2 Introduction to Indian Poetics

Dr. Mrinmoy Pramanick

About the chapter:

This chapter is an introductory module to the Indian Poetics, literary theory and historiography. This module briefly discusses about the development of Indian literary theory and brings the historical trajectory of its development. It focuses on Classical Sanskrit poetics, Persian literary thoughts and historiography, modern literary thoughts and interpretations along with contemporary readings of ancient and medieval theory of literature. This module also argues why Indian literary thoughts and aesthetics to be focused in academic practices of literature, what is the significance of Indian literary theory and all.

This paper is not made only to give brief outline of Indian literary thoughts and aesthetics but it also proposes and claims that the Indian literary thoughts have very significant role in contemporary literary and philosophical contexts. These theories are proposed to be very significant tools for getting Indian method of reading literature, philosophy and aesthetics. This introduction may help the beginners to get interest to find different lectures and write ups on Indian literary theory. This module and other modules given here in this paper perhaps will bring new interest of the new learners in the one of the most unfocused area of Indian literature. Such discussions also may bring new dialogues in English literary studies and the subjects will get focused widely in spite of being studied in any particular discipline.

Introduction

What we understand as Indian poetics is mainly written in Sanskrit. But in this paper we are not only discussing Indian poetics written in Sanskrit only but we are going to present briefly about the Indian thoughts on literature across the ages. Therefore, it is not only about poetics but also about literary theory, criticism, interpretation, reception, historiography and also contemporary literary and cultural theory proposed by different practitioners of literature and philosophy. This module is divided mainly in three parts. First part talk about Sanskrit literary theory and the second talks about Persian literary theory and the third part talks about modern and contemporary interpretation of Sanskrit theory and other literary and cultural theories like Dalit aesthetics, tribal aesthetics, Indian feminism and nativism etc.

Different modules written in this paper speaks from interdisciplinary points of view. Different kinds of theories have been discussed here. This initiative will help the students to understand how different literary theories have been emerged with the practice of literature as a whole (system) and literary text in particular. Not only the literary studies but also the cultural, social and political issues, activism etc. also brought different literary theories into being.

This module briefly describe about the historical trajectory of Indian literary theory, beginning from Sanskrit poetics, Tamil poetics, to Persian literary thoughts, to literary thoughts in bhasha and modern and contemporary interpretations.

Sanskrit Poetics

Sanskrit poetics has been developed by a group of scholars over the centuries who actually focused on the Kavya and Natya and issues of alamkara, artha, shabda and rasa of these literary forms. It is important to mention here that the Sanskrit word Kavya not only means the poetry or epic but it is actually a term used for literature in broader sense. Sanskrit poetics had been evolved with different schools of thoughts and those schools are as follows:

1. Alamkara (poetic figures) school
2. Rasa (aesthetic pleasure) school
3. Riti (style) school
4. Guna (attribute) school
5. Dhvani (suggestion) school
6. Vakrokti (obliquity) school
7. Anumana (inference) school
8. Aucitya (propriety) school

Bharata’s Natyashashtra is the oldest text found in the field of alamkara and rasa theory. After Bharata, Dandi talks about alamkara in his Kavyadarsha, and thereafter Bamana deals with alamkara in his Kavyatairikara. Rasa theory becomes major concern of theorists like Rudrata, Lollata, Shankuka, Bhatta Nayaka after Bharata proposed Natya-rasa and Kavya-rasa. Later Anandavardhana talks about Dhvanirasa and Abihinavagupta works on the entire theoretical development on rasa and proposed his ideas in his Abhinavabharati. Dandin in his Kavyadarsha and Vamana in his Kavyalankar-sutra, respectively talks about Riti as one of the major components of poetry. Vamana, Abhinabagupta and Dandin also developed the idea of Guna in poetry. Anandavardhana in his Dhvanyaloka proposed the doctrine of Dhvani as the major component of poetry and he claimed that none of the alamkara or shabdartha is the only condition of poetry. Anandavardhana therefore talks about dhvani-rasa what creates a successful poetry. Kuntaka is another brilliant linguist and literary theorist who talks about Vakrokti in his Vakrokti-Jivita. Mahim Bhatta proposed the idea of Anumana as the process to comprehend different aspects of Dhvani in poetry. Kshemendra’s Auchitya-Vichara and Kavi-kanthavarana are two books what contains his doctrine of auchitya.

