Daṇḍin

Daṇḍin

Daṇḍin was a seventh- to eighth-century Sanskrit grammarian and author of prose romances, and 'is one of the best-known writers in all of Asian history'. A range of evidence points to an association with the Pallava dynasty and its court at Kanchipuram in modern-day Tamil Nadu. His writings were all in Sanskrit.

Daṇḍin's life and times have been studied particularly by D. K. Gupta. If we accept the account of Daṇḍin's life in his Avantisundarī as genuine autobiography, Daṇḍin was a great-grandson of one Dāmodara, a court poet from Vidarbha who served, amongst others, the Pallava king Siṃhaviṩṇu and King Durvinīta of the Western Ganga dynasty:

Dāmodara was married in Kāñcī and fathered three sons; his middle-born, Manoratha, had four sons; Manoratha’s youngest son, Vīradatta, married a Brahmin woman, Gaurī, and they had several daughters and, eventually, a son, Daṇḍin. Daṇḍin then reports that he lost his mother at the age of seven and his father shortly thereafter, and that as an orphan, he had to flee Kāñcī because of an enemy invasion and was able to return only once peace was restored.

Yigal Bronner concludes that 'These details all suggest that Daṇḍin’s active career took place around 680–720 CE under the auspices of Narasiṃhavarman II Rājasiṃha in Kāñcī (r. 690/1–728/9)'.

Daṇḍin was widely praised as a poet by pre-modern Sanskrit commentators such as Rājaśekhara (fl. 920 CE), and his works widely studied to this day. One shloka (hymn) that explains the strengths of different poets says: दण्डिन: पदलालित्यम् "daṇḍinaḥ padalālityaṃ" ("Daṇḍin is the master of playful words").

However, Daṇḍin's works are not well preserved. He composed the now incomplete prose Daśakumāracarita, and the even less complete Avantisundarī (The Story of the Beautiful Lady from Avanti), also in prose. But he is best known for composing the Kāvyādarśa ('Mirror of Poetry'), the handbook of classical Sanskrit poetics, or Kāvya, which seems to be preserved intact. There has been some debate over whether these were all composed by the same person, but 'there is now a wide consensus that a single Daṇḍin in authored all these works at the Pallava court in Kāñcī around the end of the seventh century'.

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