A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s2.11

c14.s2.11

We are still far from serious history in the *Navasāhasāṅkacarita*¹ of Padmagupta, also called Parimala, whose work, in eighteen cantos, was written about 1005. It relates the mythical theme of the winning of the princess Çaçiprabhā, but is intended at the same time to allude to the history of king Sindhurāja Navasāhasāṅka of Mālava; we have by the hand of Bilhaṇa a similar example of this curious treatment in the drama *Karṇasundarī* in which he celebrates, under the guise of the marriage of a Caulukya prince to the daughter of a Vidyādhara king, an actual wedding of his patron to a princess. Obviously the method does not tend towards historical treatment or results. But the poet is by no means without the power of graceful expression, however impossible it may be to treat seriously his poem as a whole. Thus he has quite a happy conception in: