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RICHNESS OF METAPHORS
399
but it will appear from what has been already
are subject
said that Hindu versification is by no means easy.
There
are nevertheless a great many people of all castes who
dabble in rhymes, and amuse themselves by reading out
publicly and ostentatiously the pieces they have composed.
In India, as in Europe, poetasters abound, while good poets
The Indian languages, however, being
are very scarce.
very rich in synonyms, afford a great advantage to the
Hindu poet.
There are five principal authors who have written on the
and these have laid down fixed
subject of Hindu prosody
and unalterable laws for making verses. Their collected
works are called Chandas. The Brahmin who taught me
was guided in his instructions by a book whose author had
so arranged that every rule was comprised in a verse which
served at once the double purpose of an example of the
rule as well as the rule itself.
;
;
Of Taste and Style
in
Hindu Poetry.
The predominating features of Hindu poetry are emphasis,
and bombast. Every Hindu poet would seem
to be a prototype of him who, in Horace,
affectation,
Proicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba,
compared by Longinus to a man who
opens his mouth wide to blow through a tiny flute. The
poetry of all nations has its peculiar turns of expression,
&c, which render it
its licences, its own vocabulary,
but in Hindu
difficult of understanding by foreigners
poetry the frequent use of elliptical phrases, of allegories,
of metaphors, and of expressions not in vogue in ordinary
language, renders the meaning so obscure that it is impos-
sible to understand it properly unless one makes a special
study of the subject. Even a thorough knowledge of
or of the Clitarchus
;
Hindu prose works is of no avail.
Were Hindu literature better known to us, it is possible
that we should find that we have borrowed from it the
romantic style of our days, which some find so beautiful
and others so silly. If the Hindu poet has occasion to
describe any particular object, he seldom omits even the