A History of Sanskrit Literature c10.s2.1.2

c10.s2.1.2

This view gains support from the fact that, though Daṇḍin praises the Vaidarbha style, and evidently disapproves of the Gauḍa, in practice poets of later date often affect the Gauḍa manner. Açvaghoṣa, however, affords a more convincing proof still of the early character of the Vaidarbha; his style unmistakably is of the Vaidarbha type; as Bāṇa later says of the western poets, it aims at sense rather than mere ornament; it is his aim to narrate, to describe, to preach his curious but not unattractive philosophy of renunciation of selfish desire and universal active benevolence and effort for the good, and by the clarity, vividness, and elegance of his diction to attract the minds of those to whom blunt truths and pedestrian statements would not appeal. This project left no room for mere elegance or for deliberate straining after effect, and thus it results that Açvaghoṣa’s works attain a high measure of attractiveness, especially when we make the necessary allowance for the decidedly bad condition of the text tradition of both epics. Simple, of course, in the sense in which it can be applied to English poetry, is an inappropriate epithet as regards any Sanskrit Kāvya, but relatively to the later standard, even in some measure to Kālidāsa, Açvaghoṣa's style is simple. Nor may we deny it the epithets of sensuous and passionate;