A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.27

c14.27

The *Kirātārjunīya* describes, in eighteen cantos, the combat, first narrated in the *Mahābhārata*, between Çiva, in the guise of a *Kirāta* or mountaineer, and Arjuna. It cannot have been composed later than the sixth century, as its author, Bhāravi, is mentioned in an inscription of 634 A.D. The fifteenth canto of this poem contains a number of stanzas illustrating all kinds of verbal tricks like those described in Daṇḍin's *Kāvyādarça*. Thus one stanza (14) contains no consonant but *n* (excepting a *t* at the end);¹ while each half-line in a subsequent one (25), if its syllables be read backwards, is identical with the other half.²