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INTRODUCTION
the whole, right when he says that the suggestion that Kalidasa is responsible for the Setubandha 'is excluded by the style, with its innumerable plays on words, alliterations, recondite similes, exaggeration, and its enormous compounds."
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The report that the Setubandha was composed by Kalidasa seems to have been unknown to Baņa, who lived only two hundred years after Pravarasena, and praises the achievements of the two poets in separate verses in the prelude to his Harṣacarita. Among later poets, Kṛṣṇakavi, of uncertain date, pays quite different kinds of tribute to Kalidasa and Pravarasena at the beginning of his poem Bharatacarita2.
After describing Kalidasa's diction as beautiful like a water-lily or a pearlstring, and charming as the beloved's presence (1.3), he praises the Setubandha as a famous poem 'that does not go deep into the understanding of the dullwitted,' by which he seems to mean that the poem is hard to understand for the ordinary reader. This is no doubt a fair assessment of the poem.
1 Keith op. cit., p. 97.
2 Trivandrum Sanskrit Series.
3 Kṛṣṇakavi says jalāsayasyantaragāḍhamärgamalabdhabandham giricauryavyttyä | lokesvalam kantamapurvasetum babandha kirttya saha kuntalesaḥ II.1.4. The verse plays upon the word setu (bridge) and the epithets applied to it. The apparent sense is a king of Kuntala built a marvellous bridge that was not planted in any repository of water (i.e., the ocean), nor was it erected by 'stealing' the mountains, i.e., uprooting and carrying them away for building the bridge, as described by Pravarasena. The real meaning is that he produced the wonderful Setukavya that was not fully understood by the dull-witted, nor was it composed by resorting to theft, i.e., plagiarism. The phrase giricauryavṛttyä should also be construed as giri cauryavṛttyä. Similarly, jala'saya should also be taken as jaḍasaya acc. to the dictum da-layoraikyam. Cf. Bhoja (SK) 2.75. There is a similar play on jalasaya in the Avantisundari of Daṇḍin in connection with the Setubandha. The citizens of Kusumapura in Magadha are described as na jalasayaḥ setubandhalagnasca. The apparent meaning of the phrase is: 'they are not tanks; yet have bridges fixed in them.' The real meaning is: 'they are not jaḍasaya (dull), so are devoted to the study of the Setubandha.' Trivandrum ed. p. 20.
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