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Dr. Charlotte Krause : Her Life & Literature
seems to be interwoven with allusions to contemporaneous events and persons, disguised by paranomasia, and therefore difficult to recognize for a reader remote in time and circumstances, but probably easily understood and readily enjoyed by the circle in which the poet moved.
It has already been seen that the poem is full of double entendre and that many of its words are iridescent with variegated meanings, challenging the reader's imagination to follow the poet into the intricacies of his fancy. When he, e.g., uses the word 'guna', he often leaves it to the reader to find out whether 'virtues' are referred to, or the attributes' of Logic, or both; or when he calls his hero's Fame ‘aprameya'( St. 6), he keeps him wondering whether this adjective is used in the conventional sense of 'immeasurable', or the special one of ‘not to be proved' which it has as a logical term, or both; or when he speaks of the king's 'naya', it may be simply ‘maxims', or the 'stand-points' of Jaina Logic, or more likely both.
When proper nouns are concerned, the decision is even more difficult, as there is the danger of hitting beyond the mark and inferring meanings of which the poet never thought ! How is, for instance, the modern reader to decide whether or not the word ‘Satyabhāmā' ( St. 9) is meant to imply an allusion to the Empress Dattadevī, whose portrait appears on some of Samudragupta's coins, alternating with that of Śrī-Lakşmi whose co-wife she can be called with fullest justification 2192
How to decide whether or not the expression ‘Ādyapuruṣa' (St. 23 ), which may refer either to Vişnu or to the first Tīrthankara Rşabhanātha, simultaneously also implies an allusion to the 'Adirāja' or certain Gupta records, i.e., to Ghatotkaca, the 'Ancestor' of the Gupta Emperors ?193
It is still more uncertain whether or not King Hastivarman of Vengi, or perhaps Vyāghrarāja of Mahākāntāra whom Samudragupta defeated194, or both, are in Siddhasena's mind, when he speaks of those 'bhujaparighaparispandadęptair narendraiḥ.... mrga
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