A History of Sanskrit Literature c14.4

c14.4

With regard to the age of court poetry in general, we have the important literary evidence of the quotations in Patanjali's *Mahābhāshya*, which show that Kāvya flourished in his day, and must have been developed before the beginning of our era. Several of these quoted verses are composed in the artificial metres of the classical poetry, while the heroic *anushṭubh çlokas* agree in matter as well as form, not with the popular, but with the court epics.