काव्यमीमांसा (महाकवि राजशेखर - कवि-रहस्य एवं देश-विभाग सटीक)

INTRODUCTION. XXIII Mr. K. P. Jayaswal disagrees¹ with the above and points out that the word Kārttikeya goes with the word Nagara, and adds that "no poet would have mentioned so irreverently about Kumā- ragupta's own mother to him." Against this, it may be pointed out that the verse does not show any irreverence on the part of the poet whose business obviously is to eulogise his patron king Kumāragupta or Skanda- gupta of the Gupta dynasty. For, the weakness of Rāmagupta was already made known by Candragupta, also by Dhruvadevi who discarded her worthless husband and married his brother. Moreover, the descendants of the Gupta dynasty out of disrespect for Rāmagupta never mentioned him in the inscriptions as one of their ancestors. Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar who discussed the question later on,² is disposed to agree with Mr. Jayaswal in considering the word Kārttikeyanagara as the name of a town, and identified it with the ancient village of Vaijanātha in Almora District U. P. on the authority of the Pāṇḍukeśvara copper plate and the Tāle- śvara charters.³ Dr. Bhandarkar believes, however, that the verse is addressed to Candragupta, though he is not named expressly therein. If this position is accepted, Mr. Jayaswal's objection of showing irreverence to Kumāragupta's mother or Dhruvadevi is set at rest. Prof. V. V. Mirashi,⁴ however, remarks that the view held by Dr. Bhandarkar is hardly convincing, because the verse quoted here is a Muktaka or a detached stanza which should not only be complete in itself but also contain the name of the king addressed to. He, thus, commits the same mistake as Prof. Altekar, and takes the word Kārttikeya in the vocative, but advances the new theory that the word stands for the king Mahīpāla of the Gurjara Pratīhāra dynasty, the patron of Rājaśekhara. In support of this, he further adds that Kṣemīśvara in the Bharatavākya of his drama Caṇḍakauśika similarly calls his patron Mahīpāla as

1. J. B. O. R. S. Vol. XVIII, p. 20.
2. Malaviya Commemoration Volume. p. 194.
3. I. A. XXV. 178, and E. I. Vol. XIII, pp. 115-118.
4. I. A. 1932, p. 201.