A History of Sanskrit Literature c25.s2.4

c25.s2.4

To Daṇḍin poetry appears under the metaphor of a body of words determined by the sense which it is desired to set out, and that body is ornamented, the term Alaṁkāra here being used in the most general sense to cover anything which lends beauty to the poem as ornaments do to the human body. A poem may consist of verse, prose, or both, as in the drama and the Campū; no Indian writer on poetics allows himself to be led astray into demanding verse form as a condition of poetry. This, of course, was a natural conclusion from the fact that law, medicine, astronomy and astrology, grammar, and philosophy had all been composed in verse, so that outer form was obviously no criterion between the literature of knowledge and that of power. Of verse forms Daṇḍin enumerates the Sargabandha or Mahākāvya, the characteristics of which we have already noted; Muktaka, single verses; Kulaka, groups of up to five verses; Koça, unconnected verses by different authors; Saṁghāta, similar verses by one author. Of prose he mentions Kathā, Ākhyāyikā, and Campū, recognizing as current the difference between the first two, but rejecting it as quite artificial and not even in accordance with practice. The use of different languages is admitted, Sanskrit, Prākrit, Apabhraṁça, and mixtures of these being allowed, seen in the Mahākāvya in Sanskrit, in poems in the Skandhaka metre in Prākrit, in the Āsāra in Apabhraṁça, and the Nāṭaka, drama, in a mixed form.¹ Daṇḍin also recognizes the distinction between a poem to be heard and one to be seen; but refers to works on dramatic art for consideration of the latter.