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Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c68: XXX Conclusion

Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c68

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English

XXX Conclusion

v1.c68.1

An attempt has been made in the foregoing pages not only to indicate the diversity as well as immensity of Sanskrit Alaṃkāra literature, but also to settle its relative chronology as a workable basis for an historical treatment. If we leave aside its unknown beginnings and Bharata, the historic period of its growth covers broadly a thousand years from 800 to 1800 A.D., and is marked a speculative activity, surprising alike for its magnitude and its minuteness. This activity in its early stage centres round Kashmir, to which place belong most of the famous and original writers on Poetics. We do not indeed know the place of origin of the two earliest writers, Bharata and Bhāmaha, but immediately after them we find Vāmana, Udbhaṭa, Rudraṭa, Mukula, Ānandavardhana, Lollaṭa, Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, Abhinavagupta, Kṣemendra, Kuntala, Mammaṭa and Ruyyaka flourishing in Kashmir. The only important exception is found in Daṇḍin who was probably a South Indian writer. Coming to later times we find the study extending itself to Central India, Guzerat, the Dekkan and even Bengal. In South India, no doubt, this study was kept alive by a succession of brilliant, if not very original, writers: but these contributions of later times, though greater in bulk and sometimes superior in a certain acuteness, never supersede the volume of original work done in Kashmir, which may be fittingly regarded as the home-land, if not the birthplace, of the Alaṃkāra-śāstra. The writers of Central India, Guzerat, the Dekkan and Bengal only carry on the tradition, as well as acknowledge the authority, of the Kashmiri originators of the science.

v1.c68.2

Although our history covers a period of more than a thousand years, it is yet marked by several well-defined stages. With the date of Ānandavardhana, we arrive for the first time at a distinct landmark in its chronology as well as its history; and we may take it as the central point from which we may proceed backwards and forwards, although the system of Ānandavardhana itself was raised to almost exclusive recognition by the classical work of Mammaṭa. The mutual relation of this system to the other systems flourishing before and after Ānandavardhana furnishes the best and safest criterion for the orientation of the divergent streams of thoughts and tendencies, which gather together in one clear, dominant and finally authoritative doctrine in Mammaṭa. Indeed, one of the obvious objects of Ānandavardhana’s work was not only to fix the new principle of dhvani in poetry, but also to work up and rationalise into a synthetic and comprehensive system the already accumulated ideas, elaborated by previous thinkers but flowing through different channels in the respective systems of Bhāmaha, Vāmana and the post-Bharata dramaturgic rasa-writers ; while Mammaṭa gathered the results up and uttered them in the convenient and concise form of a systematic text-book.

v1.c68.3

Although in Bhāmaha's *Kāvyālaṅkāra*, the earliest known work on Poetics, we meet for the first time with a more or less systematic scheme of Poetics, there is enough evidence to show that it must have been preceded by a period, covering perhaps several centuries, of unknown beginnings. All that we know of this period consists of glimpses of rhetorical speculations, such as we may find in Bharata, in the recorded opinions of (or stray references to) pre-Bhāmaha writers like Medhāvin, or in such treatises on Alaṅkāra as was presumably utilised by the *kāvya*-poets in general and by Bhaṭṭi in particular. This period begins with the enumeration and definition of only four poetic figures, ten *guṇas* and ten *doṣas*, but ends with the elaborate characterisation of thirty-eight independent figures in Bhaṭṭi. But what is important to note in this period is Bharata's more or less elaborate exposition of Dramaturgy, and incidentally of *rasa*, which element however, is considered, not in relation to Poetry and Poetics, but in connexion with Drama and Dramaturgy.

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