Tamil Poetics

Besides Sanskrit, another major field of Indian poetics is Tamil. It is also ancient and contemporary school of Indian poetics as Sanskrit. Major theorist of Tamil poetics is Tholkappiyar. He was a linguist and grammarian also. His book Tholkappiyam deals with diction and syntax mainly. This book actually concerned as descriptive linguistics of Tamil. Though his work deals with grammar and other parts of linguistics, its major reference was poetry. Therefore, word, meaning, syntax in poetry are analysed with keen interest.

Persian Poetics

Persian language in India has a very rich history of literature. Entire medieval India has observed Persian as an influential literary culture and many modern Indian languages have adapted or translated texts from Persian. Therefore, history of Persian literature in India is not only the history of Persian alone but a comparative history of influence study also. Different literary genres and themes adapted from the Persian and Arabic literature. Besides this, Persian as an official language of the Nawabs and the Mughal Empire influenced the common language of the people of India. There are innumerous loan-words in different modern Indian languages from Persian. Persian also influenced the prose style in different modern Indian languages.

Al-Badaoni and Amir Khusru are very significant figures in the history of medieval Indian thoughts. They have contributed a lot in Indian literary thinking. Persian contribution in Indian literary theory keeps the continuation of the heritage of knowledge began with the Sanskrit.

Albadaoni is celebrated because of his contribution in historiography and documentation of historical knowledge of medieval Indian literature, culture, society and politics. Perhaps the model of writing history proposed by Albadaoni is one among very few historiography proposed by the Indian thinkers. His history of literature of India or history of medieval India is not history but methodology and discursive framework for writing history. This may be called as the Indian model of writing history. His understanding about the literature of India also can be recognized as the categorization of the literature of India as Indian Literature. Besides this Amir Khusru, a rare genius is one among the very famous poets who has life in popular culture. But Khusru is not only a poet; he is a chronicler, musician, composer, author and poet all in one mind. His idea of literary history is also a model of writing history of literature. Like Badaoni he also proposed a historiography of Indian literary history and Indian history also.

Albadaoni’s Twarikh and Amir Khusru’s Nuh Siphir is the texts which contains theoretical thinkings of these two great mind.

Poetics and Literary Thoughts in Indian Bhasha

Indian bhasha literature has rich heritage of literature more than thousand years old. Indian bhasha develops with the influence and reception of literature from Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, European literature and obviously literature from different Indian languages. Whole history of bhasha reflects the poetics of influence and reception. Bhakti movement the major changing force in Indian literature and Bhakti also is one of the denominators in Indian literature. Indian bhasha has observed different ideas and doctrines have been developed during the bhakti movement in Indian literatures. Bhakti-rasa itself is a major rasa what was widely practiced in entire Indian culture, life and literature. Srila Rup Goswami is one of the major theorists who talks about Bhakti-rasa in literature.

Besides this, we can observe development of different context specific literary ideas emerged within the Indian bhasha literature. We can also find different adaptation, and interpretation of literary theories already exists either in Sanskrit or in European literature. Modern Indian bhasha literature also observed different modern literary thinkers who proposed new or different ideas on literature or propose new interpretation not only the existing literary theories but literature also. This is how we find modern Indian literary theories. Tagore, Arobindo, Ananda Coomerswamy and Jainendra Kumar are such kind of literary thinkers.

Tagore and Jainendra Kumar focused on the beauty in poetry in particular and in literature in general. They found the source of Satya, Shiva and Sundara in the Upanishadas. Jainendra Kumar was also influenced by Tagore. Beauty in Indian literature was redefined by the scholars like them. Arobindo took further move in literary thought. He observed literature as a medium of freedom and freem speech. He categorized different Indian literature and he found mantra as significant category of literature in ancient Indian literature. Arobindo also proposed a historiography for Indian literary history.

Modern Interpretations1

Ancient Sanskrit literary theory has been reinterpreted and re-contextualise by the great Indian literary minds. The texts which were written in Sanskrit and other languages are widely translated into English and different other Indian languages across the 20th century. Tagore, Arobindo, Coomerswamy, Mardhekar, Krishna Rayan, Suresh Joshi, Krishnamurti, Hiriyanna, Bhalchandra Nemade, Ramanujan, Bimal Krishna Matilal, Patankar, Spivak, Sudhir Kakar, and Aijaj Ahmed are such scholars.

