Design and Rhetoric in a Sanskrit Court Epic: The Kiratarjuniya of Bharavi

2. The Poetics of the Mahākāvya

Chapter 2
The Poetics of the Mahākāvya Il semble que l’indianisme moderne n’ait pas accordé aux probl èmes de la forme toute l’attention qu’ils méritent. Encore faut-il entendre par là, non les catégories grammaticales, mais les structures. Louis Renou1 The Norms of the Mahākāvya This chapter focuses on three mutually related questions: What kind of a poem is a mahākāvya? Why, given the genre’s prestige within the tradition, have Western scholars found it difficult to discern literary value in Sanskrit court epics? And, how, given the lack of an adequate generic poetic for court epic in Sanskrit criticism, may we fruitfully respond to poems such as the Kirātārjunīya? The definition of the mahākāvya in a standard Sanskrit work on poetics is a useful starting point for exploring all three issues. Kāvya is a highly codified literature. Even the earliest kāvya poems convey the flavor of norm and convention, and the norms of the mahākāvya have remained remarkably constant through time. However, the treatises on poetics devote very little space to the mahākāvya genre. Dan . d .in and Bhāmaha (7th–8th centuries), the authors of the earliest major works on kāvya poetry, treated the mahākāvya as a subgenre of stanzaic verse, and most later writers followed suit.2 Furthermore, the three most celebrated Sanskrit court epics, the Kumārasam . bhava (The Origin of Kumāra) and the Raghuvam . śa (The Lineage of Raghu) of Kālidāsa (4th–5th centuries ), and Bhāravi’s Kirātārjunīya, predate the works on poetics. If anything, the history of the mahākāvya reveals a gradual evolution 7 8 Design and Rhetoric in a Sanskrit Court Epic in style, with the major poets making innovations that eventually became trends. Nevertheless, Dan . d .in’s succinct definition of the mahākāvya in his Kāvyādarśa (Mirror for kāvya) is useful for our study, since it provides a list of the characteristics and requirements that distinguish the court epic from contiguous genres in kāvya and non-kāvya literature. The later writers on poetics do little more than add details to Dan . d .in’s list.3 Dan . d .in lived in South India less than a hundred and fifty years after Bhāravi. He appears to have been intimately familiar with Bhāravi and his poem, and to have held him in high regard; a reference in his Avantisundarīkathā is one of the few historical allusions to Bhāravi available to us.4 Among the preseventh -century mahākāvyas Bhāravi’s poem closely fits the ideals of Dan . d .in’s description. It seems more than likely that the Kirātārjuni ̄ya, whose acclaim in the seventh century is attested by a royal inscription, served Dan . d .in as a model for the genre, a function it serves even today in the curriculum of Sanskrit poetry and criticism. The Kāvyādarśa is primarily devoted to the poetics of the catus .padi ̄, “the verse or stanza made up of quarters (pāda),” which can constitute a poem by itself, or form the building block for sequences of verses. The definitions of the kāvya genres in the opening chapter are only a prelude to the main themes of the treatise, the deployment of language in poetry, and the classification of figures of speech. Having defined poetry as being of three kinds, prose, verse, and mixed, Dan . d .in identifies “verse” as the catus .padī.5 He then proceeds to describe the distinctive characteristics of the mahākāvya.6 The composition in cantos (sargabandha) is a “great (or extended) poem” (mahākāvya). Its definition is as follows. Its beginning is a benediction, a salutation, or an indication of the plot. It is based on a traditional narrative, or on a true event from some other source. It deals with the fruits of the four aims of life. Its hero is skillful and noble. Adorned (alam . kr .tam) with descriptions of cities, oceans, mountains, seasons, the rising of the sun and moon, playing in pleasureparks and in water, drinking-parties and the delights of love-making, the separation of lovers, weddings, the birth of a son, councils of war, spies, military expeditions, battles , and...