Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c21.23

v1.c21.23

If Ānandavardhana gave the final authoritative shape to the *dhvani*-theory (only the details of which were worked out by Abhinavagupta and others), the anonymous Dhvanikāra was not its absolute creator. This is made clear by the first kārikā, which tells us that the theory was already taught by earlier thinkers, and that it existed even at the time of the Dhvanikāra himself in various forms, handed down, as Ānandavardhana explains, in unbroken tradition (*paramparayā yaḥ samāmnātaḥ*), although it may not have been explained, as Abhinava adds in his gloss, in particular books (*avicchinnena pravāheṇa tair etad uktam, vināpi viśiṣṭa-pustakeṣu vivecanādityabhiprāyaḥ*, p. 3). This implies without doubt that the school existed from a very early time, but some unknown writer gathered together, summed up, and fixed the theory in a form which obtained considerable literary esteem for his work and the honoured but somewhat vague appellation of the Dhvanikāra for himself. But his name and fame, in course of time, were eclipsed by those of his great Vṛttikāra, who succeeded in establishing the theory for all time and to whom posterity began to ascribe, not altogether undeservedly, all the honours of his predecessor, so that one of the latest writers on Alaṃkāra, Kumārasvāmin (p. 288), glorifies him with the curious but significant epithet—Dhvanyācārya.