Tagore talks about beauty in poetry and his major concern was on art, on defining art and beauty. Aurobindo as we mentioned earlier, talks about poetry and freedom, freedom of speech in poetry, poetry and national movement, etc. The Sources Poetry, The Essence of Poetry are major two books on literary thoughts by Aurobindo. Mardhekar also was interested in the essence of beauty in poetry. Krishna Rayan talks about literariness, while Suresh Joshi focuses on interpretation. Nemade brought a different aesthetic theory altogether, that is nativism. His work on nativism published from Indian Institute of Advanced Study, in English Nativism. Ganesh Devy in his book Indian Literary Criticism: Theory and Interpretation includes all the scholars who are referred here following Devy’s work. Devy includes Spivak’s work on the literary representation of subaltern as an Indian criticism and Aijaj Ahmed’s work which is placed in Devy’s book talks about orientalism which is indeed significant way of understanding India’s modern past.

Dalit, Folk and Tribal Aesthetics

Dalit aesthetics and literary theory is one of the major contributions in postcolonial thoughts. Perhaps it is the only original literary thought contributed from India. Authors like, Sharan Kumar Limbale, Om Prakash Valmiki etc. has contributed on the epistemological ground of the Dalit Aesthetics. Dalit aesthetics is not only to offer the theoretical understanding of the Dalit literature but also it offers tools and methodology of reading and writing Dalit literature. In brief Dalit aesthetics also defines the definition and characteristics and major denominators of Dalit literature. This aesthetics is genealogically different than any other aesthetic thoughts we have come across or it is different than main stream aesthetic thoughts.

Dalit literature is not only a literature of different category but it is primarily the weapon for the Dalits to fight against all the oppression made by the caste discrimination of the society or by the any other upper class/caste oppression or the state oppression. Hence the aesthetics which is theorized by the Dalit scholars is the aesthetics of resistance and a strong accumulated voice of self-right and self-identity. Sharan Kumar Limbale’s book Dalit Sahityache Soundaryashashtra is one of the pioneering work in this field.

Like any other established literary thoughts, Dalit aesthetics is also one of the major subject of study in the literary disciplines. It is one of the significant component in contemporary study of literature. English, Comparative Literature, and other Bhasha literature departments offer courses on Dalit literature and aesthetics is part and parcel of it.

Likewise, emergence of tribal and folk literature also has been observed in the post-independent period. Folk and tribal literature is not being found only as oral or performative but written also. Besides this, many literary texts are found centred by the folk essence or texts emphasized on the folk elements.

In present days, readers do not perceive tribal literature only as the cultural products of the communities but different authors from the communities write literature in tribal languages or any other language and claimed as tribal literature. It means tribal literature is not only oral or performative or documentation of those but literature written by the tribal authors. For example, Hansda Swovendra Sekhar writes in English and he claims that his writings are tribal writings, to be more specific those are Santali literature but written in English. This is how tribal literature is redefined and folk literature also redefined with the adaptation of folk elements.

This discussions reflects that new tools, methods and theories are needed to understand, conceptualise, analyse and theorise tribal and folk literature. Because folk and tribal literature is one side, indigenous cultural forms of narrative

Conclusion

As English department is moving towards new areas since last few decades, it is not limited within the literatures and literary thoughts produced only in English. English also wants to contextualize its study with the reference of the language, culture and region of the emergence of the department. It tries to addresses new issues of different literary worlds, therefore it is important to the discipline to address the Indian questions. Therefore, Indian literature in English translation and local literary movements and thoughts are being prioritized in English department. Dalit literature and Dalit aesthetics, folk and tribal aesthetics, along with Sanskrit, Tamil, Persian, and aesthetics thoughts found in bhasha culture is now its one of the major theoretical concerns. It is to establish the cultural dialogues among the cultures and also to establish dialogues broadly between English and non-English cultures which are also major concern of the Comparative Literature discipline. Therefore, it is important to English to offer courses on Indian poetics and aesthetics because English needs to relocate itself.

References

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• Lal, Vinay;. (n.d.). Indian Poetics and Western Literary Criticism . Retrieved from https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/Literature/poetics.pdf
• Satchidanandan, K;. (2014, March 21). Dilemmas of Indian literary criticism. Frontline. Retrieved from http://www.frontline.in/columns/K_Satchidanandan/dilemmas-of-indian-literary-criticism/article5739887.ece
• Srinivasan, Prema;. (2000, July 16). A fresh look at Indian poetics. The Hindu. Retrieved from http://www.thehindu.com/2000/07/16/stories/1316067k.htm
• http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/52324/10/10_chapter%203.pdf