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Kavyanusasana easy style. His strength lies in encyclopaedical work rather than in original research but the enormous mass of varied information which he gathered from original sources, mostly lost to us, makes his works an inestimable mine for philological and historical research.” (Ency. of Religion and Ethics. Vol VI. p.591).
Hemachandra's sastric work has, always, been so much in the fore-front that it has, so to say, monopolized the attention of the students of his work - now and in ancient times; yet a careful study of his poetic works reveals him to be a poet of no mean onder. His two Dvyāşrayas, his illustrative verses in the Rayaņāvali (or the Deşināmamāla ) and the Chhandonuşāsana, the T. S. P. C. and the devotional hymns, throw a flood of light on his poetic faculty.
Possibly some critics will feel it strange that I should think of associating poetry with the Dvyásrayaswhich are, in their opinion, merely grammatical exercises. But is it not a peculiarity of poetry that it is sometimes discovered in strange places ? Let it be, at once, granted that the language of the S. D. K. is uncouth; it is there on purpose. But once you get accustomed to it and pierce through its forbidding exterior you get genuine epic poetry. The descriptions of the S. D. K. are generally picturesque and realistic, e. g. the description of Anahillapura, that of the sudden appearance of monsoon when Karọa was practising penance, that of the Arbudachala, etc.. Even the conventional descriptions of seasons, bathing, flowergathering, etc. in the S. D. K, are more objective and realistic than those found in the recognized Mahākāvyas.
The descriptions of battles -and there are many
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