BOOKS ABOUT SANSKRIT POETRY

FAQs

Q1. What are the other names of Sanskrit poetics?

Poetics (alankara shastra) Bangla poetics is closely based on Sanskrit poetics. It is also called sahitya shastra aur sahitya tattva. The use of rhetorical devices such as similes, metaphors, and imagery dates back to the Rigveda, but it is unsure whether poetics used to be studied at the time. However, poetics did not develop as a separate subject as did chhanda shastra (prosody).

Bharata's Natyashastra is the oldest known book on Indian poetics about drama. But Bharat also discusses sentences, arrangements of sentences, their quality, rhetoric, type, etc. Important for both drama and dance, Natyasastra analyzes eight types of rasa (sentiments), including shrungara (erotic). Sanskrit poetics came to identify feeling (rasa) and suggestive-ness (dhvani) as the distinguishing features of poetry.

Q2. Who is the greatest poet in Sanskrit?

Kalidasa (4th–5th century CE) was a classical Sanskrit author who is India's greatest poet. His surviving works consist of three plays, two epic poems, and two shorter poems. The two epic works of poetry, Kumarasambhava and Raghuvaṃsa are among the most revered in Indian literature to this day. His plays and poetry are primarily based on the Vedas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Puranas.

Kalidasa also wrote the Meghaduta (The Cloud Messenger), a khaṇḍakavya (minor poem). The play ‘Abhijnanasakuntalam’ tells the story of King Duṣyanta and Shakuntala, the adopted daughter of the sage Kanu and the real daughter of Vishwamitra and Menaka. His works cannot be dated with precision, but they were most likely authored before the 5th century CE.

Q3. Who is the famous poet in Sanskrit literature?

Kalidasa has been the national poet of India and the brightest star in the firmament of Indian Poetry for the last two thousand years. He has been unanimously acclaimed as the greatest Sanskrit poet.

Other famous poets are : Valmiki for Ramayana, Maharshi Vedvyasa for Mahabharata, Bharat Muni for Natyashastra Bhasa for Svapnavasavdatta, Vishnu Sharma for Panchatantra, Narayan Sharma for Hitopadesh Dandi for Dashakumaracharita, Banabhatta, Panini, Bharavi, Bhartṛhari, Jayadeva, Jaimini, and many more.

Q4. Which poet wrote the Sanskrit?

Valmiki is also known as Adi Kavi, which means the first poet. He is widely credited for being a pioneer of Sanskrit literature, defining the shape and form of Sanskrit poetry. Considered to be the greatest Sanskrit poet in India, Kalidasa is widely said to have been from the 5th century. His two epic works of poetry, Kumārasambhava and Raghuvaṃśa are among the most revered in Indian literature to this day.

Bharavi was a great Sanskrit poet who wrote one of the greatest classical Sanskrit epics Kiratarjuniya or Arjuna and the mountain man; which was hailed as Mahakavya or great poetry.

Some other famous poets: Rambhadracharya, Srinivas Rath, Ram Karan Sharma, Bhatt Mathuranath, Vidyadhar, Palkuriki Somanatha, etc.

Q5. Who wrote the first Sanskrit poem?

Valmiki is the author of one of the two greatest Indian epics, the Ramayana. Valmiki is also known as Adi Kavi, which means the first poet. He is widely credited for being a pioneer of Sanskrit literature, defining the shape and form of Sanskrit poetry. Ramayana, one of the longest works of literature the world has ever known, comprises of 24,000 verses across seven kandas, divided into 500 saragas.

मां निषाद प्रतिष्ठां त्वमगमः शाश्वतीः समाः।

यत्क्रौंचमिथुनादेकम् अवधीः काममोहितम्॥

These verses are his first shloka in Sanskrit Literature, which Valmiki said out of grief and rage.

Later Valmiki wrote several other Puranas. Valmiki Jayanti is dedicated to Adi Kavi, - the first poet of Sanskrit literature.

Q6. Who wrote Sanskrit first?

The enactment of the Sanskrit language is credited to Panini, along with Patanjali's Mahabhaṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work. He wrote the ‘Ashtadhyayi’, which can be translated as “Eight Chapters on Grammar”. The Ashtadhyayi was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full, and the culmination of a long grammatical tradition is "one of the intellectual wonders of the ancient world."

The Aṣṭadhyayi of Panini became the foundation of Vyakaraṇa, a Vedanga. Paṇini's grammar is a classic that defines linguistic expression and sets the standard for the Sanskrit language. Sanskrit is an ancient and classical language of India in which every first book of the world Rigveda was compiled.