Rajendra Chenni’s A Critical History of Kannada Literature is a timely, much-needed, readable history of one of India’s major literary cultures. While there have been such overviews before, it is necessary that each generation rewrite history with new foci and commitments. It is increasingly rare – in the age of academic specialisations – for scholars to be able to summon up a millennium and a half of literary production and be able to engage in good-faith conversation and dialogue with that tradition.
Chenni begins with some of the unavoidable issues of literary historiography. The first canonical text, the 9th-century Kavirajamarga, is celebrated as arguably the “first book of aesthetics in a vernacular language anywhere in the world”. Unsurprisingly, however, the content is deeply indebted to the Sanskrit tradition of scholars such as Bhamaha and Dandin.
The beginnings
What one thus needs is an appreciation of more reflective, rather than reflexive, nationalisms and sub-nationalisms. Further, the Kavirajamarga has a seemingly unproblematic engagement with worldly authority – it pits itself against other regional polities, but does not question aesthetics itself as needing to be homogenised and entirely aligned with political power.
In contrast, there were already Jaina, Shaivite and Buddhist traditions that often took a more sceptical position vis-à-vis political and temporal power, and the...
from Scroll.in https://scroll.in/article/1093933/a-critical-history-of-kannada-literature-a-much-needed-history-of-a-major-literary-culture?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=public https://sc0.blr1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/article/214232-sqaeidxczw-1782806035.jpg
via
0 Comments