Bāṇabhaṭṭa
A figure from the books
#Banabhatta
Bāṇabhaṭṭa · c. 580–650 CE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Sanskrit prose — court poet and biographer; author of the Harṣacarita, the first full-length biography of a living Indian king, and of the Kādambarī, Sanskrit's most celebrated novel.
“Sanskrit says bāṇocchiṣṭaṃ jagat sarvam — "the whole world is Bāṇa's leftovers," because he described everything before anyone else could — and the poet who ate the world introduced himself, on page one, as an orphan who blew his inheritance running away with a travelling circus of poets, gamblers, monks and snake-doctors.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“Biography — the shaped, truthful-enough story of one real, still-breathing human being — enters Indian literature with him; and the man who invented it opened his masterpiece by telling the worst stories about himself first.”
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