Page:Classical Poets Of Gujarat.pdf/49

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widely read, is held in high esteem, and it is even now felt, as I heard a Sastri once exclaim of him. “ The man is dreadful—this Akho spares no one and _ looks invincible!’

he constructive part of Akho is drawn from the Vedanta philosophy, and he himself says his philosophy Should not be taken for poetry. Akho wants to rise and raise to The Highest Self, and the brilliant rays of this Highest Self—like the rays of the sun—are not a matter for description. They defy description ; they are like the sky that cannot be weighed in any scales. They exceed the limits of the mind; and as for poor poets, theirs are simply the powers and arts of the mind, and these powers and arts must, of necessity, be confined within the limits of the mind. The Brahma extends beyond the mind and is beyond poetry.

Thus did this goldsmith Poet whois said to have been in charge of the Imperial Mint at Ahmedabad, leave to Gujarat a voice, which his poems, like the American invention which preserves and reproduces dead voices, have preserved for us in its life-like state, to be heard and felt with its original power by him who has a mind to do so.

The other poets of the century are divided into two rival schools. One of them is headed by Preménand.. Samal belongs to the other, but he is the only member of his school without a single follower, though not