Raghavayadaviya par Venkatadhvarin

by M.S. Narasimhacharya and Marie-Claude Porcher

The Raghavayadaviya is a poem with two meanings (anuloma-viloma-kavya). All thirty stanzas, when presented in the habitual order, glorify Rama (recalling his important feats in the Ramayana) and, when read differently and in reverse order, they glorify Krsna (by narrating an episode in his legend, the abduction of the Parijata tree). The prosodic constraints imposed by this dual reading result in stylistic obscurity: accumulation of monosyllables, usage of rare terms etc. To overcome the principal difficulties in comprehension, the author has himself prepared a commentary in which he explains the vocabulary, grammatical constructions and stylistic devices used. The book contains the Sanskrit text as well as a translation and study in French.