Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c68.3

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.