A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s3.7

c14.s3.7

It is difficult to say much for Bilhaṇa as a historian. We may justly suspect his impartiality; Çiva intervenes in the affairs of his hero with suspicious promptitude, and the impression conveyed is certainly that the poet is trying by stressing the supernatural intervention in his favour to explain away the awkward fact that he fought with both his brothers. We have no real character-drawing, but merely the reflex of the epic; Āhavamalla and Vikramāditya are as heroes necessarily paragons of virtue, the others vicious. It is quite in keeping with the epic manner that the Colas, so often rooted out, are at the end of the poem still perfectly capable of worrying the ruler. Again, the artificial style leaves often difficulty as to the precise sense; it is not even certain whether while at Karṇa’s court Bilhaṇa wrote a poem on Rāma or made a journey to Ayodhyā. Chronology is utterly lacking, as it is in Bāṇa; ‘after some days’ or ‘after many days’ are expressions quite worthless, and while the inscriptions generally confirm Bilhaṇa’s narrative, there remain much vagueness and inaccuracy, or at least exaggeration as in the case of his alleged Gauḍa conquests. An irritating but epic vagueness prevails; there is dubiety about the identity of the two Karṇas whom he mentions,¹ and he frequently leaves out the names of minor personages, leaving us to guess their identity. The descriptions of the usual pleasures of a royal court are doubtless generically true, but they are clearly out of place, and the Svayaṁvara is too obviously based on Kālidāsa to give us any confidence in its existence, in anything like the form in which it is pictured, though we know that Rājputs long kept up the practice. There is also only too much ground for accepting as true to life the scene of drunkenness, for the Rājputs have long found delight in romping, equivoke, debauchery, and drinking.