First academic study of classical South Asian literature.

Panoramic historical overview of South Asian classical poetry, from Sanskrit to early modern hindi.

Part of prestigious South Asia Research series.

This volume is the first attempt to offer a panoramic historical overview of South Asian classical poetry, especially in Sanskrit. Many of the essays in this volume are the first serious studies of the great masterpieces of South Asian literature. Moreover, the book as a whole captures the millennium-long developmental logic of kavya literature by identifying a series of critical moments of breakthrough and innovation-that is, moments when the basic rules of composition and the aesthetic and poetic goals underwent dramatic change, allowing the tradition to reinvent itself. Individual sections thus focus on the beginnings of kavya literature and Kalidasa's creation of what came to be its classical form; the new poetic model that emerged from the intense competition and conversation of Bharavi and Magha in the middle of the first millennium; the extended revolutionary period in Kanauj, where Bana and his successors reconceived the meaning and practice of Sanskrit poetry; and the no less transformative period at the beginning of the second millennium, when poets of genius such as Sriharsa were active in the context of India's nascent vernacularization. The scope of the volume extends beyond Sanskrit to early modern Hindi, and beyond the subcontinent and the Himalayas to Java and Tibet, where kavya found a new home and continued to evolve. A general introduction proposes a theoretical framework for the study of this immense literary tradition in terms of its continuous self-reinvention.

Edited by Yigal Bronner, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, David Shulman, Renee Lang Professor, Humanistic Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Gary Tubb, Chair/Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Division of the Humanities, University of Chicago

Yigal Bronner is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

David Shulman is Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies at the Hebrew University.

Gary Tubb is Chair and Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Division of the Humanities, the University of Chicago.

Contributors:

Yigal Bronner is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.; Allison Busch is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University.; Phyllis Granoff is the Lex Hixon Professor of World Religions at Yale University; Thomas Hunter lectures on the Sanskrit and Indonesian languages at the University of British Columbia.; Peter Khoroche, after teaching Sanskrit at SOAS in the early 1970s, he chose independence and has since then pursued an interest in modern British art as well as in Sanskrit literature.; Charles Malamoud was Directeur d'études at the Ecole pratique des hautes études, Sorbonne, Paris, until his retirement in 1999.; Dan Martin completed his doctoral degree in Tibetan Studies at Indiana University in 1991.; Lawrence McCrea is Associate Professor of Sanskrit Studies at Cornell University; Velcheru Narayana Rao is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Emory University, Atlanta, GA; David Shulman is Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies at the Hebrew University; Herman Tieken is an independent researcher; Gary Tubb is Chair and Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Division of the Humanities, the University of Chicago.