Indian poetry of the classical style, kāvya, has been long ignored by western Indologists. Nowadays opinion slowly tends to change in favour of this rather extreme poetry. Bhāravi's Kirātārjunīya, the poem treated in this volume is part of the tradition of epic poems or mahākāvyas. Six are recognized. The Kirātārjunīya marks the beginning of a new style of Indian poetry and represents one of the best written in this tradition. The plot is taken from the Mahābhārata.
The authors of the kāvya-tradition are recognized as word painters in the highest sense. Because of that the poems have traditionally been accompanied by indefinite large commentaries written by undisputed scholars such as Mallinātha. One might, carefully poring over those commentaries, at the most catch a glimpse of the real beauty of the epic poem and even then a great deal will be missed.
For the first time now an English translation of Mallinātha's commentary, the Ghantāpatha, on the Cantos XIV-XVIII of the Kirātārjunīya and a rendering of the stanzas concerned is given.
Jan Marcus Zwaan was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He read Classical, and Indian and Iranian Languages at the University of Amsterdam.