A History of Sanskrit Literature c13.43

c13.43

An interesting and characteristic figure of the latest stage of classical Kāvya is Çrīharṣa, son of Hīra and Māmalladevī, author of the *Naiṣadhacarita*⁴ or *Naiṣadhīya*, who wrote probably under Vijayacandra and Jayacandra of Kanauj in the second half of the twelfth century,¹ though this date has not passed unquestioned.² He was also author of other works, including the *Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya* in which he establishes the reasonableness of the Vedānta by showing that all attempts at obtaining certainty are fallacious. The *Naiṣadhīya* unquestionably has a definite interest in the history of Sanskrit literature, for it exhibits the application to the charming episode of the *Mahābhārata*, familiar to all students as the *Nala*, of the full resources of a master of diction and metre, possessed of a high degree of skill in the difficult art of playing on words, and capable of both delicate observation of nature and of effective expression of the impressions thence derived. Indian taste shows its appreciation of him beyond question in naming him a Mahākavi as the successor of Kālidāsa, Bhāravi, and Māgha, nor need we doubt that to any of these critics the *Nala* would have seemed insufferably tame compared to the work of Çrīharṣa. As one enthusiast of modern times³ says, ‘all mythology is at his fingers’ ends. Rhetoric he rides over. He sees no end to the flow of his description,’ and the same author, in recounting a tradition that the work counted when complete 60 or 120 cantos expresses the hope that the missing portion may be discovered in some collection of manuscripts. It is happily incredible that even Çrīharṣa should have thought it worth while further elaborating his theme. As it is, the long poem carries us only to a description of the married bliss of Nala and Damayantī, leaving off with a description of the moon carried out in a dialogue between the amorous pair. Needless to say, Çrīharṣa, in dealing with the theme of the wedding, shows that his logical studies had in no way prevented him becoming an expert of great skill in all the complexities of the *Kāmasūtra*. We could wish that there was some respectable authority for an anecdote once current regarding Harṣa; he was, this tale runs, the nephew of Mammaṭa, the famous author of the *Kāvyaprakāça*, to whom in pride he exhibited his poem. His uncle, in lieu of rejoicing, expressed only profound regret that he had not seen it before he wrote the chapter on faults in poetry in that treatise, since it would have saved him all the labour to which he had been put in searching books to find illustrations of the mistakes which he censured.