A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.s1.7

c11.s1.7

That such princes should favour poetry and fine arts was inevitable. Samudragupta was proud of his skill with the lute, and a coin depicts him playing that instrument. But a more secure support for his claims is afforded by the assertions of the panegyrist Hariṣeṇa (*c.* 350), who assures us that his patron had a poetic style which was worth study and wrote poems which increased the poet's spiritual treasure, and again that his title of king of poets, Kavirāja, was well grounded through his composition of many poems deserving imitation by others. He delighted also in the society of the earnest students of literature, was interested in the explanation and defence of holy scripture, and devoted to music. Moreover, he won fame by removing the discrepancy between the poet's art and riches, doubtless his chief merit in the eyes of many of his flatterers. Of his great son Candragupta we know that he adopted the title Vikramāditya, reminiscent of the legendary Vikramāditya of Ujjayinī, and it is certainly plausible to suggest that the fame of Vikramāditya as the patron of poets, attested in the late and in itself worthless legend of the Nine Jewels,¹ was due to the literary distinction of Candragupta's court. The list of Jewels runs Dhanvantari, Kṣapaṇaka, Amarasiṁha, Çaṅku, Vetāla Bhaṭṭa, Ghaṭakarpara, Kālidāsa, Varāhamihira, and Vararuci. Of these Dhanvantari, as the author of a medical glossary, is older than Amarasiṁha, who also used Kālidāsa; the fourth and fifth are mere names; Varāhamihira definitely lived in the sixth century, and the dates of Kṣapaṇaka as a lexicographer and of Vararuci are unknown. But we have a distinct corroboration of the idea of Candragupta as a patron of poets in the fact that his minister of external affairs, Vīrasena Kautsa Çāba, was interested in poetry. Probably the succeeding emperors manifested equal concern in poetry.