Wednesday, 5 April 2023

EKAVALI – A TREATISE ON POETICS

 



 

The literary heritage of India has created a standard literary taste and due to this a very large number of works on poetics came into existence. Poetics is one of the branch of Sanskrit Literature. The entire field of Sanskrit poetics may be regarded as one continued attempt to understand and appreciate the beauty of literary creations. All aspects of literary activity have been recorded with necessary details by the great Sanskrit opticians from Bharata to Jagannatha Pandit. The principal purpose of Sanskrit poetics is to search for the "soul" of poetry. It has recognized the uniqueness of aesthetic experience and made it the primary purpose of poetry. The various theories of rasa (sentiment) are the attempts of poeticians to understand the psychology of art experience. There are eight schools which differed each other with different schools of theories, viz., Alaṅkāra, Riti, Guna, Doṣa, Rasa, Dhvani, Vakrokti and Aucitya.

The book Ekavali by Vidyadhara is a well-known work on Sanskrit-poetics. It helps to learn, understand and implement to compose poetry.  Ekavali chapterised with the word Unmesha.  There are eight unmeshas that define and illustrate the poetics rules and regulations.

 

All the eight unmeshas of Ekavali consist of three parts: Karikas in verses, which define and classify the technical terms; the vrtti or the explanations of the Karikas in prose and the examples given to illustrate the Karikas. It is important to note here that all the three parts are created by Vidyadhara himself. He does not borrow any example from any other source. Moreover, he originated a new tradition by composing all the illustrative verses in praise of his patron, Narasimha of Orissa. As such, he is a kavi and an acarya, both.

 

He has set a tradition, not existent till his time, which was enthusiastically espoused by his successors in Prataparudrayasobhusana, Nanrajayasobhusana, Raghunathabhupaliya, Alamkaramanjusa and other works of this kind.

The Ekavali is fortunate enough to have a Sanskrit commentary ‘Tarala’ by a well-known Sanskrit commentator Mallinatha which adds the value and importance of the Ekavali.

In the Ekavali, the nature of Kavya, three powers viz., Sabdasaktis namely, Abhidha, Laksana, and Vyanjana, the types of Dhvani, Rasa, Guna, Dosa, Sabdalankaras and Arthalamkaras are discussed in detail.



(This blogpost is a part of Blogchatter's #BLOGCHATTERA2Z2023)


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