A kāvya Casting for Pradyumna

Abstract

The Pradyumnābhyudaya—a thirteenth-century Sanskrit play by King Ravivarman—is the focus of Chapter 7. This work, based directly on the Prabhāvatī episode of the late Harivaṃśa, appears to be the first Brahminical kāvya or courtly belles-lettristic work to make Pradyumna its protagonist. Of central importance is Ravivarman’s molding of the story into conformity with common standards and expectations for poetic expression in courtly writing. In particular it is argued that two conventions of the Sanskrit drama, the garbhāṅka or nested play, and the śleṣa or double-meaning verse form, become the means for an underscoring and sharpening the signature double love-and-war geste of Kṛṣṇa’s son. As such, the chapter argues that the recasting of the Prabhāvatī romance into belles-lettristic form, far from hijacking the figure of Pradyumna for new purposes, in fact powerfully restates the persisting appeal of the masculine sex-and-violence triumphalism fundamental to his mythic persona.