Sri Dandin

Sri Dandin is a 6th-7th century Indian Sanskrit author of prose romances and expounder on poetics. Although he produced literature on his own, most notably the Dasa Kumara Carita, translated in 1927 as The Adventures of the Ten Princes, he is best known for composing the Kavyadarsa ('Mirror of Poetry'), the handbook of classical Sanskrit poetics, or kavya. His writings were all in Sanskrit.

Kavyadarsa

In Kavyadarsha Dandi argued that a poem's beauty derived from its use of rhetorical devices – of which he distinguished thirty-six types. He was the main proponent of gunaprasthana, the view that poetry needed qualities or virtues such as shlesa (punning), prasada (favour), samata (sameness), madhurya (beauty), arthavyakti (interpretation), and ojah (vigour). Poetry consisted in the presence of one of these qualities or a combination of them.

He is also known for his complex sentences and creation of very long compound words (some of his sentences ran for half a page, and some of his words for half a line).

Dasa Kumara Charitam

The Dasa Kumara Carita relates the vicissitudes of ten princes in their pursuit of love and royal power. It contains stories of common life and reflects a faithful picture of Indian society during the period couched in the colourful style of Sanskrit prose. It consists of (1) Purvapithika, (2) Dasakumaracarita Proper, and (3) Uttarapithika.

A shloka (hymn) that explains the strengths of different poets says: "Dandinaha padalalithyam" (Dandi is the master of playful words).