A Lasting Vision: Dandin’s Mirror in the World of Asian Letters

[RG #145] A Lasting Vision: Dandin’s Mirror in the World of Asian Letters

September 1, 2015 - January 31, 2016

Organizer: Yigal Bronner (The Hebrew University)

Dandin’s Mirror of Poetry (Kāvyādarśa), a Sanskrit work on poetics composed in South India around 700 CE, is one of the most influential treatises ever produced in Asia.

The work was translated and adapted into a variety of languages in the south of the Indian peninsula and the island of Sri Lanka (Kannada, Tamil, Sinhala, and Pali), travelled to Southeast Asia (Burma and Indonesia), was repeatedly translated in northern and central Asia (Tibet and Mongolia), and may even have exercised influence on poetic praxis in China. Moreover, it is hard to overstate the profound impact of Dandin’s Mirror, which, in distant corners of Asia and at different times, consistently emboldened new literary beginnings.

2015-2016 A Lasting Vision: Dandin’s Mirror in the World of Asian Letters Research Groups 2015-2016 Humanities

Members

Yigal Bronner

FELLOW

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Jennifer Clare

FELLOW

Independent Scholar

Helen Creese

FELLOW

University of Queensland

Charles Hallisey

FELLOW

Harvard Divinity School

Shenghai Li

FELLOW

Harvard Divinity School

H. V. Nagaraja Rao

FELLOW

Oriental Research Institute Mysore (emeritus)

H. V. Nagaraja Rao, Vidvān, Oriental Research Institute Mysore (emeritus), is a world authority on Sanskrit grammar and poetics. He is the editor of numerous Sanskrit works and has translated many Sanskrit works into English and Kannada, including, most recently, Ruyyaka's Alaṃkārasarvasvam.