Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c37.13

v1.c37.13

The date of Deveśvara, author of the *Kavi-kalpalatā*, can be approximately settled from the internal evidence supplied by the work itself; for it closely follows, in its treatment of the subject and general arrangement, Arisiṃha and Amaracandra's work; and it is not difficult to show that he also slavishly copies wholesale from the text of his predecessors. He borrows literally most of the rules and definitions, and even repeats the illustrative stanzas. Thus Deveśvara pp. 157-60 (*veṇyāḥ sarpási⁰*) and pp. 36-7 (*ratnádi yatra*) = Arisiṃha pp. 135-37 and pp. 30-1; the definition of *adbhuta-vidhi* in Arisiṃha p. 93 = Deveśvara p. 130. This copying is not sporadic but systematic, and is found practically throughout the work, so that it is highly probable that Deveśvara had had the text of the *Kāvya-kalpalatā* before him, when he composed his own work on the same subject. This gives us one terminus to his date at the middle of the 13th century.