A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.s9.41

c11.s9.41

To us, no doubt, both similes and metaphors sometimes seem far-fetched; those from grammar leave us cold, but there is wit in the assertion that the wearing by Rāma of the royal dress when the ascetic's garb revealed already his fairness is equivalent to the vice of repetition (*punarukta*). The bowmen whose arrows strike one another are like disputants whose words conflict. The king seeks to subdue the Persians as an ascetic his senses through the knowledge of truth. Kālidāsa is rich also in plays of fancy which present a vivid picture (*utprekṣā*); it is natural to him to think vividly, to attribute to the mountains, the winds, the streams the cares, sorrows, joys, and thoughts of men. He loves also the figure corroboration (*arthāntaranyāsa*); indeed, its careless use reveals the hand of the forger of the last cantos of the *Kumārasambhava*. But the *double entendre* is rare indeed; the instances of it are very few, and they lend no credit whatever to the suggestion that v. 14 of the *Meghadūta* is an attempt obliquely to praise Nicula and damn Dinnāga. Of the former we know nothing, and it was doubtless the later love for Çleṣas which bade men find them in Kālidāsa, where not one elaborate case even can be proved to exist.¹