Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c70.9

v1.c70.9

P. 36.—B. N. Bhaṭṭācārya (op. cit. p. 113) argues from a reference to Vātsyāyana’s Kāma-sūtra and the portions of the Nāṭya-śāstra which deal with erotics, the more elementary character of the former work, inasmuch as certain minute details of classification indulged in by the latter are not to be met with in the former work. But the illustration he adduces (viz. the classification of heroes and heroines) does not appear to be very much to the point; for the two writers approach the topic from entirely different standpoints and adopt different principles of classification. The same writer also argues (p. 116) with reference to Bharata and the so-called works of Bhāsa, that the dramaturgic treatise, if any, which existed in the latter’s time, was not Bharata’s Nāṭya-śāstra, but one of its forerunners. We have avoided a discussion of this point, in view of the doubts which have been raised as to authorship of these dramas, and the correctness of the attribution to Bhāsa.