Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s11.300

v1.c3.s11.300

Kāru, ‘poet,’ is a word almost confined to the Rigveda.¹ There is evidence that the poet was regarded as a professional man, just as much as the physician (Bhiṣaj).² The poets, no doubt, mainly lived at the courts of princes amid their retainers,³ though they would probably also sing the praises of rich merchants. There was probably no essential connexion between the priest and the poet. Though the priest was often a poet, yet poetry can hardly have been restricted to the priestly caste. Indeed, at the horse sacrifice (Aśvamedha) the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁴ expressly requires that one of the singers of panegyrics should be a Rājanya, while the other was a Brāhmaṇa, both singing verses of their own composition. The Anukramaṇī (Index) in several cases⁵ attributes hymns of the Rigveda to princes; and even though this may often be merely the same sort of procedure⁶ as has made Śūdraka the author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, or Harṣa of the Ratnāvalī, and has given us royal teachers of the Brahman doctrine,⁷ still the Indian tradition evidently saw nothing odd in the idea of non-Brāhmaṇas as poets. Most of the non-sacred poetry has, however, disappeared, for the epic is a product, as it stands, of a later period. See also Ṛṣi.