The narrative in the Raghuvamça moves with some rapidity, not being too much impeded by long descriptions. It abounds with apt and striking similes and contains much genuine poetry, while the style, for a Kavya, is simple, though many passages are undoubtedly too artificial for the European taste. The following stanza, sung by a bard whose duty it is to waken the king in the morning (v. 75), may serve as a specimen-- The flow'rs to thee presented droop and fade, The lamps have lost the wreath of rays they shed, Thy sweet-voiced parrot, in his cage confined, Repeats the call we sound to waken thee. More than twenty commentaries on the Raghuvamça are known. The most famous is the Samjivani of Mallinatha, who explains every word of the text, and who has the great merit of endeavouring to find out and preserve the readings of the poet himself. He knew a number of earlier commentaries, among which he names with approval those of Dakshinavarta and Natha. The latter no longer exist. Among the other extant commentaries may be mentioned the Subodhini, composed by Dinakara Miçra in 1385, and the Çiçuhitaishini, by a Jain named Charitravardhana, of which Dinakara's work appears to be an epitome. The Kumara-sambhava, or the "Birth of the War-god," consists, when complete, of seventeen cantos. The first seven are entirely devoted to the courtship and wedding of the god Çiva and of Parvati, daughter of Himalaya, the parents of the youthful god. This fact in itself indicates that description is the prevailing characteristic of the poem. It abounds in that poetical miniature painting in which lies the chief literary strength of the Indian. Affording the poet free scope for the indulgence of his rich and original imaginative powers, it is conspicuous for wealth of illustration. The following rendering of a stanza in the Viyogini metre (in which lines of ten and eleven syllables ending iambically alternate) may serve as a specimen. The poet shows how the duty of a wife following her husband in death is exemplified even by objects in Nature poetically conceived as spouses-- After the Lord of Night the moonlight goes, Along with the cloud the lightning is dissolved: Wives ever follow in their husbands' path; Even things bereft of sense obey this law. Usually the first seven cantos only are to be found in the printed editions, owing to the excessively erotic character of the remaining ten. The poem concludes with an account of the destruction of the demon Taraka, the object for which the god of war was born. More than twenty commentaries on the Kumara-sambhava have been preserved. Several of them are by the same authors, notably Mallinatha, as those on the Raghuvamça.