Desire To Think

Tag: Poetry

  • T.S. Eliot and Indian Philosophy

    T.S. Eliot — Wikimedia Commons (Octave.H) It is well-known that T.S. Eliot engaged deeply with Indian philosophy in ways which significantly influenced his worldview and his poetry. In fact,Eliot was a student of the eminent Sanskrit scholar Professor Charles Rockwell Lanman at Harvard University, and in fact Eliot’s PhD supervisor there, Josiah Royce, had also earlier learnt…

  • The Setubandha of Pravarasena

    Monkey Army building a stone bridge to cross sea on way to Lanka — Wikimedia Commons (Ms Sarah Welch) The Prakrit languages have a very rich and complex literary history dating back to at least the early centuries AD. As Prof. Andrew Ollett explains – “Like Sanskrit, [Prakrit] was a language of literary intellectual culture, and cut across…

  • Śakuntalā’s poem

    Dushyanta and Shakuntala in a Landscape — LACMA The play Abhijnāna-Śakuntalam is one of the most well-known and frequently-performed works by the renowned Indian poet Kālidāsa. The play is based on the famous story found in the Mahābhārata about the romance of Śakuntalā and Duṣyanta. However, Kālidāsa uses his own creative imagination to add some additional twists…