History of Sanskrit Literature: Authors, Works, Periods
What is tested
Matching authors to works, placing works in periods, and naming the genre - mahākāvya, drama, prose kāvya, fable, poetics, grammar.
Periods
Vedic (four Vedas; Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, Upaniṣads) → epic (Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata) → classical kāvya (Gupta and post-Gupta) → late scholastic writing.
Landmark authors
- Aśvaghoṣa: Buddhacarita, Saundarananda - early Sanskrit mahākāvyas on Buddhist themes.
- Kālidāsa: three plays (Abhijñānaśākuntala, Vikramorvaśīya, Mālavikāgnimitra), two epics (Raghuvaṃśa, Kumārasambhava), and the Meghadūta, a saṃdeśa-kāvya.
- Bhāsa: Svapnavāsavadatta; Śūdraka: Mṛcchakaṭika; Viśākhadatta: Mudrārākṣasa; Bhavabhūti: Uttararāmacarita, Mālatīmādhava, Mahāvīracarita.
- Bāṇa: Harṣacarita (ākhyāyikā) and Kādambarī (kathā); Subandhu: Vāsavadattā; Daṇḍin: Daśakumāracarita and the poetics text Kāvyādarśa; Bhaṭṭi: Bhaṭṭikāvya.
- Fable and tale: Viṣṇuśarman's Pañcatantra, Nārāyaṇa's Hitopadeśa, Somadeva's Kathāsaritsāgara; Jayadeva's Gītagovinda is later lyric.
- Grammar: Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī, Kātyāyana's Vārttikas, Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya.
- Poetics: Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra (rasa), Ānandavardhana's Dhvanyāloka, Mammaṭa's Kāvyaprakāśa.
Worked example
"Name the author and genre of Mṛcchakaṭika." → Śūdraka; a prakaraṇa in ten acts, dramatising the love of the merchant Cārudatta and the courtesan Vasantasenā against a political revolt. Reasoning: a prakaraṇa is defined by a non-royal hero and a plot drawn from ordinary life, which separates it from the nāṭaka with its king or divine hero.
Traps
Swapping Bāṇa's two works; attributing more than three plays to Kālidāsa; confusing Bhāsa with Bhavabhūti; and naming an author without a work, which earns nothing in a two-part question.