“Kāvya in the Dark Ages: The Source and the Missing Link”

In this paper, building on earlier work of my own, I will argue that the art poetry that dominated Classical Sanskrit literary culture, kāvya, has as its stylistic source the elaborate and self-conscious style of the earliest Sanskrit text, the Rig Veda. Despite the large chronological gap between the Rig Veda and Classical kāvya, and the apparent absence of this genre in Sanskrit in the intervening centuries, a missing link can be identified in the discourses of power in Middle Indic languages and in early Buddhist literary works. Both the similarities in poetic devices and the shaping of subject matter will be addressed, with ample examples.