18 Rajashekhara and Indian Poetics
Dr. Mrinmoy Pramanick
About the chapter:
This module talks about Sanskrit literary theorist Rajshekhara and his contribution to Indian poetic thought. Here we briefly discuss about Rajshekhara’s early life and then about his entire works. Rajshekhara’s idea of Kavyapurusha is recurrently used in different periods of the time by different theorists and the interpreters. Rajshekhar is very few among the early rhetoricians who has growing importance in present Indian context of imagining Indian literature and Indian literary history.
Introduction
Rajshekhara is one of the major Sanskrit literary theorist. Along with contributing on the pooetic thoughts he has much more greater approach to the literature in general. Specifically, his ideas can be used to conceptualise Indian literary historiography and imagining Indian literature in present context. His seminal work Kavyamimamsa is his contribution in Sanskrit poetics. He is known as Rasavadi Alamkarik. He had brought the idea of rasa further ahead of Bharatmuni. Anandavardhana and Abhinabagupta are major two figures in this field. He is very much critically acclaimed and his theory is highly adapted by different critics and modern literary theorists, such as Sujit Mukherjee and Ganesh Devy.
A Short Bio-Note of Rajshekhara
Rajeshkhara was a noted Sanskrit poet, playwright and aesthetician. His family came from Maharashtra. They were from Vatsagilma (modern Basim, which is situated in the Akola District of Maharashtra)1; this was former capital of the branch of the great royal families of the Vakatakas, who ruled Vidarbha from third to six centuries.
Rajshekhar was born in a poet’s family. Many of his predecessors wrote poetry. They were, Akalajalada, Surananda, Tarala and Kaviraja. One can learn from his poetry about various aspects of his life. His father was Duradaka, who is also the minister at the Kalachuri court. Brahmin Rajasekhara, married the Kshatriya lady named Avivitasundari, who was a daughter of Chhuna (Chauhan) family. Avantisundari was an educated lady. She was a rhetorician too and Rajashekhara quoted her opinion in some place of Kavyamimansa.
Rajshekhar started his life as the court-poet of the great Pratihara king Mahendrapala of Kanauj. He was conferred the title of Kaviraj by Mahendrapala’s son and successor Mahipala. Though he was a poet but his skill in writing plays are remarkable and some of his plays are worth to mention such as the Balablarata, the Karpuramnjari ( it was written in Prakrit) etc.
However, his happy days in the court of Pratihar King did not last long as the Pratihara kingdom was invaded by the Rashtrakuta king Indra III during the reign of Mahipala. Rajashekhara, thereafter, came back to the court of the Kalachuri king at Tripura.
One of Rajashekhara’s earlier works is the Balaramayana, which is an enormous play in ten acts contains more than 780 verses. Balaramayana is the story of Rama, which starts from his his marriage with Sita and ends in his return to Ayodhya, after the destruction of Ravana. Rajshekhar considered himself an incarnation of great Sanskrit poet Bhavabhuti. He brought some changes to the original story of Ramayana; some of them were clearly influenced by the Bhavabhuti.
The Balabharata is another notable Sanskrit play of Rajashekhara which was written in two acts. However, the full manuscript of this play was not found. The extended portion of Balmahabharata describes the swayamvara of Draupadi, the gambling scene and the departure of the Pandavas into exile. Apart from this, Rajashekhara wrote a Sattaka or Prakrit play named the Karpuramanjuri. The Karpuramanjuri is a love story of Chandapala (the Pratiharu king Mahipaia) and Karpuramanjari, a princess of Ktratala. Another significant contribution of Rajashekara as a playwright is the Viddkasalabhanjika, which has a more complicated plot than the Karpuramanjari. The main protagonist of the play is the King Karpuravarsha of Tripuri. The character of Karpuravarsha is modelled on the Kalachuri king-Yuvarajadeva I .The play has a great historical significance.
In addition to these plays, Rajeshkara also composed a kavya, named Haravijaya which is written in glorification of Siva. Besides, he authored several muktaka type verses, later which have been collected in Sanskrit anthologies.
Rajsekhara’s Kavyamimamsa
But the book that made Rajashekhara one of the stalwarts of Indian aesthetics is Kavyamimamsa. His Kavyamimamsa is a real treasure of information on poetic matter. Though, the complete manuscript of this book could not be retrieved. The first section of it, called Kavi-rahasya, has been restored and published. The book contains 18 sections and it is heavily modelled on Arthasastra of Kautilya and the Kamasutra of Vatsyayana.
Rajashekahara’s main intention behind writing such book was probably to write a handbook of information for aspiring poets. The book deals with a great range of topics from mythological introduction of divine and semi-divine authors of the Kavya-vidya to the canonical section of the system of writings. V.V. Mirashi in his article “Rajashekhara” has said,
Rajashekhara divided the whole system of writings into two groups – works of ‘non-human’ origin (apaurusheya) and of ‘human’ origin (paurusheya). The Kavyamimamsa is not a book of conventional work on rhetoric. This book provides detailed discussions on the many difficult topics of rhetoric, which are rarely touched upon. Rajashekhara was deeply interested and has a great respect for the science of aesthetics. According to V.V. Mirashi He considered Sahityavidya to be the fifth vidya. The other four vidyas are (1) the Vedas, (2) trade and agriculture, (3) the science of polity, and (4) meta-physics.
