About Chitra-kavya

Chitra-kavya (picture-poetry) is an ancient Indian tradition of writing poetry in visual patterns by play of meaning (shabdalankāra). It is the device of constructing verses that can be written out in the form of a lotus or of a chariot. This tradition developed into different forms such as the Yamaka Kāvyas where the letters are the same while the meanings are different in different lines; in the Mahakavyas like the Kirātārjunīya and the Shishupala Vadha there are instances of verses with only a single letter of alphabet or only two letters, also there is the Niranunāsika, where no nasal sound appears, Rāmacarita narrates in the same set of verses the story of Rāma and of a king who patronised the poet. All these poems show the prodigious intellect of the poets and their control of the language effortlessly applied showing no obscurity in diction.