Setubandha

Author(s): Krishnakant Handiqui
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 66

INTRODUCTION
episodes; and their subject matter is in any case much more limited than that of the Setubandha. Nevertheless the Sanskrit poems are more extensive than the Prakrit work because of the greater emphasis on elaborate and often long-winded descriptions. Bhāravi's description of the fight between Arjuna and the Kirāta, for instance, occupies more than three Cantos of his poem (15-18). Māgha, like Pravarasena, devotes an entire Canto to the portrayal of a mountain; but most of the conventional descriptions in his poem are much more elaborate than those in the Setubandha. To sum up, the Raghuvamsa treats a very wide subject within a relatively narrow compass (nineteen Cantos). The Setubandha, though much more limited in scope, has as many as fifteen; while the Mahakavyas of Bhāravi and Māgha, in spite of the greater brevity of their themes, have eighteen and twenty Cantos respectively. In the evolution of the Mahākavya the Setubandha thus marks the stage at which the descriptions begin to preponderate at the expense of the narrative, and illustrates the transition from Kalidāsa to the poems of Bhāravi and Māgha.
The topics introduced by Pravarasena into the tenth Canto of his poem appear in toto in Bhāravi's Kirätārjuniya (Canto 9) in the same sequence as in the Setubandha. They were taken over by Māgha from Bhāravi, and expanded into two Cantos of the Sisupalavadha (9-10), and soon became stereotyped in the Sanskrit Mahākāvya. Bhāravi treats of these topics in his own manner, but sometimes betrays close acquaintance with particular verses of Pravarasena. For example,
शङ्किताय कृतबाष्पनिपातामीयया विमुखितां दयिताय ।
fanfaarifgafant stafa FH qatlara : 11 Bhāravi 9.46 Sāsai vimukka-māņo bahalubbhiņņa-pulauggameņa piāņam/ purao-hutta-nisanno gaoniatta-hiao vilāsini-sattho //
Setu 10.77
LU0 /