A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.s6.1

c14.s6.1

To understand Kalhaṇa's outlook on history we must not, of course, think of Thucydides or Polybios; we must, as has been well said, remember that, with these great works before them, Roman opinion was still content to see in history the opportunity for displaying command of rhetoric and of inculcating moral maxims. Kalhaṇa's aim is to produce a work which shall conform to the demands not of rhetoricians—of whom India had none—but of writers on poetics, and at the same time to impress on his readers moral maxims. The first of his aims he frankly admits at the outset: ‘Worthy of praise is the strange power of true poets which surpasses in value even the drink of immortality, since by it not only their own bodies of glory, but also those of others, are sustained. It is the creative genius of the poet alone which by its power of the production of beauty can place past times before the eye of men.’ He admits¹ the difficulty which he has to face; the amplitude of his task forbids the development of attractive variety (*vaicitrya*), which means that, having so much to narrate, he could not follow Bhāravi and Māgha in filling up his poem with descriptions of the poet’s stock-in-trade. There are indeed digressions but modest in kind, and it is only in them that we find the constant occurrence of the ornaments which mark the true poetic style. Nothing, however, shows his self-imposed moderation better than comparison with Bāṇa’s *Harṣacarita* or Bilhaṇa’s poem.