Double-Narrated Poetry

I have scanned through this book by Yigal Bronner in the New York Public Library last Friday.

http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Poetry-Simultaneous-Narration-Disciplines/dp/0231151608/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=IBZ04JYRD069R&colid=26R50W8SS4O2E

It turns out that this double narration can work multiple ways:

- Pure sanskrit, but also some for Sanskrit and Pakrit (bilingual double-narration)

- Some works by reading left-to-right and right-to-left

- There are such poetry in Tamil and Telugu too - not just in Sanskrit

- In terms of mechanisms, other than using words that an mean two things at the same time, one method is "resegmentation" depending on where one divides a "word" it could mean different things

Some major authors who has written double-narration poetry (called slesa in Sanskrit):

- Subhandu as pioneer (in A.L. Basham's work as one of the three "prose" master together with Bana and Dandin)

- Dandin has some fragments left (he is associated with the Pallava court, timing is later than Bana, his book on poetic theory is called Kavyadarsa)

- Dhananjaya (a Jain) - first extant Ramayana-Mahabharata double narration

- Hemacandra (Jain) also wrote one, but no longer extant

- Kaviraja (12th c., circa 1175 in Kadanba cort, "King of Poet"), his work is named Raghavapandaviya - on which there are a dozen commentaries

Notes: other modern authors of Indian literature history:

- A.K. Warder's Indian Kavya Literature

- Sheldon Pollock

Sounds like I should consider Kaviraja seriously in my expanded world canon list!