Mahākāvya
Mahākāvya (lit. great kāvya, court epic), also known as sargabandha, is a genre of Indian epic poetry in Classical Sanskrit. The genre is characterised by ornate and elaborate descriptions of phenomena such as scenery, love, and battles. Typical examples of mahākāvya are the Kumarasambhava and the Kiratarjuniya.
The genre evolved from earlier epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Despite the length of mahākāvyas (15-30 cantos, a total of about 1500-3000 verses), they are still much shorter than the Ramayana (500 cantos, 24000 verses) and the Mahabharata (about 100000 verses).
The Buddhist poet and philosopher Aśvaghoṣa (c. 80 – c. 150 CE) is one of the earliest Sanskrit poets with surviving Kāvya literature. His Buddhacarita (Acts of the Buddha) calls itself a mahākāvya and was influential enough to be translated into both Tibetan and Chinese.[1] Another kāvya by Aśvaghoṣa is the Saundarananda, which focuses on the conversion of Nanda, Buddha's half-brother.[2][3]
- Further reading
Mahakavya, Wikipedia
Notes
- ↑ E.B. Cowell, trans. The Buddha Carita or the Life of the Buddha, Oxford, Clarendon 1894, reprint: New Delhi, 1977, p. X (introduction).
- ↑ Yoshichika Honda. 'Indian Buddhism and the kāvya literature: Asvaghosa's Saundaranandakavya.' Hiroshima Daigaku Daigakuin Bungaku Kenkyuuka ronshuu, vol. 64, pp. 17–26, 2004. [1] (Japanese)
- ↑ Johnston, E. H. (1928). Saundarananda (PDF). Lahore: University of Panjab.
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