classicalindianlitol

8/3/2019 ClassicalIndianLitOL

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Classical Indian Literature


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Gupta Era

320 ce 550 ceGupta dynasty was founded by

Chandra Gupta I

Development of Mahayana

Buddhism

Classical Age in north India

Cave paintings at Ajanta

Sakuntala, Jataka,

Panchatantra andKamasutra

were written

Aryabhattas Astronomy.

Kumardevi and Chandragupta I(Minted by their son Samudragupta)

335-370 ce

Gold Dinar

Weight: 7.8 gm

Obverse: King and queen


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Mahayana BuddhismBuddhism split into two sects, Mahayana and

Hinayana (Theravada).

Mahayana laid stress on the concept of theBodhisattva or `one destined to be the Buddha' andalso conceived of Eternal Buddhas who resemblegods or deities.

Hinayana regarded the Buddha as a man and had adoctrine, Theravada, stressing the salvation of the

individual.The interaction of Mahayana philosophy and

Hinduism gave rise to Tantric Buddhism or

Vajrayana.


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.

AJANTA

CAVES

During the 4th

century c.e. in aremote valley, work began on theAjanta Caves to create a complex ofBuddhist monasteries and prayerhalls.

As centuries passed, numerousBuddhist monks and artisans dugout a set of twenty-nine caves,converting some to cells, and othersto monasteries and Buddhist

temples. These caves are adorned with

elaborate sculptures and paintingswhich have withstood the ravages of

time


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Ajanta Caves

The Ajanta caves depict

the stories of Buddhismspanning from the periodfrom 200 bce to 650 ce.

The 29 caves were builtby Buddhist monks usingsimple tools like hammer& chisel.

The elaborate andexquisite sculptures and

paintings depict storiesfromJataka tales .

The caves also houseimages of nymphs and

princesses.


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SceneFrom

The Jataka


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SamskrtaThe Language of Classical Literature

Samskrta: Sanskrit perfected, classified refined

Correct speech Codified and frozen in theAstadhyahi : the rules ofgrammar

Considered ideal language for classics

Prakrta: Prakrit original or natural

Dialects that changed and developed with spokenlanguage


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Kavya

Kavya the poetry of the classicalcanon

Permeated with the culture of theGupta courts

Kavi, learned poets, wrote under the

patronage of kings for audiences ofconnoisseurs

sahrdaya with heart,responsive

rasika enjoyer of aestheticmood

Highly formulated norms andconventions

Many works on poetic theory


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Kavya Genres Mahakavya: great poem or court epic contains lyric stanzas

with elaborate figures of speech and emphasizes description

Natya: drama

employs both prose and verse

includes Sanskrit and Prakrit

wider range of characters

lyrical description more than dramatic action

Muktaka: short lyric poems

Bhartrhari: pointed epigrams

Kalidasa: idyllic verses on nature

Amaru: erotic vignettes

Katha or Akhyika: narrative tales

Pancatantra: collection of animal fables

SomadevasKathasaritsagara (Ocean to the Rivers of Story):

picaresque, marvelous tales, romances


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NitiAims for Human Conduct, Worldly Wisdom

The Nagaraka gentleman, citizen, courtier cultivated life as art with the 4 aims for human conduct:

Dharma: religious duty

Artha: wealth, politics, public life Kama: erotic pleasure and the emotions VitsyayanasKamasutra

Moksa: liberation from the chain of birth and death in

which souls are trapped because ofKarma Karma implies fluid relationships between divine, human and

animal worlds

gods become human, humans may achieve bodhisattva status

or may be reincarnated as animals


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Women in Classical Literature

Courtly ideal wives likeSita chaste, loyal,submissive, long-suffering

Wives in merchant-classstories chaste,independent, powerful

Courtesans erotic,beautiful, intelligent,ruthless, rapacious,independent

Religious contemplatives figures of authority and

free agents


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Visnusarmans

Pancatantra

ca. 2nd 3rd ce

Pancatantra: The Five Strategies

Collection of folk tales and fableswithin frame tales

Brought by Arabs into Europe model and source for1001 Nights,Boccaccios The Decameron,Chaucers The Canterbury Tales,

GrimmsFairy Tales, LaFontainesFables, etc.

Central concern is niti conduct political expediency and social

values Visnusarman allegedly used the

fables to teach 3 dim-wittedprinces the science of politics


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The Pancatantras

5 Strategies

Book I : The Loss ofFriends Leap and Creep

The Blue Jackal

Forethought, Readywit andFatalist

Book II : The Winning ofFriends

Book III: Crows and Owls strategies of alliance and war

Mouse-Maid Made Mouse

Book IV: Loss of Gains

Book V: Ill-ConsideredAction

The Loyal Mungoose

D k b


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Natya:

Drama

Drsyakavya: poetry to be seen asopposed to sravyakavya: poetry to beheard

BharatasNatyasastra authoritative

text on dramatic aesthetics and theory Abhinaya: a symphony of languages

verbal text, stylized gesture, facialexpression, eye movement, music, dance

8 fundamental emotions, bhava,expressed in 8 major rasas, stylizedrepresentations of the emotions universal rather than particular

No tragedy in Indian drama

impossible in the Hindu and Buddhistconception of the universe ofkarmalinking humans with nature and thecosmos through networks of volition,action and response open-ended cycles

of time

Video on Indian Natya
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSg


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Dramatic Conventions

Performed at seasonal festivals and celebrations such as weddings,the dramas were regarded as rites of renewal and order

Characters are types, not individuals

Contrasts and complements among diverse elements: lyric verse and prose dialogue

erotic and heroic moods

heroic king and gluttonous buffoon

Sanskrit spoken by noblemen, Prakrit spoken by women,children and men of lower caste

domestic and public worlds; worlds of the court and of nature;worlds of the human and divine

emotional universes of men and women
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSg


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Kalidasa

fl. 4th 5th c. ce

The dramatist and poet is regardedas the greatest figure in classicalSanskrit literature.

His three surviving plays are

Abhijnanasakuntala (Sakunatalaand the Ring of Recognition),Vikramorvasi, and

Malavikagnimitra.

These court dramas in verse,nataka, relate fanciful ormythological tales of profoundromantic love intensified andmatured by adversity.

In Kalidasa's two epics,RaghuvansaandKumarasambhava, delicatedescriptions of nature are mingledwith battle scenes.

The other poems of Kalidasa are

shorter and almost purely lyrical.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSg


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Sakuntala

Nataka: heroic romance

play about love

between a noble hero

and a beautiful woman Dominant mood: the

erotic rasa: tension

between duty, dharma,

and desire, kama

King Dusyanta falls in

love with Sakuntala,

daughter of the nymphMenaka and foster

daughter of the ascetic

hermit-sage, Kanva.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwDdjKJ_HSg

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