Kāvya
Kāvya (T. snyan ngag སྙན་ངག་). A highly stylized Sanskrit literary style employed in the court epics of India from the early centuries AD.[1] "It evolved an elaborate poetics of figures of speech, among which the metaphor and simile predominate. Other characteristics of the style are hyperbole, the careful use of language to achieve a particular effect, a sometimes ostentatious display of erudition, and an adroit use of varied and complicated metres—all applied to traditional subjects and themes derived from early popular epics."[1] The term kāvya can refer to the style or the completed body of literature.
The kāvya style was employed in the writing of epic poems, known as mahākāvya, and in the Sanskrit theater.[1]
The most renowned writers of the kāvya style included: Aśvaghoṣa, Kālidāsa, Bana, Dandin, Magha, Bhavabhuti, and Bharavi.[1]
The earliest surviving kāvya literature was written by Aśvaghoṣa (c. 80–150 CE), a Buddhist. Two of his works are extant, both in the style of mahākāvya: the Buddhacarita (“Life of the Buddha”) and the Saundarananda (“Of Sundari and Nanda”). The Buddhacarita was translated into Chinese and Tibetan.[2]
The Indian writer/scholar Dandin (7th–8th century) wrote a treatise on kāvya named Kāvyādarśa ("The Mirror of Poetics"). This treatise was translated into Tibetan multiple times, and was highly influential with Tibetan Sanskrit scholars.
The kāvya style
Arthur W. Ryder states:
- The kavyas differ widely from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, epics which resemble the Iliad and Odyssey less in outward form than in their character as truly national poems. The kavya is a narrative poem written in a sophisticated age by a learned poet, who possesses all the resources of an elaborate rhetoric and metric. The subject is drawn from time-honoured mythology. The poem is divided into cantos, written not in blank verse but in stanzas. Several stanza-forms are commonly employed in the same poem, though not in the same canto, except that the concluding verses of a canto are not infrequently written in a metre of more compass than the remainder.[3]
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Britannica Editors. "kavya". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2012, https://www.britannica.com/art/kavya.
- ↑ J.K. Nariman: Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism, Bombay 1919. Aśvaghoṣa and his School.
- ↑ Ryder 1928, p. XV.
Sources
- Britannica Editors. "kavya". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2012, https://www.britannica.com/art/kavya.
- Ryder, Arthur W. (1928), Kalidasa: Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works, E.P. Dutton. Archive version, Sacred texts version
Further reading
Print publications:
- Keith, Arthur Berriedale,(1928). A History of Sanskrit Literature. (Oxford University Press).
- Macdonell, Arthur Anthony (1900), "Kāvya or court epic", A History of Sanskrit Literature, New York: D. Appleton and company
- Winternitz, M. A History of Indian Literature. Oriental books, New Delhi, 1972
- Gonda, Jan A History of Indian Literature, Otto Harrasowitz, Wiesbaden.
- Monier-Williams, Monier. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. London: Oxford Clarendon Press.
- Warder, A.K.. Indian Kavya Literature, South Asia Books. Publishers page
Web publications:
Kāvya, Wikipedia
