I have scanned through this book by Yigal Bronner in the New York Public Library last Friday.
It turns out that this double narration can work multiple ways:
- Pure sanskrit, but also some for Sanskrit and Pakrit (bilingual double-narration)
- Some works by reading left-to-right and right-to-left
- There are such poetry in Tamil and Telugu too - not just in Sanskrit
- In terms of mechanisms, other than using words that an mean two things at the same time, one method is "resegmentation" depending on where one divides a "word" it could mean different things
Some major authors who has written double-narration poetry (called slesa in Sanskrit):
- Subhandu as pioneer (in A.L. Basham's work as one of the three "prose" master together with Bana and Dandin)
- Dandin has some fragments left (he is associated with the Pallava court, timing is later than Bana, his book on poetic theory is called Kavyadarsa)
- Dhananjaya (a Jain) - first extant Ramayana-Mahabharata double narration
- Hemacandra (Jain) also wrote one, but no longer extant
- Kaviraja (12th c., circa 1175 in Kadanba cort, "King of Poet"), his work is named Raghavapandaviya - on which there are a dozen commentaries
Notes: other modern authors of Indian literature history:
- A.K. Warder's Indian Kavya Literature
- Sheldon Pollock
Sounds like I should consider Kaviraja seriously in my expanded world canon list!