A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s3.29

v3.c35.s3.29

In general we have been accustomed to regard a work of poetry that is older as less refined and less influenced by the theory. But this conclusion is correct only in a limited sense. It would be more correct to say that when a poet writes in a simple style, it is said that either he belongs to an older period or that he has a superior taste. There have been poets, even in later days who had sufficient taste to avoid a very high flown kāvya style¹. Besides, we learn from Daṇḍin's poetics that there arose great local differences in respect of the style². In eastern India, in the courts of mighty kings, poetry seems to have been cultivated earlier than in the south-west. For the first time in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D., when the Guptas attained sovereignty, the poet of the west too entered into the field of poetic competition³.