A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.s6.18

c11.s6.18

The problem why the poem was never finished by its author remains insoluble. The loss of the last pages of a solitary manuscript may be the explanation, but it is far more likely that the poet, deterred either by contemporary criticism of his treatment of the divine pair, or by the feeling that the legend of the birth with its strangeness and miracles was not a true theme for poetry, abandoned the purpose and left his work unfinished. It can hardly be claimed that death intervened, for there can be no doubt that the *Raghuvaṇça* is a later work. This shows itself both in the graver tone, in the references to the Yoga philosophy and the less personal conception of the universe as compared with the magnification of Çiva in the *Kumārasambhava*, and in the growing pedantry seen in the use of similes derived from grammar, of which we have only modest suggestions in the *Kumārasambhava*.⁷ Thus Rāma's army follows him to serve his purpose as the prefix *adhi* is followed by the root *i* to make the word *adhyayana*; Sugrīva is put in Vālin's place as king as a substitute replaces the root, and husband and wife are theme and suffix. Moreover, in the constant parallels between the two poems, as in the description of the marriage rites, the priority seems to belong to the *Kumārasambhava*; it is curious that Kālidāsa shows a distinct love of using the same metre for the same theme; thus in both we have the Çloka used in prayers,¹ death is described in the Viyoginī,² a ruined state in the Upajāti.³