Text · Sanskrit court epic and grammar primer
Bhattikavya
/bʱɐʈʈɪˈkaːʋjɐ/
Also known as Bhaṭṭikāvya, Bhaṭṭi-kāvya, Rāvaṇavadha, Ravanavadha, Bhatti's Poem, The Death of Ravana
A Sanskrit mahakavya of about 600 CE that retells the Rama story while working through the rules of Panini's grammar, canto by canto, so that a student could learn grammar, rhetoric and a little Prakrit from a gripping story. Its author, Bhatti, says he wrote it at Valabhi in Saurashtra. Far from India it became the source text of the Old Javanese Kakawin Ramayana, which follows it closely for twelve cantos.
- Date
- 600–700
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
Tradition says Bhatti wrote it because an elephant wandered between him and his pupils, which by the law books suspended grammar lessons for a year; a poem that teaches grammar without being a grammar book was his way round the ban.
Dated to about 600 CE on the strength of Bhatti's closing verse naming his royal patron at Valabhi; variant readings of that verse give the patron as either Narendra, son of Shridhara, or Shri Dharasena, so the exact date is uncertain.
Connections (4)
- Ramayana traditionRamayana
Across twenty-two cantos Bhatti retells the adventures of Rama in simple, elegant Sanskrit, closely enough that the poem is described as the Ramayana faithfully retold, while every canto doubles as a lesson. Its alternative title, Ravanavadha or 'The Death of Ravana', may have been added to tell it apart from other Rama works. It shows the epic being used around 600 CE as a school text, which is the form in which it later reached Java.
- InfluencedAshtadhyayi
Bhatti wrote his poem as a study aid to Panini's Ashtadhyayi, taking the examples already used by the grammatical commentaries and setting them inside the Rama story. Whole stretches map onto blocks of Panini's rules: cantos five to nine illustrate particular sutras on affixes, cases and retroflexion, and cantos fourteen to twenty-two each display one tense or mood. Bhatti says outright that the poem needs a commentary and that he has slighted the dullard for the scholar.
- Court associationVallabhi
In the poem's closing verse Bhatti says he composed it in Valabhi, the Maitraka capital in Saurashtra, under the protection of a king whom the manuscripts name either as Narendra, son of Shridhara, or as Shri Dharasena. That verse is the basis for dating the work to about 600 CE. It ties one of the most widely copied Sanskrit poems, with thirteen surviving commentaries, to the same city whose monastic university Xuanzang and Yijing knew.
- TransmissionKakawin Ramayana
Literary scholars, following C. Hooykaas (1958), identify the Bhattikavya as the source of the Old Javanese Kakawin Ramayana. The Javanese poem follows Bhatti closely as far as his twelfth canto, sometimes translating a verse directly, and then diverges, adding material that makes it conform more completely to the rules of a great poem as laid down by Dandin. So Java's Ramayana descends from a Sanskrit grammar primer from Gujarat rather than straight from Valmiki.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, "Bhaṭṭikāvya" and "Kakawin Ramayana". Oliver Fallon, Bhatti's Poem: The Death of Rávana (Clay Sanskrit Library, 2009); C. Hooykaas, The Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa, an Exemplary Kakawin (1958).
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