|
Book Review
Unique literary genre
KANNADADALLI SHATAKA SAHITYA: A. Srikrishna Bhat; Pub. by Sri Bhagavatpada Prakashana, Sri Sonda Swarnavalli Maha Samsthana, Post Mathadevala, Sirsi Taluk, North Kanara District, Karnataka-581336. Rs. 240.
THIS WORK is a valuable and educative dissertation on the Shataka literature, a literary composition with a little over a hundred or so stanzas. An important and noteworthy branch of Kannada literature, it lays stress on adherence to truth, piety, devotion to God, morality, and sacrifice and seeks to build a combination of the temporal and the spiritual equipment of the individual in daily life.
More than 500 Shatakas have been identified and their varied authors, drawn from different communities, are given in a long list furnished by the author. The time of these Shataka exponents is also mentioned highlighting the career of this branch of literature.
The work places the advent of this literature to the 11th Century giving credit to the noted scholar, Nagavarmacharya as the forerunner when he wrote his maiden work, Chandrachudamani Shataka in 1070 A.D. There are suggestions that the Shatakas could be equated to the Upanishads in Kannada for their all-pervasive reach and appeal and eloquent brevity. They compared favourably with the profundity of the Dasa Sahitaya representing the Bhakti tradition and its popularity.
Shataka literary stream, the author finds, is common to the South Indian and the other Indian language literature, including Tamil and Hindi. Although the Shatakas had their origin in Sanskrit, this is no limitation. It will be a misfortune if the Shataka literature in Kannada does not receive the attention and patronage it richly deserves.
According to the author the last century was the heyday of the Shataka literature in Kannada as more than 150 compositions made their appearance, though there was a slight shift in the quality of content, particularly in the area of construction regimen and discipline of grammar.
C. M. RAMACHANDRA
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Book Review
|
