Tilakamanjari

Author(s): Dhanpal, Sudarshankumar Sharma
Publisher: Parimal Publications

Page 59

DHANAPĀLA AS A PROSE WRITER
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his Dasakumāracarita in the tight vein of a perspicuous diction though his illustrious successors emulating his norm went to the extent of pedagogic equivoques and brought it to the consummation of ornate verbal jugglary.'
Such is the pattern set by Dhanapāla in his Tilakamañjarī in which he himself described prose as a multicoloured tiger abiding in the impenetrable Dandaka forest in the form of abundantly numerous descriptions seeking refuge in a forest of unbroken Dandakas (i.e., long drawn sentences), struck by terror (from whom) the people turn their faces away (with a view to escaping for life).?
This highly ornamented style has been styled as Vicitramārga by Kuntaka in his Vakroktijīvita'. The Vicitramārga or the chequered route entails the detour involvement's in descriptive and narrative sequence wherein equivoques form the bedrock of words and their meaning or sounds and senses; where in a multiple series of figurative expressions stranded into a circuitous noose or strung into a series of pearls like expressions render the poetic muse a veritable peer to a comely dame resounding with the clank of jingling ornaments in the form of associative expressions inlaid into a variety of material comprising of the rich wealth of imaginative descriptions of towns, gardens, men, women, seasons, religious places, rivers and streams, fakes and bowers, chivalrous deeds of the heroes, amorous dalliances of lovers given to love in union as well as in separation, festivals, processions and all types of social and cultural leanings. Dhanapāla has ostensibly adhered to the path already paved by Bāņa in his Kādambarīkathā but in his modes of delineation and arrangement of distinct imagery he has taken a cue from his Harsacarita.
In his general mode of descriptive and narrative sequence Dhanapāla gets lost so much in heaping of figurative embellishments that invariably he loses sight of the links of the narrative which advance the plot ahead but in doing so he was bound meticulously by the legacies of the age he inherited from Bāņa or else he would have failed to produce the volume of such a romance. He treats of all the constituent elements of his plot in a judicious manner and never fails to maintain the subsequent inter relation of the characters conversing during his descriptions though the reader finds it very hard to understand the correct links provided by the mutual conversations of
1. Bi: 4744HGER ifanyi Kavyādarśa I. 80 p. 43. V. Narayanan, Jivananda
Vidyasagar 1964. (18) 2. gravsguaRUHI: wyraujali
inca 4 Elçada 17: ITM Vol. I. Intr. verse 15 p. 20. Botad ed. (19) 3. 42741644 Kārikās 34-43. pp. 124-125. Dr. Nagendra and pp. 133-136 text