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…

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