A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s7.25

v3.c35.s7.25

In canto XVIII the poet gives his autobiography. Here he describes his native land, particularly his native village Khonamukha, in a manner so true to nature that Bühler², who visited the place, has expressed his admiration at the exactness of the description. The village clings so closely to the hills of the Himālaya that it could not have been described more accurately than in the words of the poet, who has designated it as "a coquettish ornament of the Himālaya". About his father Jyeṣṭhakalasa he reports that he wrote a commentary on the Mahābhāṣya. Both of his brothers were scholars and authors. About his ownself he boasts that he had ardently and diligently studied the Vedas, the Vedāṅgas, grammar upto the Mahābhāṣya and poetics and that the fame of his poetry had spread all over the world. He says not altogether unassumingly "there is no village, no province, no capital town, no forest and no grove, or place that Sarasvatī has sanctified, where the wise and the fool, the old and the young, man and woman do not in a body recite his poem with a thrill of joy" (XVIII, 89). He had travelled far and wide, in the same manner as young scholars and poets in India have the tendency to do, in different courts and places of pilgrimage. He visited the holy cities of Mathurā, Kanauj, Allahabad and Vārāṇasī. For a long time he stayed with a prince Karṇa of Ḍāhala, where he defeated the poet Gaṅgādhara in a literary contest and composed a poem on Rāma. After travelling much he arrived at Kalyāṇa, where King Vikramāditya conferred on him the title Vidyāpati ("Master of Science"). and presented to him one blue umberella and an elephant.