‘Thou art the son of one who denies in his folly things that we see, the earth, the ocean, mountains and so forth; how then art thou not ready to deny so small a thing as a bowl?’ Moreover, when the Buddhist, politely and with commendable charity, picks up Devasomā when her fruitless assault on his locks lands her on the ground, he accuses him of taking her in marriage and invokes punishment on this violator of the rights of Brahmins. A Pāçupata, a more respectable type of Çaiva sectarian, comes on the scene and is appealed to as an arbitrator, but finds the task too difficult; both claimants proudly assert their adherence to a creed which forbids lying, and the Buddhist recites in addition the whole list of moral rules which makes up the Çikṣāpada. The obvious arguments from colour and shape in favour of the Buddhist are made out by his rival to be no more than signs of his skill in changing objects at pleasure. Finally the Pāçupata suggests that they must take the matter before a court. En route, however, a diversion is made by an Unmattaka, or madman, who has rescued the skull from a dog, the real thief; he first appears willing to give it as a present to the Pāçupata, who haughtily rejects the horrible object, but suggests the Kapālin as the recipient; then he changes his mind, but, annoyed by the cry of ‘mad’, asks the Kapālin to hold the skull and to show him the madman; the Kapālin, nothing loth, accepts the skull, and misdirects the madman. All are now happy; the Kapālin makes a handsome apology to the Buddhist monk, and the usual Bharatavākya with a reference to the ruling king, the author, concludes the work. The author undoubtedly shows a considerable knowledge of the tenets of the Buddhists, and the play is not unamusing, though the subject is much too trivial for the pains taken to deal with it. The style is certainly appropriate to the subject-matter; it is like that of Harṣa, simple and elegant, while many of the verses are not without force and beauty. In the prose speeches of the Kapālin, however, we have occasional premonitions [391] of the unwieldy compounds of Bhavabhūti. There is, as in all the later Prahasanas, a certain incongruity between the triviality of the subject-matter and the elaboration of the form but the king has the merit of avoiding the gross vulgarity which marks normally the later works of this type.