Bhaṭṭikāvya

That is, not a treatise written in verse but an imaginative piece of literature which is also intended to be instructive in specific subjects.

The author, Bhaṭṭi, describes himself at the end of the book: Even this eulogy is unreliable since variant readings of the verse show that his patron may have been Śrī Dharasena.

It fits well within the definition of this genre given later by Daṇḍin in his “Mirror of Poetry” the Kāvyādarśa:[2] It springs from a historical incident or is otherwise based on some fact; it turns upon the fruition of the fourfold ends and its hero is clever and noble; By descriptions of cities, oceans, mountains, seasons and risings of the moon or the sun; through sportings in garden or water, and festivities of drinking and love; Through sentiments-of-love-in-separation and through marriages, by descriptions of the birth-and-rise of princes, and likewise through state-counsel, embassy, advance, battle, and the hero’s triumph; Embellished; not too condensed, and pervaded all through with poetic sentiments and emotions; with cantos none too lengthy and having agreeable metres and well-formed joints, And in each case furnished with an ending in a different metre—such a poem possessing good figures-of-speech wins the people’s heart and endures longer than even a kalpa.

itihāsa-kath’’-ôdbhūtam, itarad vā sad-āśrayam, | catur-varga-phal’-āyattaṃ, catur-udātta-nāyakam, nagar’-ârṇava-śaila’-rtu, | udyāna-salila-kṛīḍā-madhu-pāna-rat’-ôtsavaiḥ, vipralambhair vivāhaiś ca, kumār’-ôdaya-varṇanaiḥ, | mantra-dūta-prayāṇ’-āji-nāyak’-âbhyudayair api; alaṃ-kṛtam, a-saṃkṣiptaṃ, rasa-bhāva-nirantaram, | sargair an-ativistīrṇaiḥ, śravya-vṛttaiḥ su-saṃdhibhiḥ, sarvatra bhinna-vṛttāntair upetaṃ, loka-rañjanam | kāvyaṃ kalp’-ântara-sthāyi jāyate sad-alaṃkṛti.

The poem through its form and subject matter is conducive to the attainment of the four aims of human life (puruṣārtha): “righteousness” (dharma), “wealth and power,” (artha), “pleasure” (kāma) and “spiritual liberation” (mokṣa).

Bhaṭṭi’s Poem contains descriptions of cities, the ocean, mountains, seasons, the rising and setting of the sun and moon, and the sports of love and sex.

The five are the Raghuvaṃśa[3] (“Lineage of Raghu”) and the Kumārasambhava (“Birth of the war God KumAra/KartikEya/Muruga”) of Kālidāsa, the Śiśupālavadha (“Slaying of Śiśupāla”) of Māgha,[4] Kirātārjunīya (“Arjuna and the Mountain Man”) of Bharavi and the Naiṣadhacarita (“Adventures of the Prince of Nishadha”) of Śrīharṣa.

The multitude of manuscripts found in libraries demonstrates the popularity of the Bhaṭṭikāvya and the thirteen extant and eight further attested commentaries instantiate its importance to the tradition.

[5] “Bhaṭṭi’s Poem” has two purposes: it is both a poetic retelling of the adventures of Rāma and a compendium of examples of grammar and rhetoric for the student.

The Bhaṭṭikāvya provides a comprehensive exemplification of Sanskrit grammar in use and a good introduction to the science (śāstra) of poetics or rhetoric (alaṃkāra, lit.

Finally it tells the compelling story of Prince Rāma in simple, elegant Sanskrit: this is the Rāmāyaṇa faithfully retold.

The learned Indian curriculum in late classical times had at its heart a system of grammatical study and linguistic analysis.

This grammar of Pāṇini had been the object of intense study for the ten centuries prior to the composition of “Bhaṭṭi’s Poem”.

This poem, which is to be understood by means of a commentary, is a joy to those sufficiently learned: through my fondness for the scholar I have here slighted the dullard.

The traditional story given to account for the technical or shastric nature of the poem goes that Bhaṭṭi’s class on grammar was one day disturbed by an elephant ambling between him and his pupils.

This bestial interruption necessitated an interdiction of study for a year as prescribed by the solemn law books.

To ensure that no vital study time was lost our poem was composed as a means of teaching grammar without resorting to an actual grammatical text.

Here again poetry is subjugated to the pedagogic purpose of exemplification: the metre is the humble anuṣṭubh or śloka and there are few figures of speech to decorate the tale.

To start with, the three words of the rule in their uninflected form are ik, yaṇ and ac which are a type of acronym for their respective series of letters: the simple vowels i, ī, u, ū, ṛ, ṝ, ḷ; the semivowels y, v, r, l; and all the vowels a, ā, i, ī, u, ū, ṛ, ṝ, ḷ, e, o, ai, au.

Cantos 11 and 12 are held to display respectively the quality guṇa of “sweetness” mādhurya and the sentiment rasa of “intensity of expression” bhāvikatva.

Assuming that Bhaṭṭi did intend to show these, their precise characteristics described in his source text would be best discovered from careful analysis of the language of his own work rather than from the pronouncements of later writers on poetics.

Because the following words all begin with voiced consonants, in Sanskrit sandhi the ending -aḥ is in all these cases changed to -o, thus making the form indistinguishable from the Prakrit.

For instance in verse 13.3 the Sanskrit sabhā “hall” would normally become sahā in Prakrit by the rule khaghathadhabhāṃ haḥ “h is the replacement for kh, gh, th, dh and bh,” (Prākṛtaprakāśa 2.27).

Mallinātha defends the retention of sabhā in Prakrit by saying that there is the continued operation (anuvṛtti) of prāyaḥ “generally” from an earlier rule.

The Javanese Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa follows “Bhaṭṭi’s Poem” closely as far as canto 12, sometimes to the extent of directly translating a verse, but begins to diverge thereafter.