A History of Sanskrit Literature c16.s1.13

c16.s1.13

Much less attractive is the *Ghaṭakarpara*¹ in twenty-two stanzas, which describes how a young wife at the beginning of the rains sends a message by the cloud to her absent husband, a situation the reverse of that described in the *Meghadūta*. The poem owes its title to the fact that the author at the close offers to carry water in a broken jar for any one who can surpass him in Yamakas, alliterations consisting of repetitions in corresponding places of groups of the same letters. Hence perhaps there has been evolved the poet Ghaṭakarpara who would thus have perpetuated his name by this word-play. That the work is earlier than Kālidāsa is deduced by Jacobi¹ from the fact of this boast, which later was not justified; if, however, the poem when first written set a model in this form of composition, then it might be preserved when it had ceased to be pre-eminent on the score of its originality. This conjecture seems wholly implausible; no example of a text being preserved as a literary curiosity is known, and Ghaṭakarpara evidently was ranked higher by Indian taste than by modern opinion, for he was made one of the nine jewels of Vikramāditya’s court as contemporary of Kālidāsa. The fact that a *Nītisāra*² in twenty-one stanzas is ascribed to him does not strengthen the case for his identity, as there is nothing distinctive in the verses.