my qualities I have conquered some rivals. Thus I have toiled, in ignorance, for many worthless objects. Now my heart filled with pure knowledge longs for the river of the immortals.
(105.) Some pious favourites of Pârvati, with tranquil hearts practising Yoga, pass in their age the remainder of their days on the banks of the Mandakini, that are softened by windraised murmuring waves.
(106.) Princes of the earth! prosperity, the wilfully unstable lightning of the cloud of fate, cannot be enchained; incessantly sounds the drum that announces the departure of the breath of life; worship then those true poets, who work the salvation of your bodies of glory through the nectar of their verse, and renouncing pride make them your spiritual guides.
(107.) O ye kings! abstain from opposing the attachment of true poets; in sooth, pure fame comes to you through their favour; pleased they composed that grave beautiful life of Rama, angered they made ten-headed Ravana the conqueror of the world, an object of derision.
(108) May the God, who is the first creator of the revealed texts, the dear husband of Parvati, give you intelligence to understand the sayings of true poets-he, who imitating the ways of the S'avaras frightened the moon-sickle placed on his crest, so that she concealed her deer in some distant hiding place.
If this narrative is divested of its envelope of poetical bombast, the main facts, which Bilhana reports of his own life, are perfectly credible. He was born at Khonamukha, three miles from Pravarapura in a family of Madhyade'st Brahmans. His great-grandfather Muktikalas'a,[१] and his grandfather Rajakalas'a were Agnihotris and able to recite the Vedas. His father Jyeshtha-kalas'a was a grammarian who wrote a commentary on the
- ↑ A Brahman of this name is mentioned. Rajatar. VII. 20 segg.
