Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c5.40

v1.c5.40

Although these speculations have an indirect bearing on Poetics and might have suggested and helped to develop some of its fundamental theories, they cannot be taken as a definite basis of any deductions as to the antiquity of the discipline itself. It is striking indeed that we have no direct or indirect reference to Poetics as a *śāstra* in early texts, although at the end of the 9th century Rājaśekhara speaks of a tradition which makes it the seventh *aṅga*. Poetics is omitted in the enumeration of the different branches of study in the well-known passage in the *Chāndogya Upaniṣad* (VII. 1. 2. 4, ed. Böhtlingk). Āpastambha (II. 4, 11), speaks of the usual six *aṅgas*, but Yājñavalkya (i 3) enumerates in all fourteen *śāstras*, to which the *Viṣṇupurāṇa* adds four more, in which Poetic is not mentioned at all. In a similar list in the *Lalita-vistara*¹, there is a reference to *kāvya-karaṇa-grantha* and *nāṭya*, which may be taken to imply Poetics and Dramaturgy respectively, but the designation ‘Alaṃkāra’ is not met with until we come to *Śukra-nīti* which includes it, in company with *Artha-śāstra*, *Kāma-śāstra* and *Śilpa-śāstra*, among thirty-two different *śāstras*. It has been pointed out by Rhys Davids² that the old Pāli texts, *Aṅguttara* (i 72, iii 107) and *Saṃyukta* (i 38, ii 267), there are references to a similar study. These passages are interesting historically as being opposed to the science, but they do not expressly or by implication mention it as Alaṃkāra-śāstra.³