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INTRODUCTION
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Kalidasa, of whom he was an admirer, the fact sounds still more strange. It is, however, not unlikely that his personal experiences and the circumstances of his life were to a certain extent responsible for this singular characteristic Wilson, however, is of opinion that the more deeply a man feels, the more prone he is to look at facts and the less able to humour or Jest'
But the absence of humour is considerably compensated by his fondness for irony, which exhibits itself to a remarkable extent in his Mv Thus, for instance, in Jamadagnya's speeches on p 59,1 8, p. 61,1 2, p 77,1 1, p 82, 1. 4, p 98, 1 8, in Rama's speeches on p 53,1 3, p 54,1 5, p 127, 1 8, and the following verse, p 138, 1 1; in Vasistha's speech on p 78,1 10, and in Alaka's speech in VII. 1 I have also been able to find one such instance in Mal. VII. 0/1 kaham nāma nava-vahû-vrssambhanovaa januam, &c
(c) Hus style A defect of his style, which is to a certain extent present in the Mv, but which reached its climax in the Mal, is his use of absurdly long and highly confusing compounds both in prose and in verse and his introduction of long prose speeches Therein he seems to be following the conventional rules of the Rhetoricians Thus in Mv and Māl. he employs the style known as gaudi, which is characterized by the use of long compounds, conjunct consonants, and hard letters, and in Utt, the vardarbhi style, suited to the karuna-rasa, and marked by the absence of heavy constructions and long compounds, and by the presence of soft letters 2 In places we cannot fail to mark his loose constructions, some of which he shares in common with his brother poets and dramatists. Thus in My alone we might mention brahmadyars tridaba-munabhah, I 11, agatam rajare-grhät for rajare-grhāt āgatam, p 9, 1 15, brahmanaJanasya sanghata-mrtyum, p 20, 1. 5, mama hrtasya, &c, p 59, 17, sada esa panhuda-tthane, p 108, 1. 4, eka-samaya-vyutpannam eka-kriyam, IV 57, and svayam kathayitum, &c, p 151, 1. 14 There are a few more passages which are defective in one way or the other In Mv I 18 we have to stretch dando 'parah to extract a sense from it In I 20 the su of sunirgata has no significance In II 9 stri-ratnam misyate wants upekertum to bring out the intended sense In tac ca gatam, p 189, 1 8, tat stands for ryputvam. On p 201,1 2, apastah lacks a subject In VII 37 the first foot is defective through a construction inharmonious with the next two lines
1 Vide ojo-guna-yukta gaudiya rītih | asyām ca bandhauddhatyam samasa-darrghyam samyuktavarnatvam prathama-trtiyākrāntau dvitiyacaturthau yuktau rephas cakaryah -Kāvyānusāsana, p. 81, 1 24 Cf. also Kävyä I 80
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2 Vide madhurya-guna-yuktā vaular bhi itih asyam ca prāyena komalo bandho 'samāsah, &c -Kävyänusäsana, p 31, 1 13
3 Vide notes on these passages
