno Rudraddmno, sometimes with real effect. Of figures of sense (arlhalamkaras) one simile compares in the later manner the curtain wall of a reservoir to a mountain spur in the Kavya phrase parvatapratisparddhi. The description, if never of a very high order, displays some merit, especially in the vivid picture of the destruction by flooding of the dam of the reservoir. But what is far more important is that the author thinks it fit to ascribe to the king the writing of poems in both prose and verse ; flattery or not, it was obviously not absurd to ascribe to a Ksatrapa, of foreign extraction, skill in Sanskrit poetry. Moreover, the poems are qualified by a string of epithets as adorned by the qualities of simplicity, clearness, sweetness, variety, beauty, and elevation arising from the use of conventional poetic terminology (sphutalaghiHtiadhuracitrakdnta- gabdasamayoddrdlamkrta). The term almnkrta points unmis- takably to the author's acquaintance with a science of poetics prescribing the ornaments of poetry, and a comparison with the merits ascribed by Dandin 1 to the Vaidarbha style which he 1 Kavyfidarfa, i. 40 ff. See below, cbap xviii, § 2.
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