Panditaraja Jagannatha: The Renowned Sanskrit Poet of Medieval India

In the galaxy of Indian poeta-cum-critics, Jagannatha occupies a formidable position by virtus of his creative imagination and critical study. His age, no doubt synchronlses with appearances of other literary genluses and scholars. But Jagannatha is unparalleled in the field of Sanskrit poetry on account of his dynamism and versatilleintellect. In the syphere of Indian aestheltics his contribution has not been fully assessed only because he is a modernkl writer with a stigma attached to his name and also doctrine of traditional poetics have been firmly established. He has written good poems from the aesthetic point of view but not from a mere rhetorical one. He has done this with his power of close reasoning inspired by the subtle logic of the neo-logicians and he imported the technical language of Navya Nyaya for accurate expression. Panditaraja also has based Indian aesthetics on metaphysical foundation of the Vedanta Philosophy and has done it ably with the help of technique of Navya Nyaya. His treatment of some poetic principles like rasa, guna and alankara exhibite the salient features of Indian aesthetics and adds new values to all of them. Here a modest attempt has been made to judge Jagannatha in his dual aspects, viz. (1) a critic, and (2) a poet. His personal life and his literary contributions are discussed in a critical and comparative method and is assessed from the view point of Indian poetics as propounded by him ink his Rasagangadhara. The work traverses a virgin field of literary work and I claim originality in exposition of the interpretations of the principles of literary criticism and critical estimate of a neglected great figure in Sanskrit literature.