304 THE REIGN OF HARSHA the other dramas, the Ratnavali, or " Necklace," and the Priyadarsika, or " Gracious Lady," although lack- ing in originality, are praised highly for their simplicity both of thought and expression. The greatest ornament of the literary circle at Harsha's court was the Brahman Bana, author of the historical romance devoted to a panegyrical account of the deeds of his patron, which is an amazingly clever, but irritating, performance, executed in the worst pos- sible taste, and yet containing passages of admirable and vivid description. The man who attributes to the commander-in-chief, Skandagupta, " a nose as long as his sovereign's pedigree," may fairly be accused of having perpetrated the most grotesque simile in all literature. But the same man could do better, and shows no lack of power when depicting the death-agony of the king. " Helplessness had taken him in hand; pain had made him its province, wasting its domain, lassitude its lair. . . . He was on the confines of doom, on the verge of the last gasp, at the outset of the Great Undertaking, at the portal of the Long Sleep, on the tip of death's tongue; broken in utterance, unhinged in mind, tortured in body, waning in life, babbling in speech, ceaseless in sighs; vanquished by yawning, swayed by suffering, in the bondage of racking pains." Such writing, although not in perfect good taste, un- mistakably bears the stamp of power. One campaign sated Asoka's thirst for blood; thirty- seven years of warfare were needed by Harsha before he could be content to sheathe the sword. His last
