Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c5.44

v1.c5.44

It seems likely, therefore, that Poetics as a technical discipline must have been of comparatively late origin, and probably began to develop in the first few centuries of the Christian era.⁴ With the flourishing of Sanskrit learning and literature in the 4th and 5th centuries under the Gupta Emperors, its development probably proceeded apace. Bühler’s epigraphical researches ¹ have confirmed the indication, first given by Lassen, as regards the development of Sanskrit *kāvya*-style in this period, and it may be taken as the prelude to a rhetorical activity which bore rich fruit in the 8th and 9th centuries in systematic investigations of poetic principles. His examination of the early inscriptions, not only proves the existence of a body of highly elaborate prose and metrical writings in the *kāvya*-style during the first five centuries A.D., but it also establishes the presumption that most of these *praśasti*-writers were “acquainted with the rules of Indian poetics” ². Bühler attempts to show that the manner in which these writers conform to the rules of Alaṃkāra, crystallised in the oldest available manuals like those of Bhāmaha and Daṇḍin, would go to indicate “the existence of an Alaṃkāra-śāstra or some theory of poetic art” ³.