In this Book

University of California Press
summary
At the turn of the twelfth-century into the thirteenth, at the court of King Laksmanasena of Bengal, Sanskrit poetry showed profound and sudden changes: a new social scope made its definitive entrance into high literature.  Courtly and pastoral, rural and urban, cosmopolitan and vernacular, confronted each other in a commingling of high and low styles. A literary salon in what is now Bangladesh, at the eastern extreme of the nexus of regional courtly cultures that defined the age, seems to have implicitly reformulated its entire literary system in the context of the imminent breakdown of the old courtly world, as Turkish power expanded and redefined the landscape.  Through close readings of a little known corpus of texts from eastern India, this ambitious book demonstrates how a local and rural sensibility came to infuse the cosmopolitan language of Sanskrit, creating a regional literary idiom founded on a cosmopolitan-local dialectic that would define the emergence of the Bengali language and its literary traditions; in intimate relationship to both courtly Sanskrit and some kind of uncanny otherness.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title Page, Further Reading, Copyright, Dedication
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  1. Table of Contents
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  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. ix-x
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  1. Introduction
  2. pp. 1-16
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  1. 1. The Political Poetic of the Sena Court
  2. pp. 17-46
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  1. 2. Poetic Antigravity: Govardhana’s Āryāsaptaśatī
  2. pp. 47-71
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  1. 3. The Vernacular Cosmopolitan: Jayadeva’s Gītagovinda
  2. pp. 72-88
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  1. 4. Vulgar Kāvya: Badu Candīdās's Śrīkrsnakīrttana
  2. pp. 89 -114
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  1. Conclusion: The Tropography of the Sena World
  2. pp. 115-124
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  1. Appendix A. The Complete Verses Attributed to the Sena Kings
  2. pp. 125-132
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  1. Appendix B. The Complete Verses Attributed to Govardhana (Not Found in the Āryāsaptaśatī)
  2. pp. 133-136
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  1. Appendix C. The Complete Verses Attributed to Jayadeva (Not found in the Gītagovinda)
  2. pp. 137-146
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  1. Appendix D. Gītagovinda-Śrīkrsnakīrttana Correspondences
  2. pp. 147-154
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  1. Notes
  2. pp. 155-194
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  1. Bibliography
  2. pp. 195-206
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 207-210
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  1. Series Page
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