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A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s1: Characteristics of Ornate Poetry

A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s1

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English

Characteristics of Ornate Poetry

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By "ornate poetry" the people in the west render the Indian term "kāvya" which, though ordinarily meaning "poetry", in rhetorics has the special connotation—polished expression", the main characteristic whereof, as a poetic piece, is that it attaches more importance to the form than to the subject-matter. It was cultivated particularly, if not exclusively¹, in the courts of Indian princes and, consequently, is often styled "court poetry".

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¹ Not only the princes, but all high dignitaries and rich people, as a rule, appear as patrons of poets, and literary "saloons" flourished not only in courts but also in Brāhmaṇical settlements and in big cities...Cf. F.W. Thomas, JRAS 1910, 972f.

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Originally, even the old heroic poetry, that later became so popular, as we learn from the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, was courtly. The bards (sūtas), who were the carriers and propagators of this ballad lore, too, lived in the courts of the princes and sang to make their exploits known. They would accompany their patrons even to battlefields, so that on return they could sing of the exploits of the warriors. These court bards stood closer to the Kṣatriyas than to the learned Brāhmaṇas. Very often they worked as chariot-drivers of the warriors in these campaigns and participated in their ventures. It was, however, a time of unrest in which these heroic songs originated—an age of strifes and crude practices, when hunting, gambling, and competitive contests were favourite recreations of the princes. It was only during hours of rest, at banquet gatherings, victory celebrations, and on occasions of sacrificial performances that bards would recite their ballads². Firstly as life in courts became more refined, in place of these bards there came in more learned artisans who were brought up in the schools of the Brāhmaṇas and competed in scholarly contests with them. These poets described strifes and battles too merely on the basis of heresays in a mechanical manner. They would attach greater importance to the elegance of form and to erudition¹ than to the creative faculty or poetical talent. Writers of panegyrics who could sing in praise of their patrons in artistic verses were past masters in the poetic art. Apparently, panegyric constituted the original theme of this kind of poetry (for being sung publicly in courts). And this explains also the origin of the kāvya style, that is to say—the style of court poetry. The more the poet strained himself, the more he displayed his skill, the more difficult his work, and the prince felt flattered the more².

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² Cf. above I, 262 (tr. p. 315) and Hertel, Tantrākhyāyikā, I, pp. 10ff. Indians call the Mahābhārata too a "kāvya"; see above I,267 (tr. p. 312).

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¹ Even a poet of the eminence of Kālidāsa does not escape this; he too airs his knowledge of grammar occasionally in similes; see Raghuvamśa 12, 58 and 15, 9.

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² [2. The other view about the origin and development of the "kāvya" style may be presented as follows: "The pessimism of the Buddhistic ideal gradually disappeared, having been replaced by more-accommodating views about the value of pleasure. Even the Buddhist author of the Nāgānanda has thought it fit to weave a love-theme into the lofty story of Jīmūtavāhana's self-sacrifice, and in his opening benedictory stanza he does not hesitate to represent the Buddha as being scolded for his hard-heartedness by the ladies of Māra's train. From Patañjali's references we find that from its very dawn love was recognised as one of the dominant themes of kāvya poetry. The Buddhist conception of the love god as Māra or Death makes way for the flower-arrowed god who is anticipated in the Atharvaveda and is established in the epics, but whose appearance, name and personality are revived and developed in the fullest measure in the kāvya.

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"The dominant love-motif of the kāvya is explained by the social environment in which it grows and from which alone it can obtain recognition. It is, however, not court-life alone which inspires this literature. At the centre of it stands the nāgaraka, the polished man of the town, whose culture, tastes and habits so largely mould this literature that he may be taken to be as typical of it as the priest or the philosopher is of the literature of the Brāhmaṇas or the Upaniṣads.
"It is not impossible to offer a compromise between these two divergent views on the development of kāvya that is neither wholly heroic or courtish, nor completely erotic. Poetry developed in courts no doubt, but its background was laid in the society at the same time. Naturally, therefore, whilst the poet would like to sing in praise of his patrons, he would introduce anecdotes from the life of the common man for the development of his theme in a suitable manner. Poetry offers recreations. Neither the heroic kāvya nor the erotic alone could be always agreeable; of course in the opinion of the Indian rhetoricians the vira or the śṛṅgāra could become the dominant sentiment of kāvya.
This blending of two different tastes in kāvya is reflected in the writings and legends of the very ancient period. Rājā Janaka, the ascetic king of Mithilā, is reported as maintaining a band of courtesans and the Buddha is described as pining in his anxiety for the welfare of the world, for peace, patience and enjoyment. (S. K. De, Sans. Lit. p. 18 ff.) ].

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Earliest evidence traces of "court poetry" is found in the Rāmāyaṇa. Indians themselves call Vālmīki "the first poet (ādikavi)" and the Rāmāyaṇa "the first poem (ādikāvya)", and several sections of this epic, in fact, already exhibit in full characteristics of the kāvya style¹. The court epic of the classical age of Sanskrit poetry presents this style in full blossom; besides, it has made inroads into lyrical compositions, gnomic poetry, drama, and narrative literature, and has not spared even the religious poetry of the Buddhists and the Jainas.

