‘A great poem about great things’

Indira Viswanathan Peterson

What is a Mahakavya? The question preoccupied Indian literary theorists writing in the 7th-8th centuries CE as they contemplated the most prestigious genre among the kavya. This refined literature had emerged in the early millennium in Sanskrit and related languages, in royal courts and elite circles.

Bhamaha tells us that Mahakavya is the ‘sargabandha’ genre of kavya, a long composition in verse divided into sarga chapters. He adds: “It is a great poem, a poem about great things.” According to Dandin, treating a narrative from history or legend, the Mahakavya delineates the rise and flourishing of a noble hero. Such a poem must include “descriptions of cities, oceans, mountains, seasons, the rising of the sun and moon, playing in pleasure parks and in water,... the delights of lovemaking,.. the birth of a son, councils of war, spies, military expeditions, battles, and the victory of the hero.”

In sum, it should exalt the warrior-king and his career by covering the entire spectrum of courtly and political life. It must also treat “the fruits of the four aims of life (purushartha),” touching on the ideals of dharma, wealth and success, pleasure, and transcendence over worldly existence. Lastly, it must evoke an overarching aesthetic emotion (rasa), resonating with fundamental, powerful emotions, particularly the heroic and the erotic. Resembling the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, from which they often draw their themes, Mahakavya poems are “epic” in their expansive scope and amplitude of vision. However, kavya literature caters for connoisseurs, and its principal concern is with aesthetic value, measured in terms of beauty, virtuosity, and elegance of form and expression, undergirded by erudition. Embodied in the concepts of figures of speech (alankara) and rasa, these are the ideals that engage literary theorists and guide reader response. Recited and discussed in assemblies and savoured in private reading, the “court” or “literary” epic is the epitome of the literary and the classical in Indian literature.

Five Mahakavyas, produced between the 4th and 12th centuries, are deemed the masterpieces of the genre: Kalidasa’s The Lineage of Raghu and The Birth of Kumara, Bharavi’s Arjuna and the Hunter, Magha’s The Slaying of Shishupala, and Sriharsha’s The Deeds of King Naishadha. Drawn to Bharavi’s challenging, innovative style and to his dramatic treatment of a Mahabharata episode, I translated Arjuna for MCLI. How should one read a Mahakavya? Court epic poems are composed of short, tightly structured, usually grammatically self-contained verses, barely distinguishable from the single-verse poem (muktaka), the most popular genre of Sanskrit kavya. Each Mahakavya verse presents a single complex yet coherent image or idea, delivered in a striking style that exploits the formal and semantic richness of the Sanskrit language. Readers unravel complex, precisely calibrated relationships among grammatical structures, images, and meanings within the verse microcosm, to savour alankara, rasa, or thought.  

However, Mahakavya verses should be read in the context of the descriptive and oratorical passages in which they are embedded. We savour and return to Kalidasa’s descriptions of the Himalayas, and Bharavi’s description of Arjuna’s penance or the fiery speech of Queen Draupadi that impels the poem’s action. An arena for dazzling displays of virtuosity, these set pieces are in some ways like miniature painting albums in which each painting treats a vignette or aspect of a courtly theme; but Mahakavya passages are more aptly described by analogy with the dynamic improvisatory techniques of Indian classical music, where the performer elaborates on particular melodic themes through variations of ever-increasing complexity and nuance.  The Mahakavya has flourished over two millennia, across religious and other boundaries. Queens and courtesans wrote Mahakavyas. Ashvaghosha’s Life of the Buddha was one of the earliest Mahakavyas, and a Kerala author recently wrote a poem on Jesus Christ. Modern Sanskrit aficionados responded to Queen Victoria’s rule and the Independence and anti-caste movements with Mahakavyas. Mahakavyas continue to speak to us, both as works of art and as human documents addressing enduring aesthetic and moral concerns.

The author is Professor Emerita of Asian Studies, Mount Holyoke College, USA.

The Heritage Shelf is a monthly column from the Murty Classical Library of India, published by Harvard University Press, presenting India’s greatest literary works and the enduring traditions that shaped them.