The melody of song, the stricken strings,
In undertone that half unconscious clings,
More clearly sounding as the passions rise,
But ever sweeter as the music dies.
Words that strong passion fain would say again,
Yet checks their second utterance—in vain;
For music sweet as this lives on until
I walk as hearing sweetest music still.
To Rājaçekhara[12] we owe a full account of the studies which went to make up the finished poet, who had the choice of Sanskrit, Prākrit, Apabhraṅça, and Paiçācī, or the speech of the goblins (bhūtabhāṣā), as his modes of composition. Knowledge of grammar, of the dictionary, poetics, and metrics are demanded, as well as skill in the sixty-four acts; purity of mind, speech, and body are requisite, as well as most attractive surroundings. The poet’s male attendants are to speak Apabhraṅça, the female Māgadhī, while those within the harem itself are to use Prākrit and Sanskrit, and his friends to exercise themselves in all forms of speech. With pardonable lack of historical truth, we are told anecdotes of kings who forbade the use in their harems of certain letters, and combinations of sounds, on grounds of euphony, and the poet may imitate their usage. We also learn that Sanskrit was affected among the people of Bengal, in Lāṭa Prākrit, in Mārwār, and by the Ṭakkas and Bhādānakas, Apabhraṅça, while in Avantī, Pariyātra, and Daçapura Bhūtabhāṣā prevailed. The people of Surāṣṭra and the Travaṇas are credited elsewhere[13] with intermingling Sanskrit and Apabhraṅça, while unkind comments are made on the mode of pronouncing Sanskrit among the excellent poets of Kashmir, and on the nasal accent of the north as opposed to the music of that in Pañcāla. We learn also[14] that poets were wont to make journeys, and to utilize the knowledge of other places thus gained in their works.
Rājaçekhara[15] is also emphatic regarding the capacity of women: [[288]]daughters of kings or ministers, courtesans, and wives of jesters, were skilled as poets, the capacity which brings about the ability to compose being a matter affecting the soul, and not, therefore, bound up with sex. To Rājaçekhara the ability to write poems is largely due to experiences in previous births, and he logically denies that sex can affect this. But though verses are cited from the poetesses in the anthologies, and not a few names are known, and Avantisundarī, Rājaçekhara’s own wife, appears to have been an authority on poetics, it is certain that no drama of importance has come down to us which is written by a woman. The explanation for this would seem rather to lie in social conventions, as in Greece, for there is no reason to suppose that the clever women mentioned by Rājaçekhara, and doubtless not rare in the courts, could not have composed plays of merit. [[289]]