Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c5.1

v1.c5.1

There is an interesting passage in the *Kāvya-mīmāṃsā* in which Rājaśekhara, while giving us a somewhat fanciful account of the divine origin of Poetics, mentions at the same time the names of the supposed original exponents of the discipline. It is said that the Spirit of Poetry (*kāvya-puruṣa*), born of the Goddess of Learning (*sarasvatī*), was set by the Self-existent Being to promulgate the study of Poetics in the three worlds; and he related it in eighteen *adhikaraṇas* to his seventeen will-born pupils. These divine sages, in their turn, are said to have composed separate treatises on the portions respectively learnt by them. Thus Sahasrākṣa wrote on *kavi-rahasya*, Uktigarbha on *auktika*, Suvarṇanābha on *rīti*, Pracetāyana on *anuprāsa*, Citrāṅgada on *yamaka* and *citra*, Śeṣa on *śabda-śleṣa*, Pulastya on *vāstava*, Aupakāyana on *upamā*, Pārāśara on *atiśaya*, Utathya on *artha-śleṣa*, Kubera on *ubhayālaṃkāra*, Kāmadeva on *vainodika*, Bharata on *rūpaka*, Nandikeśvara on *rasa*, Dhiṣaṇa on *doṣa*, Upamanyu on *guṇa* and Kucamāra on *aupaniṣadika*. This tendency on the part of a Sanskrit author towards glorifying his science and thereby investing it with an ancient unalterable authority is not unusual, and such legendary accounts are often fabricated where the actual origin is forgotten; but it is curious that we do not meet with them elsewhere in Alaṃkāra literature, although they find expression in Bharata and in Vātsyāyana with regard to the origin of the allied disciplines of Dramaturgy and Erotics respectively. The historical value of this passage of Rājaśekhara may, indeed, be well doubted; but it is possible that this unique account, apart from its obviously mythical garb, embodies a current tradition, implying the actual existence, at some remote and forgotten period, of early expounders of poetic theory, some of whose names are still familiar, but most of whose works have apparently perished. Thus Suvarṇanābha and Kucamāra (or Kucumāra) are also cited with reverence by the author of the Kāma-sūtra (I. 1. 13, 17), both of them as authorities on Erotics, but the latter especially as well-versed in the particular subject of aupaniṣadika, which is thus included in Erotics as well as in Poetics.¹ The present-day text of the Nāṭya-śāstra, which goes by the name of Bharata, deals in an encyclopaedic manner with various topics, but Bharata is well known, as described by Rājaśekhara, as an authority on rūpaka. No work of Nandikeśvara on rasa has yet been discovered; but his name is associated with a number of works, mostly late compilations, on erotics, music, histrionic art, grammar and tantra.²