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walls 24 Merutunga adds that while the other courtpoets tried their hands unsuccessfully at completing the verses, Dhanapala could do it in a moment, 26
(12) Another one dwells upon Dhanapala's typically Jainistic attitude to public works of munificence, such as, building tanks and etc. Once the king asked him how much merit was earned by constructing huge tanks. The poet unexpectedly replied in a satirical tone pointing out to the possibiilty of equally huge demrit due to the death of the acquatic cretures in the event of the tank getting dried up due to the lack of sufficient rains. 26
(13) The next incident seems to have occured at a very advanced age in the life of Dhanapala, who was called back from his voluntary exile from Malwa. When the king asked him about the condition of his long uninha. bited house, the poet brought out, in a paronomasiaic though pathetically poetic reply, the similarity between his own delapidated dusty Servantless house and the king's palace with the goldeu uteusils, highly adorned servants and elephants.27
(14) The PC preserves in one incident the attitude of his contemporaries towards Dhanapāla, who once eulogized Bhoja in a verse which metaphorically depicted the celestial Ganges as being but a chalk-mark put by Brahma as he started counting the best of human kings, 28 When the other court-poets ridiculed his metaphor as unrealistic aud farfetched, Dhanapāla paid them back in their own coin by citing similar uorealistic instances from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, adding that those very court-poets blindly praised those popular works.28
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It should be noted that there is not the slightest indication of the strained relations between Bhoja and Dhanapāla in the latter's prose romance, the Tilakamañarı (TM), the eulogistic tenor in the introductory verses of which does not warrant the above religious rivalry between a staunch Saivite and an equally staunch Jaina. The introductory verses and the contents of the TM definitely indicate that Dhana pāla composed his prose-romance after his conversion to Jainism, which fact afforded ample scope for expression of such a relationship. But the poet might have thought it quite out of place-especially in view of his deep regard for the paternal patronage by Muñja and long-standing personal friendship with Bhoja - to give vent to his personal opinion on such an occasion like the auspicious commencement of his life's labour of love, i. e. tbe TM. More properly, it is the popular tradition and the Jaina one in particuler - which would have an interest enough to preserve such minute, though minor, details. If one would take them at their face value, one would have to be thank. fu] to both Prabhācandra and Merutunga for affording such a peep into the oblivions of the past, In view of the facts that some of the points of
