A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s3.1

v3.c35.s3.1

As already suggested, we are to see the first stage of Indian poetry in the Mahābhārata and, more particularly, in the Rāmāyaṇa. Whatever, in our opinion, may be the amount of alterations and additions made by later authors in them, it can-not be denied that the first traces of the kāvya style are to be found in these two epics, in their earliest parts, that go back to a date before Christ. Nevertheless, so far as the poetic materials used are concerned, the difference between the epics, such as the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, on the one hand, and the poetical works of writers like Kālidāsa and Amaru, on the other, is so great that in any case we are obliged to admit a lapse of a big interval of time between these two types of poetry. Apparently, court ornate poetry did not on the whole originate in the soil of the epics; it did so in that of the lyrics. Evolution of prosody no doubt shows that the first poetic metre must have developed in love-ballads². Here, when the theme of the song admitted of little alteration, the poet was obliged to attract the attention of his audience and to win their admiration through external form and through artificiality of metre and of language. Like erotics, panegyrics did not offer a less important stimulus for artificial form. When the poets extolled in their songs glories of the princes, in whose courts they lived, their poems, being expressive of high admiration for the patrons, all along were full of artifices. Consequently, it was just natural that the court poets vied among themselves, surpassed one another, and finally one who knew how to introduce into his poems the largest number of "embellishments" was considered to be the greatest of them. This kāvya style in due course found its way into the epics through the panegyrics.