Poetry is
the oldest, ancient and the most popular art form much older than the written
form. In ancient time the earliest poetry have been recited or sung,
employed as a way of remembering religion, traditions, oral history, wars,
martyrdom, sociology, love, genealogy, and law. In one form or another, poetry has been around for centuries. However,
the epic poem seems to be the oldest example of poetry, appearing as early as
the 20th century B.C. Centuries later
other forms like the sonnet, lyric etc. appeared in the 13th century.
Poetry is generally
related to musical traditions and dance. The earliest poetry exists in the form
of hymns, such as the work of Sumerian priestess Enheduanna, and other
types of song and hymns such as Hindu hymns and chants. So, poetry is a verbal
creative art. Many of the poems surviving from the ancient world are recorded
prayers, or stories about religious subject matter, but they also include
historical accounts, instructions for everyday activities, love songs, and
fiction. The Mahabharata contains all types of poetry and is the best example.
The author
of the first poem is unknown. However, ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’ who was a
king of Uruk and contains about the stories of quests and adventures, is
considered to be the first poem. Besides this epic, the ‘Rig Vedas of
Hinduism’ and the ‘Song of the Weaver’ from Egypt are among the first
poems. The Rig Veda, Sanskrit verse
composed in the ‘2nd millennium BC.’
Sanskrit
literature refers to texts composed in Sanskrit language since the 2nd-millennium BCE.
Many of the prominent texts are associated with Hindu religion and its
branches. i.e., Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and were composed
in ancient India. In ancient period, India covered central, east and Southeast
Asia. Early works of Sanskrit literature were transmitted through an oral
tradition for centuries before they were written down in manuscript form.
Many
scholars, mostly those researching the Homeric tradition and the oral epics of
the Balkans, suggest that early writing shows clear traces of older oral
traditions, together with the use of repetitive phrases as larger poetic units.
A rhythmic and repetitive form would make a long story easier to remember and narrate,
before writing was started. Thus many ancient works, from the ‘Vedas’ (1500
- 1000 BC) to the ‘Odyssey’ (800 - 675 BC), and the ‘Puranas’, ‘Bhagawads’, the ‘Ramayana’, the ‘ Mahabharata’, the ‘ Gita’, etc to have been composed in poetic form to aid
memorization and oral transmission, in primitive and ancient societies. Poetry
appears among the earliest records of most literate cultures, with poetic
fragments found on early monoliths, runestones and stelae. These were the
methods to write on big stones or stone slabs.
Poetry in
Africa
In Africa,
poetry has a history dating back to pre-historical times. They have hunting
poetry, and panegyric means, away of praising in poetic form and elegiac court
poetry those were developed extensively throughout the history of the empires
of the Nile, Niger and Volta river valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry
in Africa can be found among the ‘Pyramid Texts’ written on the walls
of pyramids and written during the 25th century BC. The ‘Epic of Sundiata’ is
one of the most well-known examples of ‘griot’ court poetry. In African
cultures, performance poetry was very popular which was traditionally a part of
theatrics, that was present in all aspects of pre-colonial African life and
whose theatrical ceremonies had many different functions, including political,
educative, spiritual and entertainment. Africans have very old traditions of
poetry with dance and music.
Poetry was a
part of theatrical presentations of local oral artists, linguists and
historians, accompanied by local African musical instruments such as the ‘kora’,
the ‘xalam’, the ‘mbira’ and the ‘djembe’ drum. Drumming for support
should not to be confused with performances of the ‘talking drum’, which
is a literature of its own, since it is a diverse method of communication that
depends on conveying meaning through non-musical grammatical, tonal and
rhythmic ways imitating speech. These performances could be included in
those of ‘griots’. Unfortunately, with the arrival of Church and missionaries
local African literary traditions were either destroyed or banished.
Ancient Epic
Poems
‘Speculative
Fiction’ contains supernatural and unread poems. An Egyptian epic, the ‘Tale of
the Shipwrecked Sailor’, is the oldest
surviving ‘speculative fiction’ where a man is lost in
strange-supernatural land, written in ‘Hieratic’ or priestly sermons and
ascribed a date around 2500 B.C.E. Other sources mention the earliest written
poetry to the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ written in ‘cuneiform’; used
during Mesopotamian age, however, it is most likely that ‘The Tale of the
Shipwrecked Sailor’ predates ‘Gilgamesh’ by half a millennium. The
oldest epic poetry besides the Epic of ‘Gilgamesh’ is
the Greek epics ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ describing
Trojan War, and the ‘Indian Sanskrit’ epics the ‘Ramayana’ and the
‘Mahabharata’. Some scholars believe that either the Mahabharata or
the ‘Tibetan Epic of King Gesar’ describing ancient legends and myths is
the longest example of epic poetry in history.