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¹ See above, I, 404f. (tr. p. 475). The possibility indeed is not always ruled out that here we have a case of later-day interpolation made in an old poem. Cf. above I,416 A, 417A, 424, 431 (tr. pp. 489,490,497,505). The places showing the kāvya style are more seldom in the Mahābhārata (ibid I, 308, 320, 393 (tr. pp. 364,376,461) and the Harivaṁśa (ibid, I,387A, tr. p.452). [Keith, Sans. Lit. p. 43—Vālmīki and those who improved upon him, probably in the period 400-200 B.C. are clearly the legitimate ancestors of the court epic. Although some of its parts showing elegances of style, which mark the poem, are later additions, there is no ground whatever to admit that these additions fall later than the second century B.C., and they may be even earlier in date (ibid, p. 42). Jacobi, Rāmāyaṇa, pp. 119ff. The Rāmāyaṇa also shows the development of the śloka metre almost in its classical state; cf. SIFI. VII, ii, 38ff. Love charms of the Atharvaveda attest the beginning of erotic poetry (IS. V, 218ff. Keith, ibid)].

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The essential peculiarities of the kāvya style are:—accumulation of similes and fascination for long, winding descriptions—especially for certain stereotyped representations (e.g., of the seasons, the sun-rise, the moonlit night, etc.). Descriptions of this sort not infrequently occupy so much space that the subject of the poem disappears into the back-ground so much so that the contents of many cantos of an epic or of books of a romance at a stretch become capable of two distinct interpretations. Not to speak of employing artificial internally rhyming and artistically-constituted metres, the use of rare words and long compounds of words with more than one meanings, strange, play of words, strenuous efforts made throughout to express nothing in a straight-forward way², with a desire to conceal as much as possible or to express an idea in a round-about way and that too in the form of a riddle¹. The climax of artistry is attained when a poet succeeds in making one and the same sentence or verse express two different ideas at one and the same time! This phase of Indian poetry cannot be better described than through these stanzas of Fr. T. Vischer's² ridiculing symbolico-mystic poetry:

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² [2. This point has been further elaborated by inclusion of poetic conventions in this list by S. K. De, Sans. Lit., p. 28 ff. There he refers to the following in support of the view : Kāvyādarsa I, 14-19; Sāhityadarpaṇa VI, 315-25; Kāvyamīmāṁsā XIV; Kāvyakalpalatā I, 5; Sāhityadarpaṇa VII, 23-24 etc.; and M. Bloomfield Festschrift, Ernst. Windisch, Leipzig 1914, pp. 349-61; JAOS XXXVI, 1917, p. 54-89; XL 1920, p. 1-12; XLIV 1924, 202-42); W. Norman Brown, JAOS XLVII, 1927 pp. 3-24; etc. Here he has further successfully justified the standpoint of the Indian poets (ibid, pp. 32 ff.)].

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¹ The rhetorician Ānandavardhana says: *prasiddham astyeva vidagdhavidvatpariṣatsu yad abhimataṁ vastu vyaṅgyatvena prakāśyate na sākṣād-vācyatvena*, “In the refined society of the cultured people it is a settled practice that one does not speak out what lies in one’s inmost heart in a straight-forward manner, rather that one should convey it in the form of a suggestion, (Dhvanyāloka IV, 5, translated into German by H. Jacobi, ZDMG 57, 335).

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² In his parody “Faust, der Tragoedie, dritter Teil (6th ed.. Tübingen 1907, 165 ff.).

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“That Poetry above is most valuable
As has its meaning quite—obscure!”
“That which a reader understands without much strain
Comparable to the ordinary home-made bread surely is,
The finest pastry of his bakery is out
What the poet projects in a riddle.”
“Poetry radiates its magic light most brilliantly—
When a reader baffled breaks his head in vain”.

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“Kāvya” poetry, is not only artificial, it is also learned. The real poet must have studied most of the different sciences. Needs must he master lexicons for the purpose of finding out the rarest possible words and such words as have diverse meanings, with a view to being able to form long compounds analysable in different ways and capable of connoting different meanings. He must learn grammar so that he may not err in verbal structures. He must be adept in treatises on war-craft and politics for introducing in his poem descriptions of wars and political trickeries in appropriate contexts. He must be thoroughly familiar with the science of erotics (kāmaśāstra) to be able to describe love-scenes and sentiments of loving couples in accordance with “prescribed” regulations. Above this he must have made his own the text-books on prosody and poetics in order to introduce into his poem possibly the most difficult metres and a rich variety of the figures of speech (alaṁkāras, “embellishments”). It is significant to note that Indians designate what in Europe is called poetics as “The Science of Embellishment (Alaṁkāraśāstra)”.

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In order to achieve a true representation of Indian poetry it is necessary to study Indian poetics along with dramaturgy and prosody as closely associated disciplines. Although such a study properly would have constituted a section on scientific literature, even here it will be not out place, since this science itself is originally based on certain master-works that belonged to poetry on the one hand and to the earlier traditions of the Alaṁkāraśāstra on the other. Moreover, these treatises on poetics always illustrate their rules with examples either composed by the authors of the manuals themselves or cited from (in their opinion) the best poets, or from anthologies, (in which are preserved many pieces of genuine poetry, that otherwise would have been lost).

Cites (11)