Note 1 — Chapter XI · Kāvya or Court Epic (Circa 200 B.C.–1100 A.D.)

The Kirātārjunīya describes, in eighteen cantos, the combat, first narrated in the Mahābhārata, between Çiva, in the guise of a Kirāta or mountaineer, and Arjuna. It cannot have been composed later than the sixth century, as its author, Bhāravi, is mentioned in an inscription of 634 A.D. The fifteenth canto of this poem contains a number of stanzas illustrating all kinds of verbal tricks like those described in Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarça. Thus one stanza (14) contains no consonant but n (excepting a t at the end);1 while each half-line in a subsequent one (25), if its syllables be read backwards, is identical with the other half.2