vikṛtavacane māsmin krodhaç ciraṁ kriyatāṁ tvayā.
‘Forget not the milk which thou didst so long drink from the same breast with him; forget not my robe that thy childish feet so often soiled in play; his grief is bitter for the death of the younger brother whom he loved so dearly; be not, therefore, wroth for the unjust words he hath spoken to thee.’
On the other hand, we find in Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa many of the defects of Bhavabhūti, in special the fondness for long compounds both in Prākrit and in Sanskrit prose[29] and the same straining after effect which gives such a description of the battle as that vouchsafed to Draupadī by Bhīma, when she warns him nor to be overrash in battle:[30]
anyonyāsphālabhinnadviparudhiravasāmāṅsamastiṣkapan̄ke
magnānāṁ syandanānām upari kṛtapadanyāsavikrāntapattau
sphītāsṛkpānagoṣṭhīrasadaçivaçivātūryanṛtyatkabandhe
samgrāmaikārṇavāntaḥpayasi vicaritum paṇḍitāḥ Pāṇḍuputrāḥ.
‘The sons of Pāṇḍu are well skilled to disport in the waters of the ocean of the battle, wherein dance headless corpses to the music of the unholy jackals, that yell in joy as they drink the thick blood of the dead, and the footmen in their valour leap over the chariots that are sunk in the mud of the blood, fat, [[218]]flesh, and brains of the elephants shattered in mutual onslaught.’ The adaptation of sound to sense here is doubtless admirable, and the picture drawn is vivid in a painful degree, but the style is too laboured to be attractive to modern taste.
None the less Nārāyaṇa has the merit, shared by Viçākhadatta, of fire and energy; much of the fierce dialogue is brutal and violent, but it lives with a reality and warmth which is lacking in the tedious contests in boasting, which burden all the descriptions in the Rāma dramas of the meeting of Rāma and Paraçurāma. Duryodhana is not behind Bhīma himself in insolence, though perhaps more subtle than that of the violent son of the Wind-god:[31]
kṛṣṭā keçeṣu bhāryā tava tava ca paços tasya rājñas tayor vā