वासवदत्ता (महाकवि सुबन्धु - श्लेष-प्रधान शास्त्रीय गद्यकाव्य सान्वय सटीक)

INTRODUCTION 27 naturally led to consider what literary value we may assign to it. Here the ‘personal equation’ must inevitably play a part, and here the fundamental difference between Oriental and Occidental concepts must be duly recognised. In the West the subject- matter comes first in nearly every form of literary composition ; and the more tense and nervous the people, the more simple and direct is the style. In the East, on the contrary, the form is often more important than the matter, especially in periods of hyper-civilisation, such as was that during which Subandhu wrote. We must, therefore, consider the Vāsavadattā from the luxuriant atmosphere of the land of its author, not from the ‘practical’ point of view of the West. To me, at least, there is true melody in the long, rolling compounds, a sesquipedalian majesty which can never be equalled save in Sanskrit ; and the alliterations have a lulling music all their own to ears weary of the blatant discords of vaunted modern ‘progress.’ There is, on the other hand, a compact brevity in the paronomasias, which are, in most cases, veritable gems of terseness and twofold appropriateness, even though some are manifestly forced and are actually detrimental to the sense of the passages in which they occur. Yet in judging Subandhu for his faults, it must be re- membered that he created, at least so far as we now know, a new literary genre in India ; and if this fact be borne in mind, his blemishes appear to be marvellously few. In estimating his literary merits special stress should be laid on his descriptions. These are, it must be confessed, cloying from their abundance. They form the preponderating part of the entire romance, and the slender framework of the story is wellnigh lost beneath them. Yet despite this tropical luxuriance, the descriptions are not without beauty and appropriateness, whether they set forth the charms of mountain, forest, and stream, or portray the rāja’s valour and the loveliness of the heroine herself. The entire romance may, in a sense, be likened to India’s own architecture, where the whole structure is so overlaid with minute detail that the eye forgets the outlines of the building in amaze- ment at the delicate traceries which cover it.