Jagat

Towards an objective assessment   So far, the gist of my argument has been that the problem of poetry appreciation is mainly one of subjectivity—and that an unsurpassable distance separates the modern person, the uncultivated person, and the non-devotee, from the poetry of Rūpa Gosvāmī. But such arguments, though not without validity, do an injustice to both Professor De and his capacity to make legitimate criticism as well as to Rūpa Gosvāmī by failing to establish what I feel is his rightful claim to a place of honor in the history of Sanskrit literature. It is a real slap in the face to consider him a mere technician, without fully acknowledging the deep feeling and ultimate concern he had for his subject matter, what to speak of his ability to transmit these in his work. I may also have undermined my argument by intimating that the devotee's ability to criticize is impaired by a favorable bias toward any poetry, good or bad, dealing with Kṛṣṇa.   But we have also argu...

  6. Rasa : From aesthetic to sacred rapture Positive aspects of Sanskrit poetry that were the measuring sticks used by the connoisseurs of old and which can still be enjoyed by the modern reader are manifold: we can point to its meter, its sonority, or its love for multiple layers of meaning. Both Nathan and Ingalls precede their translations with excellent summaries of these aspects for the uninitiated and I heartily recommend the reader to study these essays.   The theory of language called sphoṭa-vāda , though universally applicable, has a recognizable influence on Sanskrit poetry. Sounds and words are said to build up to a cumulative effect that is not realized until the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Since Sanskrit is a highly inflected language, the poet enjoys a license for almost infinite variations of word order and can still count on word inflections and context to clarify syntactical relations. Powerful meters carry the words forward inexorably, bu...

As we have seen, the dūta-kāvya genre is everywhere concerned with the theme of love in separation. Love in separation has a long tradition not only in secular Sanskrit poetry, but also in the Vaiṣṇava religious literature. [1] For the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas, of course, Caitanya Mahāprabhu as described by Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja is a living symbol of the intensity of divine love in separation.   For the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava practitioner, separation or viraha is the devotional mood by which one attains Kṛṣṇa. Such worship of Kṛṣṇa in separation is said to be the contribution of Mādhavendra Purī, the guru of Caitanya Mahāprabhu's guru . Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura writes, “the seed of all the religious doctrines of Caitanya Mahāprabhu can be found in the following verse attributed to Mādhavendra Purī, spoken in the mood of a gopī separated from Kṛṣṇa].” [2] ayi dīnadayārdra nātha he, mathurānātha kadāvalokyase / hṛdayaṁ tvad-aloka-kātaraṁ dayita bhrāmyati kiṁ karomy aham //   O l...