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.
The subject-matter of the later Kāvyas, which is derived from the two great epics, becomes more and more mixed up with lyric, erotic, and didactic elements. It is increasingly regarded as a means for the display of elaborate conceits, till at last nothing remains but bombast and verbal jugglery. The Bhaṭṭi-kāvya, written in Valabhī under King Çrīdharasena, probably in the seventh century, and ascribed by various commentators to the poet and grammarian Bhartṛihari (died 651 A.D.), deals in 22 cantos with the story of Rāma, but only with the object of illustrating the forms of Sanskrit grammar.
The Kirātārjunīya describes, in eighteen cantos, the combat, first narrated in the Mahābhārata, between Çiva, in the guise of a Kirāta or mountaineer, and Arjuna. It cannot have been composed later than the sixth century, as its author, Bhāravi, is mentioned in an inscription of 634 A.D. The fifteenth canto of this poem contains a number of stanzas illustrating all kinds of verbal tricks like those described in Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarça. Thus one stanza (14) contains no consonant but n (excepting a t at the end);[1] while each half-line in a subsequent one (25), if its syllables be read backwards, is identical with the other half.[2]
The Çiçupāla-vadha, or “Death of Çiçupāla,” describes, in twenty cantos, how that prince, son of a king of Chedi, and cousin of Kṛishṇa, was slain by Vishṇu. Having been composed by the poet Māgha, it also goes by the name of Māgha-kāvya. It probably dates from the ninth, and must undoubtedly have been composed before the end of the tenth century. The nineteenth canto is full of metrical puzzles, some of a highly complex character (e.g. 29). It contains an example of a stanza (34) which, if read backwards, is identical with the preceding one read in the ordinary way. At the same time this Kāvya is, as a whole, by no means lacking in poetical beauties and striking thoughts.