Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c21.1

v1.c21.1

Ānandavardhana has been assigned by Bühler and Jacobi to the middle of the ninth century, on the strength of Rāja-taraṅgiṇī v 34, which makes him one of the ornaments of the court of Avantivarman, 855-84 A.D. We are pretty certain of the time of Abhinavagupta, Ānandavardhana’s commentator; for, as he himself states, his Bṛhatī Vṛtti on the Īśvara-pratyabhijñā was written in 1015 A.D., while his Krama-stotra was composed in 991 A.D. From Abhinavagupta’s remarks at the end of his Locana commentary on uddyotas i and iii of the Dhvanyāloka, it appears that the study of this famous work was traditional in his family, and that his own commentary was composed as a rejoinder to another, called the Candrikā (p. 60), written by one of his predecessors in the same gotra¹; and four times in his Locana (pp. 123, 174, 185, 215) he discusses or controverts the views of this earlier commentator, who is specifically referred to as the Candrikā- kāra at pp. 178 and 185.¹ This should certainly allow some generations to lie between Ānandavardhana and Abhinavagupta, and negative completely Pischel's contention that in three passages Abhinavagupta speaks of Ānandavardhana as one of his teachers. These passages occur at pp. 37, 183, and 214 of the printed text but a perusal of them with reference to their context will show that the honorific word *guru*, if it at all refers to Ānandavardhana, must refer to him, not literally but figuratively, as *paramparā-guru*, whose work was held in esteem in his family²; or (which is more likely) the reference is to one or other of Abhinavagupta's teachers, such as Bhaṭṭa Tauta, or Bhaṭṭendurāja, the former of whom is cited as *asmad-upādhyāyāḥ* or *asmad-guravaḥ* very often in Abhinava's commentary on Bharata. Again, Kayyaṭa states that he wrote his commentary on Ānandavardhana's *Devī-śataka* (ed. Kāvyamālā, pt. ix) at about 977 A.D., so that by the end of the tenth century Ānandavardhana was well enough established in fame to have two such learned commentators. Finally, Rājaśekhara, who lived about the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century, mentions and cites Ānandavardhana by name in his *Kāvya-mīmāṃsā* (p. 16), and this should certainly clear up any doubt as to the authenticity of the date assigned by Kalhaṇa and accepted by Bühler and Jacobi.