A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s1.18

c19.s1.18

The prose romance Udayasundarī Kathā of Soḍḍhala, a Kāyastha of Lāṭa, was written about A.D. 1000 under the patronage of Mummunirāja of Thana; the author took Bāṇa's Harṣacarita as his model, but falls far short of it. From Kerala we get in this period the quasi-historical Mūṣakavaṃśa of Atula, a chronicle of the Mūṣaka or Rāmaghata kings in fifteen cantos, and the exquisite unfinished poem Kṛṣṇavilāsa by Sukumāra whose date and nativity are, however, not beyond dispute. The Vikramāṅkadevacarita of Bilhaṇa, the Kashmiri Vidyāpati of Vikramāditya VI, is a Mahākāvya in eighteen cantos, which recounts in epic style the life and deeds of the Cālukyan emperor. The author gives his own life-history in the last canto and says that he composed the poem out of gratitude for the great honour shown to him late in his life by the ruler of Karṇāta. Not all its statements on the relations of Vikramāditya with his elder brother Someśvara can be accepted as true, but the verse is easy and flowing though the descriptions are disproportionately long. Bilhaṇa wrote other works from which citations have survived in anthologies; but there is no proof that the Pañcāśikā, a moving though somewhat outspoken portrayal of the pleasures of illicit love, can properly be attributed to him. Purporting to be the work of Cālukya Someśvara III, but most likely a composition of one or more of his court-poets, is the Mānasollāsa or Abhilashitārtha cintāmaṇi (1129-30), intended for the benefit of all classes in the state. It consists of five books of twenty chapters each. Its range is cyclopaedic, and obviously it lays under contribution many older technical treatises on medicine, magic, veterinary science, the valuing of precious stones and pearls, fortifications, painting and music, games and amusements and on the many other subjects it treats of. No great merit is evident in the choice of topics or their sequence, though the work is valuable as a record of the state of knowledge on many topics at that time. An astrologer and poet who flourished under Someśvara III was Vidyāmādhava whose Pārvati-Rukmiṇiya is a tour de force, each verse yielding two meanings, one narrating the marriage of Śiva and Pārvati and the other that of Krishna and Rukmini. Another and better effort in the same deplorable line was the Rāghava-Pāṇḍaviya of Kavirāja Mādhava Bhaṭṭa setting forth the story of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata. The poet lived in the court of Kadamba Kāmadeva (1182-97) and also wrote the Pārijātaharaṇa, a poem in ten cantos on a well-known episode from the Krishna cycle of legends.