Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/340

 by Dinakara Miçra in 1385, and the Çiçuhitaishiṇī, by a Jain named Chāritravardhana, of which Dinakara's work appears to be an epitome.

The Kumāra-sambhava, or the "Birth of the War-god," consists, when complete, of seventeen cantos. The first seven are entirely devoted to the courtship and wedding of the god Çiva and of Pārvatī, daughter of Himālaya, the parents of the youthful god. This fact in itself indicates that description is the prevailing characteristic of the poem. It abounds in that poetical miniature painting in which lies the chief literary strength of the Indian. Affording the poet free scope for the indulgence of his rich and original imaginative powers, it is conspicuous for wealth of illustration. The following rendering of a stanza in the Viyoginī metre (in which lines of ten and eleven syllables ending iambically alternate) may serve as a specimen. The poet shows how the duty of a wife following her husband in death is exemplified even by objects in Nature poetically conceived as spouses—


 * After the Lord of Night the moonlight goes,
 * Along with the cloud the lightning is dissolved:
 * Wives ever follow in their husbands' path;
 * Even things bereft of sense obey this law.

Usually the first seven cantos only are to be found in the printed editions, owing to the excessively erotic character of the remaining ten. The poem concludes with an account of the destruction of the demon Tāraka, the object for which the god of war was born.

More than twenty commentaries on the Kumāra-sambhava have been preserved. Several of them are by the same authors, notably Mallinātha, as those on the Raghuvaṃça.