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The Paramāra Emperor Bhoja ard Dhenarzla : Mutual Relationship
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poet in Bhoja's assembly who could hear the brunt of such a responsible and tough commission. In the absence of the availability of this poet Bhoja, seems to have been constrained to compose a work which might serve as an illustration of different types of love (râga) as the Erotic (šķīgāra) was his most favourite sentiment. And, possibly, this might have been the principal cause behind Dhanapala's refusal to comply with Bhoja's request to put his name in the place of Meghavāhana and that of Dhara in that of Ayodhyā. This might also have nipped in the bud even a lurking hope of Bhoja about the now-converted Jaina poet ever composing another work, of the Akhyāyika type, to commemmorate him. The difference of their mutually hostile religious faiths seem to have constituted a gulf too unbridgeably wide for the imperial order made to the poet, who was a senior in age and scholarship and favoured even by the present patron's predecessor like Muñja, and further who was too popular with the people to be disposed off easily, much less to be coarsed into composing a work of art to order. A sort of an inherent contempt of a Jaina poet for a Savite royal, but junior, patron surely precluded the possibility of his ever being dazzled by the king's personality so as to command an instantaneous natural eulogistic inspiration. Otherwise, a poet like Dhanapala, who admired Bāņa for his Harşacaritam which fetched its author boundless famedi could not have resisted a similar temptation to such a fame for himself: especially when the opportunity for such an undertaking had come uninvi. ted. It is significant that Dhanapala praises Bhoja elaborately for his personal handsomeness and valour only. As to his scholarship, however, he briefly calls him 'acquainted with the entire literature (nih-sesa-vaimaya-vid) and nothing more, Bhoja's craving for literary fame must have been whetted by Dhanapala's work, which far surpassed the former's Campū-ramayana-indirectly criticized by the latter in general terms in the introductory verses of the TM and ultimately seems to have resulted in a direct request by the emperor to his favourite court-poet, who but refused to oblige. And taking recourse to the rather justifiable grounds in view of his own considerable talents, Bhoja seems to have seized the opportunity of incidentally immortalizing himself and his capital city of Dhara rather with a vengeance, 42 while principally writing a work illustrating his main thesis of Raga-śrgāra treated in his magnum opus, the śrngäraprakasa,48 This is a unique instance of the religious difference of opinion depriving us another historical Sanskrit prose-romance-an Akhyāyika on the life of Bhoja--which could have successfully contended with Bana's Harşacaritam. And Bhoja amply deserved such an honour in view of his brilliant career, profoundly extensive scholarship and munificient patronage, the qualities that are beautifully summed up in a versed in the Udayapur Prasasti inscripton,
