A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.s2.6

c11.s2.6

Very different is the work of Vatsabhaṭṭi,¹ no minister of an emperor but a humble local poet, glad to earn a fee by writing for the guild of silk-weavers of a provincial town. What is interesting in him is his testimony to the prevalence of the Kāvya in his time; the adjective *pūrvā*, above, is used as sufficient description of his poem, the missing *praçasti*, eulogy, being so naturally supplied by those familiar with current verse. He asserts that his work was done with effort or care (*yatnena*), and there is every evidence of the truth. In obedience to the laws of poetics he inserts in his forty-four stanzas descriptions both of Lāṭa and of the town Daçapura, of the seasons, winter and spring, and shows by the use of twelve metres his skill in versification, though the effect is marred by his inability to bring off his results without free use of the weak caesura. His style is the eastern or Gauḍa, as is clearly proved by his love of long compounds in verse, and by the way in which in one stanza he has fitted the sound of the verses to the altering sentiment, advancing from soft harmonious sounds in describing the gentleness of his hero to discords when proclaiming him *dviṭdṛptapakṣakṣapaṇaikadakṣaḥ*, ‘peerless in destroying the proud hosts of the foe’. His alliterations, similes, and metaphors all are of types abundant in the Kāvya, but his skill is small, and his poem is disfigured by tautologies as in *tulyopamānāni*, the use of verse-fillers or needless particles as in *tatas tu*, or prefixes as in *abhivibhāti*, or words as in *samudrānta*, while *spṛçanniva* for the necessary neuter and *nyavasanta* are offences against grammar. But his panegyric is invaluable testimony to the widespread cultivation of Sanskrit poetry and it helps definitely to aid us in determining the date of India’s greatest poet.