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Prakrit Verses in Sanskrit Works on Poetics
His style is highly cultivated and pregnant with meaning. He chiefly delights in two figures of speech, the Upamā and the Utprekşā. If Kālidāsa is a master of Upamā Väkpati is a master of Utprekșă. His partiality for long compounds detracts, however, from the merits of his otherwise excellent poem. However, he remained unnoticed, for centuries, just because he wrote in Prakrit.
(g) Līlāva40 (Sk. Līlāvati) : is a Kathā (a romance) in Māhārāștrī Prakrit verse. Its composition is assigned to c A.D. 800. The poet does not disclose his name although he gives his father's name as Bhūṣaṇabhatta and his grandfather's name as Bahulāditya (gāthās 19,21 and 23). According to the commentator on this Kathā, however, the word 'Kouhaleņa (Sk Kautūhalena) in gäthā 23 refers to the poet's name (Kaufuhala - Kutūhala).
This Kathā consists of 1333 găthās. At the beginning of the work the poet invokes deities of the Puranic pantheon like Hari, Madhumathana, Gaurī, Candi and others. The main story deals with the love of Hāla, the very famous king of Pratișthāna in Mahārāştra, well-known as a Prakrit poet and renowned for his preference for Prakrit, and Līlāvati, a princess of Simhaladvīpa who is prophesied to make her husband a monarch of the whole world. The main story contains sub-stories of Kuvalāyāvali (daughter of King Vipulāśaya and the celestial nymph Rambhā) and Citrangada, a Gandharva prince, and of Mahānumati (daughter of Alakāpuri and his wife Vasantaśrī, born of the Vidyādhara King Hamsa and his wife Padmā) and Madhavānila, (the son of the Siddha King Malayānila and his queen Kamalā).
It is a secular and romantic poem mostly in gāthās interspersed with prose lines and verses in other metres; its structure is complex like that of Bāņa's Kādambari. The poet himself is the chief narrator, and addresses the entire poem, leaving out Invocation and Introductory portion, to his wife. In the body of the plot the chief characters or their companions are made to unfold various details about themselves, thus supplying the reader, stage after stage, with various threads of the story which get duly joined in the concluding portion of the poem. The ruling sentiment is that of śrngāra (eroticism). The characters drawn from the semi-divine beings like the Vidyādharas, the Siddhas, the Yaksas add the element of the supernatural add the
40) Līlāvai of Koūhala with the Sanskrit Vrtti of a Jain author, edited by Prof.
A. N. Upadhye, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay - 7, 1949 A. D.
