626 literature: Asia and the Pacific Sanskrit Kavya and Classical Drama India’s early literary tradition culminated in the classical Sanskrit compositions of the Gupta era, notably the kavya poetry and drama of Gupta-era authors These writings on love, nature, and morality were intended for recitation and performance, to elicit an emotional response from their audience Human emotions are personified in seasonal and day and night settings, as well as in birds, beasts, and flowers Kavya compositions follow a rigid set of grammatical rules The unit of poetry is the stanza, which has four quarters, each of varying length from eight to 21 syllables; epics employ the sloka, with eight syllables to the quarter By general consensus, the compositions of the court poet Kalidasa (fifth century) are the best One of his most popular remaining works is Meghaduta (The Cloud Messenger), whose central character is a young man who is banished to the mountains for a year for a civil offense The poem expresses the anguish of his separation from his beautiful wife; he finally gives a cloud his message of love to take to his wife Subsequently, the 10th-century popular bhakti devotional poetry, composed in India’s regional languages, addresses the intense emotions of the individual devotee who distances himself from the secular world to embrace an intense desire to become one with the divine and to fulfill the human potential for love that becomes possible when one totally commits to Lord Shiva or Lord Vishnu Kalidasa and other Gupta-era authors also set the standard for subsequent Indian drama; among them are the works of the eighth-century central Indian dramatist Bhavabhuti (fl 700), who is considered to exceed Kalidasa in his portrayal of sorrow Many medieval Indian dramas are filled with melodrama that brought medieval audiences to tears, but they always have a happy ending Women are exiled from their homes by their fathers and husbands, who later realize the injustice; lost or banished children are eventually reunited with their families; and at the last moment noble heroes are always saved from death Plots were borrowed from earlier and contemporary sources, such as dramatizations of the epics, legends of gods and ancient heroes, folklore, and tales of historic figures There were 12 recognized categories of drama, ranging from allegorical plays to light comedies Indian dramas commonly feature a hero, a heroine, a villain, a comic relief, and a cultured but shallow parasite who befriends the hero with negative consequences Javanese Kakawin Literature Java’s kakawin poets, whose patrons were kings and their courts, composed Javanese-language versions of epic stories set in the Java landscape (1000–1500 c.e.) Their stories told about the activities of a court Heroes were courtiers whose behavior was refined, and they were equally accomplished in the arts and in warfare Their opponents were crude, intellectually unstable, and self-centered Courts were not isolated but networked with their countryside Men and women of the court regularly traveled beyond the court, where they had contact with commoners and foreigners, gods and goddesses, demons and priests Courtiers especially sought harmony among several realms of existence, in the realm of humanity and in those of the divine Humans lacked the preeminence of divinity and nature In their travels courtiers encountered romance, fought in great battles, and paused to receive instruction from the gods on the meaning of human existence, all of which allowed the elite to bring prosperity to their subject humanity Kings established the standards of acceptable conduct appropriate to Java’s hierarchical society, from courtiers to commoners; in common with the theme of Indian epic literature, proper behavior insured society’s success In the minds of the poets, a king’s power ultimately depended on his alliances with his nobles and his ritual leadership in partnership with Hindu or Buddhist priests, who were his intermediaries with the Supreme Divine The initial kakawin poets hoped for a future golden age, which later poets claimed was achieved by Java’s 14th-century Majapahit court (1293–ca 1500) While early-14th-century poets thought of kings and priests as intermediaries whose special relationships with the gods was essential to their subjects’ success, by the 15th century poets symbolized the declining fortunes of the courts by asserting that Java’s prosperity was by then less the consequence of the kings and their priests than it was their subjects’ actions in this life, notably family rituals that honored the memory of deceased ancestors Chinese Literature In contrast to medieval south Asian literature, which generally has a religious context, China’s early literature focuses on secular existence and addresses the necessary conditions for successful governance Confucian tradition dictated that early Chinese literary compositions conform to rigid standards and have some secular value The era of the Han Dynasty (202 b.c.e.–220 c.e.) was notable as a period of literary transition This period featured the development of Chinese governmental record keeping and the use of these records to provide documentation for the writing of official dynastic histories, which were written by the subsequent dynasty, and the composition of essays that apply Confucian logic and the historical past to the resolution of current societal needs Chinese poetry reached its fullness in the Tang and Song eras of the seventh to 12th centuries While earlier poetic ex-