In his book, Rajashekhara placed the fifth vidya with the remaining four traditionally recognized vidyas. However, the Kavyamimansa was not limited to the discussion of rhetoric only. Among other things Rajashekhara gives detail information about the study room, courts of the kings, the daily life of the poets etc. Among many of his memorable deeds, giving recognition to the female poets is most significant as he strongly believed that poetic genius does not depend on the gender of a poet. He proposed to the king to organize a literary competition to verify the poet’s genius in the important centres of learning and advises the king should arrange this literary competition where the winner will be honoured for his poetic talent. In support of his proposal he gave examples of Ujjayjini and Patliputra.
where the great poets like Kalidasa, Mentha, Amara, Bharavi, Upavarsa, Varsha, Panini, Pingala, Vyadi and Patanjai were tested.
Rajshekhara occupies a special place in the history of Sanskrit literature. His Kavyamimansa gave a new dimension to Indian aesthetics. Except this book, our knowledge about ancient Indian culture will never be complete.
According to Rajshekhara the Vaniputra or the son of goddess Saraswati is ‘Kavyapurusha’ and his wife is ‘Sahityabidya’. Shabdartha is the body of that Kavyapurusha, Sanskrit is his face, Prakrit is his arms, Samata, Madhurya and Prasad etc. is his Guna, Rasa is his atma or soul and Upama and all is his alamkara or ornaments.
Rajshekhara’s work is remarkably different than other rhetoricians as he did not only talk about the philosophical aspect or aesthetics or linguistic aspect of poetry but he also talked about the desired lifestyle of the poets, environment of the poet, daily routine of the poet and other guidelines to be a good poet. It seems that Rajshekhara was far ahead from his time that he imagined kind of a creative writing course for the poets of his times, if we would like to interpret it from present context.
Rajshekhara’s work his kind of socio-historical also. He mentioned that many of the poets of his times used to get Royal patronage and best among those used to be selected as court poet or Asthana Kavi. Poet’s brilliancy offered them chance to be closer to the King and therefore, there was a competition among poets to be better not only from the others but from himself also. And a good poet also is a good performer. Poetry in this competition was nothing but a performance with poetic brilliancy. Poet should have very good voice, body movement, good power of expression, acting skill, modulation, very high sense of language and wit.
Poet used to be from an upper-middle class society, his house and room in particular expresses a sense of aesthetic, he is surrounded by beautiful birds, he has own love interest whom he used to offer the poems or who is addressed by him in poetry. A poet usually is a householder, who begins his day with worship, then study of other’s work and study for knowledge and then writing of his own. The basic condition to be a poet is to have a creative imagination or Prativa or the poetic talent or Kavya-Kriya. A poet must join a Kavi-Goshthi and must take part in a debate on poetry every day after his lunch. In evening poet socializes with friends and women and later part of the night he should take rest. Many of these qualities we can find among the poets, if not they follow it word by word.
According to Rajshekhara, there are few poets who writes only he gets some leisure time, they are called Data-vasara and among them who writes only for very specific reason or occasion, they are Prayojonik. There were few poets who were solely dedicated to work for literature only. They are called Asuryamupasya. They are like saint and use to stay in a lonely, peaceful life.
According to Rajshekhara poet should have greater knowledge about literature, language, chhanda, Vyakarana etc. They should know about Sangeet, Nataka, Nritya, Shahstra, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata etc.
Concept of Kavyapurusha and the Critics
As Rajshekhara had a socio-cultural and historical study on his time, poets and poetry and he also proposed a guideline to the poets through his seminal work Kavyadarsha. Kavyadarsha as a concept fascinated the later critics. Sujit Mukherjee wrote “The Biography of Kavyapurush”3, where he assumed the concept as the metaphor and imagined about the history of Indian literature and how this concept can be used for proposing a historiography for his time.
Ganesh Devy4 refers Rajshekahara while talking about literary historiography. In his article on “Two Paradigms of History”. Devy mentions that according to Rajshekhara history is actually two types, one is of single hero and the second is of many heroes. The two types of history is known as Parakriya and Purakalpa. The example of the first is the Ramayana and the example for the first is the Mahabharata. Rajshekhara, who worked for the sociology of literature for the first time, must be a subject of modern interest. According to Devy, what Rajshekhara did is a work of human science5 actually. He did not forget to mention for his readers that the itihasa and purana are two concepts can be confusing to them, because of similar kind of approach of the terms. Rajshekhar divided the narrative in four ways, and those are, Purana, Itihasa, Purakalpa and Parakriya. This is how the literary and historical narrative is being classified by Rajshekhara and this hints towards the generic division of the narrative.
Conclusion
Rajshekhar is such a literary theorist who is exceptional than any other figure of Sanskrit literary theorists. He did not only talk about the philosophical, aesthetics and spiritual beauty of poetry or kavya but he, perhaps for the first time talks about the sociology of literature, what we can say now. Besides this he was so modern that he imagined for a guidelines to the creative writers or to the poets. Most significant contribution of Rajshekhara is his Kavyapurusha what is a concept of historiography too. Contemporary critics like Sujit Mukherjee and Ganesh Devy returned far way back to the history to imagine literary historiography of India with the work of Rajshekhara only. Rajshekhara’s work offers Indian original or indigenous model of literary historiography. He is politically important for the contemporary literary India to offer a historiography.
| you can view video on Rajashekhara and Indian Poetics | |