Exploring Ancient Indian Ecosystem through the Aesthetic Framework of Kuruntokai, Gathasaptasati and Terigatha
Keywords:
Ecocriticism, Ancient Indian Poetry, Kuruntokai, Gathasaptasati, TerigathaAbstract
Ancient Indian societal establishments viewed ‘nature’ as a part of human lifestyle and linked it to everyday life events at many levels. Nature follows the simple yet universal law of cause and effect. The law of nature applies to any situation within an ecosphere. This is the principle behind using elements of ‘nature’ to portray an aesthetic situation in ancient poetic works. Literature does not float in some aesthetic ether, but, rather plays a part in an immensely complex global system in which energy, matter and ideas interact. This paper explores the role of ancient Indian ecosystem within an aesthetic framework through a comparative analysis of select poems from the ancient Tamil, Prakrit and Pali literatures. The Tamil and Prakrit poems – Kuruntokai and Gathasaptasati analysed in this paper are from the ancient literary texts belonging to the early Sangam period. The Pali text, Terigatha, was written around 600 BC by Buddhist nuns. Even though these poems belong to different cultural and historical contexts, they have many similarities in terms of the use of ecological environment as an aesthetic tool to document the personal and the public.
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