Thinkers believe
that the idea which makes poetry unique as a form and what distinguishes good
poetry from bad resulted in the development of "poetics” ", or the
study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as the Chinese
through the ‘Classic of History’, developed principles of poetic works
that had system as well as aesthetic importance.
Context is
important to poetics and to the development of poetic genres and forms. For
example, poetry employed to record historical events in ‘epics’, such
as ‘Gilgamesh’ or Ferdowsi's ‘Shahnamesh’ a Persian epic
depicting mythical and historical events of Persia, will necessarily be lengthy
and narrative. Poetry used for ‘liturgical’ or public purposes in hymns,
psalms, suras, and hadiths and is likely to have an inspirational
tone. Elegies and tragedies are intended to invoke deep internal emotional
responses. Other contexts include music such as ‘Gregorian chants’,
related with Pope Gregory, formal or diplomatic speech, political rhetoric
and invective, light-hearted nursery and
nonsense rhymes, threnodies to the deceased and even medical and
scientific texts.
Calliope, is
from Greek mythology, which is a goddess of Muse presiding over epic poetry and
literal meaning beautiful voice, is the muse of heroic poetry
Aristotle's Poetics describes
‘the three genres of poetry’, epic, comic, and tragic. He develops rules to
distinguish the highest-quality poetry of each genre, based on the underlying
purposes of that genre. Later three major genres were identified:
epic poetry, lyric poetry and dramatic poetry. Comedy and tragedy were treated as
sub-genres of dramatic poetry. Aristotle's work was influential throughout the
Middle East during the so called ‘Islamic Golden Age’, as well as in Europe
during the Renaissance. But with the advent of Islam this creative art was not
allowed to bloom. Later poets and aestheticians often distinguished poetry
from, and defined it in opposition to, prose, which was generally
understood as writing with a liking to logical illumination and global trade.
In addition to a boom in translation, during the Romantic period
numerous ancient works were rediscovered. Now there are more than two hundred
poetic forms.
History and
development of Chinese poetry
Poetry could
not flourish much due to the perpetual violence in that area but they also
contributed a bit. The character which means "poetry", in the ancient
Chinese ‘Great Seal script’ style the ‘Classic of Poetry’, which is Chinese
writing before Qin dynasty, often known
by its original name of the Odes or Poetry is the earliest
existing collection of ‘Chinese poems’ and songs. This poetry collection
comprises 305 poems and songs dating from the 10th to the 7th century BC.
The
stylistic development of ‘Classical Chinese poetry’ consists of both
literary and oral cultural processes, which are usually assigned to certain
periods or eras, corresponding with Chinese Dynastic Eras, the traditional
chronological process for Chinese historical events. The poems preserved in
written form constitute the poetic literature. Furthermore, there is or were
parallel traditions of oral and traditional poetry also known as popular or
folk poems or ballads. Some of these poems seem to have been preserved in
written form. Generally, the folk types of poems are anonymous. They have been
edited or improved in the process of fixing them in written characters. Besides
the Classic of Poetry, or ‘Shinjing’, (related with Buddha) another early
text is the Songs of the South (or, Chuci), (an anthology of Chinese poetry)
although some individual pieces or fragments survive in other forms, embedded
in classical histories or other literature.
Modern
developments
The
development of modern poetry is generally seen as having started at the
beginning of the 20th century and extends into the 21st century. Among its
major practitioners are Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, (American poet) and Anne
Carson, a Canadian port famous for the ‘Autobiography of Red’ in verse form.
The use of
verse to transmit cultural information continues today. Many Americans know
that "in 1492, ‘Columbus’ sailed the ocean blue". An ‘alphabet
song’ teaches the names and order of the letters of the alphabet; another
jingle states the lengths and names of the months in the ‘Gregorian calendar’.
Some writers
believe poetry has its origins in song. Most of the characteristics that
distinguish it from other forms of utterance—rhythm, rhyme, compression,
intensity of feeling, the use of ‘refrains’—appear to have come about from
efforts to fit words to musical forms. In the European tradition the earliest
surviving poems, the ‘Homeric’ and ‘Hesiodic’ (Greek poet) epics,
identify themselves as poems to be recited or chanted to a musical
accompaniment rather than as pure song. Another interpretation is that rhythm,
refrains, and ‘kennings’ (a way of expression in old English) are
essentially ‘paratactic’ (literary technique of short and simple
sentences) devices that enable to recite and to reconstruct the poem from
memory.
