Part 5.5 - Secret of success of a Kavi (poet)

Rājaśekhara advice a kavi (poet) should recite a kāvya (poem or poetry) by half or part. He should never recite a new kāvya (poem or poetry) in a presence of a single person. Because, the listener would anytime argue that it is his own and the kavi (poet) doesn’t be able to prove his authorship. A new kavi (poet) never lead in an assembly. He should never overestimate his capacities, since partiality harms the sense in evaluating actual merit and demerit. He never feels proud of his own creation, since it shakes the root of one’s own and ruins all his innate dispositions.

A kavi (poet) always should get his work examined by impartial critics. The secret of poetic success always depend on the study of a mood of a reader. If the reader is indifferent, thus no poet should read there. Some of the people have to think themselves poets or reader and those who boast of their poet-like virtues. Before them a kāvya (poetry) is nothing but an araṇya-rodana or cry in the wilderness.^[1]

In this way, it is the check of poet’s cleverness that he should never recite his composition even before a highly esteemed poet. Because he may not comprehend the worth of the composition and its effects goes to completely destroy with his interference.

Thus Rājaśekhara says:

“idaṃ hi vaidagdhyarahasyamuttamaṃ paṭhenna sūktiṃ kavamāninaḥ puraḥ |
na ke valaṃ tāṃ na vibhāvayatyasau svakāvyabandhena vināśayatyapi || ”

- Kāvyamīmāṃsā of Rājaśekhara: Ch-X, Pp- 52

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Kāvyamīmāṃsā of Rājaśekhara: Ch-X, Pp-51- 52