A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.s2.4

c9.s2.4

Ānandavardhana¹ has not inaptly contrasted the object of the court epic with that of the legend (*itihāsa*); the latter is content to narrate what has happened, the former is essentially dependent on form. The *Rāmāyaṇa* occupies an intermediate place, and its formal merits are not slight. But in any case it essentially anticipates the means by which the later poets seek to lend distinction and charm to their subject-matter; as they drew deeply upon it for their themes, so they found in it the models for the ornaments of their style. If the city of Ayodhyā appears in human form to the king in Kālidāsa's *Raghuvaṁça*, Vālmīki has set the example in his vision of Laṅkā in the Sundarakāṇḍa. The action in the later Kāvya is all but obstructed by the wealth of the poet's descriptive powers; Vālmīki's followers have described with no less than twenty-nine similes the woes of Sītā in her captivity, with sixteen the sad plight of Ayodhyā bereft of Rāma.² Descriptions of the seasons, of mountains and rivers, bulk largely in the Kāvya, but Vālmīki has set the example in his elaborate accounts of the rainy season and autumn, of the winter, of Mount Citrakūṭa, and of the river Mandākinī.³ Metaphors of beauty abound in the Kāvya side by side with those of strained taste and pointless wit; the *Rāmāyaṇa* is guilty of