Indian poetry of the classical style, kavya, has been long ignored by western Indologists. Nowadays opinion slowly tends to change in favour of this rather extreme poetry. Bharavi's Kiratarjuniya, the poem treated in this volume is part of the tradition of epic poems or mahakavyas. Six are recognized. The Kiratarjuniya marks the beginning of a new style of Indian poetry and represents one of the best written in this tradition. The plot is taken from the Mahabharata.
The authors of the kavya-tradition are recognized as word painters in the highest sense. Because of that the poems have traditionally been accompanied by indefinite large commentaries written by undisputed scholars such as Mallinatha. One might, carefully poring over those commentaries, at the most catch a glimpse of the real beauty of the epic poem and even then a great deal will be missed.
For the first time now an English translation of Mallinatha's commentary, the Ghantapatha, on the Cantos XIV-XVIII of the Kiratarjuniya and a rendering of the stanzas concerned is given.
Jan Marcus Zwaan was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He read Classical, and Indian and Iranian Languages at the University of Amsterdam.
Taal: eng
Aantal pagina's: 600
Verschijningsdatum: 07-06-2022