Essay name: Tilakamanjari of Dhanapala (study)
Author:
Shri N. M. Kansara
Affiliation: Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda / Department of Sanskrit Pali and Prakrit
This is an English study of the Tilakamanjari of Dhanapala, a Sanskrit poem written in the 11th century. Technically, the Tilaka-manjari is classified as a Gadyakavya (鈥減rose-romance鈥�). The author, Dhanapala was a court poet to the Paramara king Munja, who ruled the Kingdom of Malwa in ancient west-central India.
Chapter 7 - The Katha form of literature
12 (of 30)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
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257
to a content, it also transfers the latter, which has
no value in art independent of such transformation.30
From the purely structural pak point of view, the
principal characteristic of form is unity in variety,
that quality which finds order in a h褟 chaos of
details. Every individual work of art creates its own
individual form, and the really important question is
not whether it obeys the prescribed rules of any cate-
31 gory but whether the form is adequate and vital. "Yet
a reference to known categories, pseudo-aesthetic though
they may be, will help us to realize the peculiarities of
鈻�
* an individual work of art. What matters in art is
the total impression in which form and content, fused
into a unity, are equally important. Great art is great
not only in its ideas but also in its form.
32 This brings us to the next question here as to
why the poet chooses a particular medium and form for
the expression of his poetic muse. J. Middleton Murry
thinks that "whether the expression of the comprehensive
and self-consistent mode of experience is achieved in
the form of prose or verse will depend upon circumstances
which are in the main accidental", and that "the fashion
30.TTI.p.228.
31.ibid.p.233.
32. Prob. Sty. p.46 ff.
