Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c5.4

v1.c5.4

This traditional account may lead one to make the tempting suggestion of a very early systematic investigation of rhetorical issues but for the serious difficulty that there is hardly any material in the ancient literature itself to enable us to trace the origin of Poetics to a very remote antiquity. The Alaṃkāra-śāstra is never mentioned among the orthodox disciplines which constitute the so-called vedāṅgas, nor do we meet with any passage in the Vedic Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas or the earlier Upaniṣads in which we may find a real basis for a system of Poet-