Vijayāṅkā, Vikaṭanitambā, Avantisundarī – modern Sanskrit dramas of V. Raghavan in the context of contemporary Sanskrit literature.

Vijayāṅkā, Vikaṭanitambā, Avantisundarī, collectively known as Prekṣaṇakatrayī, are three short Sanskrit plays written in the 20th century in Sanskrit by Venkataraman Raghavan – a distinguished Sanskrit scholar. Until now, there were no research projects or translations of any of these plays. The subject of Prekṣaṇakatrayī is the author’s portrayal of the imagined lives of three Sanskrit poetesses from the past. One of the most important issues of these plays is Sanskrit poetics, which was also a major area of scholarly interests of Dr. Raghavan. Therefore, in order to investigate these dramas properly, they have been studied within a broader context encompassing V. Raghavan’s academic achievements as well as the history of Sanskrit theory of literature. An outline of the dramatic output of Dr. Raghavan is also provided, which portrays him as a modern Sanskrit dramatist. The dissertation also tackles a problem of contemporary Sanskrit literature, which is a field somewhat neglected by scholars. Sanskrit has a very peculiar status. Although it is not commonly used as a spoken language, people still choose it as a medium of their literary creativity. The dissertation is also an attempt to take a stance in the discussion, whether Sanskrit can be considered a dead language, or whether there is still life in it.