In pre-literate
societies, these forms of poetry were composed for, and sometimes during,
performance. There was a certain degree of fluidity to the exact wording of
poems. Written composition meant poets began to compose for an absent reader.
The invention of printing accelerated these trends. Poets were now
writing more for the eye than for the ear.
Lyric poetry
The
development of literacy gave rise to more personal, shorter poems intended to
be sung. These are called lyrics, which derives from the
Greek lura or lyre, the instrument that was used to accompany
the performance of Greek lyrics from about the seventh century BC onward. The
Greek's practice of singing hymns in large choruses gave rise in the sixth
century BC to dramatic verse, and to the practice of writing poetic plays for
performance in their theatres. In more recent times, the introduction of
electronic media and the rise of the poetry reading have led to a
resurgence of performance poetry in the lyric genre.
Sanskrit Literature
Sanskrit language contributed the greatest poetry. Dramas,
poems and stories were written in Sanskrit language in ancient India. Some of
the popular ones are: Panchatantra, Hitopadesha, Rajatarangini,
Dashakumaracharita, Mrichakatika, Mudrarakshasa, Ratnavali, Nagananda,
Priyadarshika, Mattavilasa, Baital Pachisi, Singhasan Battisi (Siṃhāsana Dvātriṃśikā).
Bhasa’s Svapna
Vasavadattam (Swapnavāsadatta) ("Vasavadatta's dream"), Pancharātra,
and Pratijna Yaugandharayaanam ("The vows of Yaugandharayana"),
Pratimanātaka, Abhishekanātaka, Bālacharita, Dūtavākya, Karnabhara, Dūtaghatotkacha, Chārudatta, Madhyamavyayoga
and Urubhanga.
Kalidasa’s
Vikramorvasiyam ("Vikrama and Urvashi"), Malavikagnimitram ("Malavika
and Agnimitra"), Abhijnanasakuntalam ("The Recognition of
Shakuntala"), Raghuvamsa ("The Genealogy of Raghu")
and Kumarasambhava ("Birth of Kumara"), Rtusamhara ("Medley
of Seasons") and Meghaduta (The Cloud Messenger).
Kadambari is
a romantic novel in Sanskrit. It was substantially composed by Banabhatta in
the first half of the 7th century CE. Vedas and their Shakha, Rigveda,
Samaveda, Krishna Yajurveda, Shukla Yajurveda, Atharvaveda,
Hindu
Sanskrit texts are manuscripts and historical literature related to any of the
diverse traditions of Shruti, namely the Vedas and the early
Upanishads. Many scholars include the Bhagavad Gita and Agamas as
Hindu scriptures, while Dominic Goodall includes Bhagavata Puranana
and Yajnavlkya Smriti..
The Smriti Sanskrit
texts are a specific body of Hindu texts attributed to an author, as
a derivative work they are considered less authoritative
than Sruti in Hinduism. The Smrti literature is a vast corpus of
diverse texts, not limited to Vedangas, , the Hindu epics, the Sutras and
Shastras, the texts of Hindu philosophies, the Puranas, the Kāvya or
poetical literature, the Bhasyas, and
numerous Nibandhas (digests) covering politics, ethics, culture, arts
and society.
The Hindu
texts were composed orally, then memorized and transmitted orally, from one
generation to next, for more than a millennium before they were written down
into manuscripts. This verbal tradition of preserving and transmitting
Hindu texts, from one generation to next, continued into the modern era.
Mattavilasa
Prahasana (Devanagari:मत्तविलासप्रहसन), (English: A Farce of Drunken
Sport) is a short one-act Sanskrit play. It is one of the two great one
act plays written by Pallava King Mahendravarman (571– 630CE) in the
beginning of the seventh century in Tamil Nadu.
Madura
Vijayam (Sanskrit: मधुरा विजयं), (English: The Conquest
of Madurai), is a 14th-century Sanskrit poem written by the
poet Gangadevi. It is also named Vira Kamparaya Charitham by the
poet. It chronicles the life of Kumara Kampanna Udayar or Kumara Kampanna II, a
prince of the Vijayanagara Empire
and the second son of Bukka Raya. The poem describes in detail,
the invasion and conquest of the Madurai Sultanate by the
Vijayanagara Empire.
Tattvartha
Sutra is a Jain text written in the Sanskrit language. It
is regarded as one of the earliest, most authoritative books on Jainism, and
the only text authoritative in both the Digambara and Śvētāmbara sects.
Shant Sudharas Bhavana is a famous book in Jainism written by Jain
monk Vinay Vijay also called as Yashovijaya.
N.B. In this article,
information has been gathered from different sources. Sources have not been
given as it was a lecture.
Kindly bear this
omission.
