1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to Courier Poetry From South Asia and Beyond
This companion is the first comprehensive study of courier poetry—in which someone, usually a lonely lover, sends an unlikely messenger (a cloud, a bee, a goose, a bat, a language, the wind, a poem, and so on) to the beloved or to a close friend or patron. The volume explores works in a variety of languages, including Sanskrit, Malayalam, Tamil, Old Javanese, Hindi, Telugu, Sinhala, Marathi, Tibetan, Prakrit, and Apabhramsa. The chapters follow the historical evolution of this massive corpus, from Kalidasa’s classic text to modernity. They also offer culture-specific maps, not only of South Asia but of the world beyond, from the shores of Java and Bali to the Mississippi.
A unique contribution, this volume will be indispensable for students, academicians, and researchers in literature, comparative literature, literary theory, poetry studies, and Asian studies.
Author Biographies ix
Acknowledgments xi
Getting the Message: An Introduction to Courier Poetry 1
YIGAL BRONNER, DAVID SHULMAN, AND GARY TUBB
1 Reading a Cloud 25
YIGAL BRONNER
2 Unbearable Levity: Desire’s Headwinds in Dhoyi’s Breeze Messenger
(Pavanadūta) 47
JESSE ROSS KNUTSON
3 Messaging Affect in Jinasena’s Ascent of Parshva 70
SARAH PIERCE TAYLOR
4 Profitable Poetry: Panegyric Messenger Poetry and Patronage 87
LIDIA WOJTCZAK
5 Abdul Rahman’s Pretexts 104
ANDREW OLLETT
6 “Our Endless and Proper Work”: Notes on Reading Sinhala
Messenger Poems 117
CHARLES HALLISEY
7 Tamil Tūtu and a Rāyalası̄ma Diversion 138
DAVID SHULMAN
8 A History of Sandesá on Stage (and Its Aftermath): Sanskrit Padams from Eighteenth-Century Thanjavur 159
TALIA ARIAV AND MARGHERITA TRENTO
9 Happily Ever After?: Love, Realism, and Parody in the Partridge Messenger 179
SIVAN GOREN-ARZONY
10 Clouds over Mountains, Streams under Ice: The Messenger Is Received in Tibet 200
JANET GYATSO AND LAMA JABB
11 A Journey through Poetry: Rethinking Tanakung’s Wṛttasañcaya 223
DANIELLE CHEN KLEINMAN
12 The Poetics of Despair in Gurram Jashuva’s The Bat 244
GAUTHAM REDDY
13 Movement, Space, and Protest: Two Hindi Responses to the Meghadūta 263
GREGORY GOULDING
14 Mudgara the Messenger 283
ANDREW OLLETT
Epilogue: The Cloud Messenger of Kalidasa, A New Translation 302
TRANSLATED BY YIGAL BRONNER AND DAVID SHULMAN
Index 332
Biography
Yigal Bronner is a Sanskritist whose areas of interest include literature, literary theory, and South Asian intellectual history more generally. He worked on this volume while teaching in the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He now teaches in the Department of History, Classics, and Religion at the University of Alberta.
David Shulman is Professor (emeritus) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He specializes in the languages and cultures of South India.
