Gaudavaho

Author(s): Vakpatiraj, Narhari Govind Suru, P L Vaidya, A N Upadhye, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 103

(LXXXVI)
pedantic like his fellow Prakrit poets and unlike his Sanskrit confreres, he is free from puns or plays upon words and from analogies or similes drawn from grammatical or dialectical quibbles. He chiefly delights in two Figures of Speech, the Simile and the Utprekṣā . Perhaps in many places Vakpati might have used words more easy to identify and shorter compounds of words; but he might not then have been so sententious, or so exact or so free from prolixity or so appropriate As the partiality for long compounds is, however, a vice of the age to which he belonged, and though it considerably detracts from the merits of his otherwise most excellent poem, we must not judge him independently of what the scholarship of his age considered as essential and beautiful ".
VII: Picture of the Society, as revealed in the Gaüdavaho:
Religious conditions :
In the medieval period, as in Europe so in India, Religion played a dominating rôle in the life of the people. It was almost their life-breath for which they lived and at times even died. By the time of Vakpatirāja, three religions had developed in Mid-India viz. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. There was perfect tolerance among the people who owed their allegiance to any one of them and lived happily without embitterment. "If47, for instance, the father was a devotee of Śiva, the son was a devotee of Buddha and the same man might change his religion without causing disturbance either in the family or the society." With the progress of the cult of Devotion as one of the three Paths to obtain salvation, idolatry had taken root and considerably developed among the
47. C. V. Vaidya History of Medieval Hindu India' P. 100.
.........
.........