A History of Sanskrit Literature c23.s2.20

c23.s2.20

Moreover, the Sanskrit poets had command of a language capable of finer sound effects than even Greek at its best; they could successfully manage metres of great complexity but remarkable beauty, and they were conscious experts in the task of matching sound to sense, an art practised indeed by Greek and Roman poets alike, but with far less adequate means and with much less subtlety. Their use of alliteration is often overdone, but they resemble Vergil in their power to make it yield effective results, an art in which his followers and notably Lucan were markedly deficient. Their love of metaphor and simile doubtless led them at times to commit faults of taste and to a display of erudition rather than of judgement; but often they show a richness of fancy and power of happy phraseology which is not paralleled either in Greek or Latin poetry. Moreover, though we may easily find their paronomasias¹ tedious, there is no doubt that they are frequently rightly called models of twofold appropriateness, and the free employment of figures of speech is often superior to the somewhat rhetorical manner which was introduced into Latin poetry by the practice of declamation in the oratorical schools, which Juvenal so forcibly derides.