Puṣpadanta and Bharata

iha paṭhitam udāraṁ vācakair gīyamānaṁiha likhitam ajasraṁ lēkhakaiś cāru kāvyaṁgatavati mitrē mitratāṁ puṣpadantēbharata tava gr̥hē ’smin bhāti vidyāvinōdaḥ Here readers recite properly in song.Here scribes are always writing out beautiful poems.Since you’ve become friends with Puṣpadanta, Bharata,the diversions of learning are taking place at your house. A mālinī verse in Puṣpadanta’s Mahāpurāṇu (Apabhramsha, 965 CE),…

Continue Reading

Metrics and combinatorics: prastāraḥ or “spreading out”

There were “six combinatorial methods” (ṣaṭ pratyayāḥ, lit. ‘six notions’) that South Asian thinkers applied to metrical forms (as well as other combinatorial problems), and Hēmacandra’s discussion of them, in the seventh chapter of his Chandōnuśāsanam, was nicely explained by Ludwig Alsdorf (“Die Pratyayas: Ein Beitrag zur indischen Mathematik” in Zeitschrift für Indologie und Iranistik…

Continue Reading

कश्चिद्भर्तृहरेर्वैराग्यश्लोकः

खलोल्लापाः सोढाः कथमपि तदाराधनपरै-     र्निगृह्यान्तर्बाष्पं हसितमपि शून्येन मनसा । कृतो वित्तस्तम्भप्रतिहतधियामञ्जलिरपि     त्वमाशे मोघाशे किमपरमतो नर्तयसि माम् ॥ khalōllāpāḥ sōḍhāḥ kathamapi tadārādhanaparair     nigr̥hyāntar bāṣpaṁ hasitam api śūnyēna manasā ~ kr̥tō vittastambhapratihatadhiyām añjalir api     tvam āśē mōghāśē kim aparam atō nartayasi mām ~~ When degenerates ran their mouths, and I still needed their good will, I put…

Continue Reading

Desolation from Tilakamañjarī

This is a mandākrānta verse from the introduction of Dhanapāla’s Tilakamañjarī, which I am reading with a few colleagues, in praise of King Bhōja of Dhārā: Blessed are those trees that drop heaps of flowers from their branches in worship upon those liṅgas, the stumps, which are bathed every morning by drops of water from…

Continue Reading

Gaticitra: “Half-turning” (ardhabhrama-)

A section of the second chapter of Śrīvijaya’s Way of the Poet-King (Kavirājamārgaṁ) discusses citrakāvya, “pattern-poetry,” and in preparation for reading it, I have started to give myself a crash course in citrakāvya. The first topic is what is usually called gaticitra, wherein a poem is generated by particular movement (gati-) through a particular matrix of syllables. Typically the…

Continue Reading

Rāma’s Last Act 1.8

किं त्वनुष्ठाननित्यत्वं स्वातन्त्र्यमपकर्षति ।संकटा ह्याहिताग्नीनां प्रत्यवायैर्गृहस्थता ॥ But it’s the constant pull of obligationsthat carries off their freedom.For those who keep the sacred fireeven domestic life is fraughtwith the danger of failing in one’s duty. From the beginning of Bhavabhūti’s Rāma’s Last Act (Uttararāmacaritam), echoing an observation made in the course of the deontic logic…

Continue Reading

Dharmakīrti’s Poetry

Martin Straube’s excellent article (“Dharmakīrti als Dichter,” pp. 471–511 in Pāsādikadānaṃ: Festschrift für Bhikkhu Pāsādika, ed. Mitsuyo Demoto, Martin Straube, Michael Hahn, Jayandra Soni, and Roland Steiner) gathers the available evidence for Dharmakīrti’s literary, as opposed to strictly philosophical, output. It begins with a passage in Ānandavardhana’s Dhvanyālōka which, quite unusually for Sanskrit literary criticism,…

Continue Reading