Pa Itar Ja Jagann Tha The Renowned Sanskrit Poet Of Medieval India

Study on the works of Jagannatha Panditaraja.

Bhanu is probably the most famous Sanskrit poet that no one today has ever heard of. His “Bouquet of Rasa” and “River of Rasa,” both composed in the early sixteenth century, probably under the patronage of the Nizam of Ahmadnagar in western India, attracted the attention of the most celebrated commentators in early modern India. Some of the greatest painters of Mewar and Basohli vied to turn his subtle poems into pictures. And his verses were prized by poets everywhere: Abu al-Fazl, the preeminent scholar at Akbar’s court, translated them into Persian, and, Kshetráyya, the great Andhra poet of the next century, adapted them into Telugu. Many writers have described the types of heroines and heroes of Sanskrit literature (the subject of the “Bouquet of Rasa”) or explained the nature of aesthetic emotion (that of the “River of Rasa”), but none did so in verse of such exquisite and subtle artistry.

The play satirizes various religions in Kashmir and their place in the politics of King Shankara-varman (883-902 CE). Jayanta's strategy is to take a characteristic figure of the target religion and unmask him as a fraud. By turning his victim's own religious doctrines against him, Jayanta makes a laughingstock of both the philosophy and its adherents. The leading character, Sankarshana, is a young and dynamic orthodox graduate of Vedic studies, whose career starts as a glorious campaign against the heretic Buddhists, Jains and other antisocial sects. By the end of the play the realizes that the interests of the monarch do not encourage such inquisitional rigor, and the story ends in a great festival of tolerance and compromise.

The present work is an investigation of the Indo-Tibetan ritual for consecrating images, stûpas, books and temples. It is based on a thorough examination of the relevant Tibetan textual material contained in Tantras, commentaries, ritual manuals and explanatory works on consecration. As rituals are meant to be performed, this textual study is combined with observations of performances and interviews with performers. The book opens with a general discussion of certain principles of tantric rituals and the foundations of Indo-Tibetan consecration. The main part focuses on a specific performance of the ritual in a Tibetan monastery located in the Kathmandu Valley. This volume contributes to the often neglected field of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist rituals. It is concerned with the sacred nature of objects for worship as well as with the main Buddhist tantric transformation into a chosen tantric Buddha.