books on dutakavya

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Phillip,

 

I suggest you have a look at the introduction to Walter H. Maurer's

*SugamAnvayA Vrtti. A Late Commentary in Jaina Sanskrit on Kalidasa's

Meghaduta by the Jaina Muni Sumativijaya, ...* Poona, 1965. It runs about

75 pages, although much of the material deals with text critical problems.

 

As I remember, Siegfried Lienhard's *A History of Classical Poetry*

(1984) has a good section, in case you've missed this.

 

For Bengal we have:

 

History of duta-kavyas of Bengal* by J. Chaudhuri (1954).

 

The following entry might be of interest, especially because of the

title of the series:

 

Title: The Ghatakarpara-yamaka-kavya, critically edited for the first

time, with an introd. in English, indices, appendices, copious extracts

from various unpublished commentaries and a new commentary,. by Jatindra

Bimal Chaudhuri. Foreword by Satkari Mookherjee.

Ghatakarpara-kavya. Sanskrit and English.

Publisher: Calcutta [Pracyavani Mandir] 1953.

Series: editor's Sanskrit dutakavya-samgraha, no. 6

Other Series Title: The editor's Sanskrit dutakavya-samgraha, no. 6

 

And one title strikes me as possible relevant, though I've never seen

it:

 

Author: Raghavanpilla, Ke., 1920- comp.

Title: Sandesacatustayam.

Publisher: [Trivandrum], 1963.

 

The introduction to *Sukasandesa of Laksmidasa* (Delhi: Nag Publishers,

1985) has material on Kerala duta kavyas, and George Hart's *Poems of

Ancient Tamil* (Berkeley: U Cal. Press, 1975) has a few pages documenting

the messenger motif from ancient times in Tamilnadu. I've gotten these

references from Pollock's *Literary Cultures in History* (U Cal 2003)

whose scattered material on the topic can be found using the index under

"Meghaduta".

 

Sorry I can't give you anything more.

 

best,

Tim Cahill