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Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c8: Lollaṭa And Śaṅkuka

Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c8

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Lollaṭa And Śaṅkuka

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Lollaṭa and Śaṅkuka are known definitely as commentators on Bharata not only from Abhinavagupta’s references to them as such, but also from numerous other writers following him¹. To Śaṅkuka, who is also cited as Śaṅku, are also ascribed several verses in the anthologies of Śārṅgadhara, Jalhaṇa and Vallabhadeva², which indicates that there was also a poet of the same name. Kalhaṇa mentions (iv 703-5) a poet Śaṅkuka and his poem *Bhuvanābhyudaya*. The reference is to the time of Ajitapīḍa, whose date is given as 813 by Cunningham and as 816 A.D. by S.P. Pandit. If our Śaṅkuka is identical with this poet, then he may be assigned to the first quarter of the 9th century. As to the date of Lollaṭa, we have no materials to decide, but all later citations agree in supporting the tradition that he was earlier than Śaṅkuka, whose theory on *rasa* is said to have been directly levelled against that of Lollaṭa. Judging from his name, Lollaṭa was probably a Kasmirian; and if any chronological inference may be drawn from Abhinavagupta’s reference to an opinion of the Kasmirian Udbhaṭa being controverted by Lollaṭa¹, he may have been later than or contemporaneous with Udbhaṭa, whose latest date is 813 A. D. These hypothetical facts give us the curious conclusion that Udbhaṭa, Lollaṭa and Śaṅkuka were probably contemporaries or lived sufficiently near one another in point of time.²

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¹ e. g. Mamaṭa *Kav. prak. ad iv* 5, p. 87 (ed. B. S. S. 1917); Hemacandra p. 67 comm., p.215 : *Taralā* pp. 85, 88; Govinda in *Pradīpa ad iv* 5, p. 63. etc.

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² in the first two, Śaṅkuka is called the son of Mayūra, who is identified by some with the author of the *Sūrya-śataka*, a contemporary of Bāṇa.

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¹ The passage is cited above p. 26 footnote.

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² The theory of *rasa* advocated by Lollaṭa probably obtained in the schools before he definitely formulated it and became its first noted champion; for Abhinava in his commentary on Bharata (ch. vi, the same passage utilised later by Hemacandra, Comm. p. 57, ll. 18-19) says that Daṇḍin in his idea of *rasa* follows the same view. Unless we presume Lollaṭa’s priority to Daṇḍin, we should take this passage to indicate that this theory, or a dogma similar to it, had already been known to Daṇḍin, even before Lollaṭa brought it into prominence. It may also be noted that Lollaṭa is also taken by most later writers (e. g. Hemacandra p. 215, Mammaṭa pp. 225 f; Mahimabhaṭṭa p. 27 etc.) as as what is technically known as *dīrgha-vyāpāra-vādin* with

Bhatta Nāyaka

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Besides referring to him as a commentator on Bharata, Abhinavagupta (*Locana* p. 27), as well as Jayaratha (p. 9), quotes under the name of Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka a verse *śabda-prādhānyam āśritya*, which Hemacandra (p. 4) gives as a quotation from a work, entitled *Hṛdaya-darpaṇa*, which is also cited without the name of the author by Mahimabhaṭṭa and his commentator. This makes it probable that some lost work of Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka’s probably bore that title, and also indicates the probable source of the quotation which occurs immediately before the verse in question in Abhinavagupta. It is, however, not clear whether this *Hṛdaya-darpaṇa* is in reality his lost commentary on Bharata. Mahimabhatta’s anonymous commentator tells us that this *Hṛdaya-darpaṇa*, like the *Vyakti-viveka*, was composed with the special object of demolishing the *dhvani*-theory formulated by Ānandavardhana¹; and this statement may explain why Abhinavagupta, the great champion of the *dhvani*-theory, takes so much pains to controvert Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka’s views in his *Locana* as well as in his *Abhinava-bhāratī*. This also adds a significance to the fact that Mahimabhatta, who had a similar object of combating the *dhvani*-theory, claims entire originality for his own treatment, boasting that he had never looked in the *Darpaṇa* at all². The citations from the *Hṛdaya-darpaṇa* also indicate

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¹ *darpaṇo*..........*hṛdaya-darpaṇākhyo dhvani-dhvaṃsa-granthaḥ* p. 1, explaining the pun in the word *darpaṇa* used by Mahiman in i 4.

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² *adṛṣṭa-darpaṇā mama dhīḥ* i 4.

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reference to the controversy about the function of *abhidhā*: for he is said to have maintained that the primary function of Denotation of a word is so far-reaching that it is competent in itself to express all other implied or suggested sense. The Mīmāṃsakas and grammarians had already discussed the question of *abhidhā*; but it must not be forgotten that several attempts to explain the fact of suggested sense (*dhvani*) obtained before the Dhvanikāra himself. It is probable that Lollaṭa was one of those who offered one of the several early solutions to the question, alluded to in the first verse of the *Dhvanyāloka*.

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that it was probably composed in a metrical form, and apparently never took at all the shape of a prose commentary.

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A careful examination of the very few passages apparently referring to this work will shew that the topics dealt with in it centre round the question of *dhvani* in poetry, in correlation with the theory of *rasa* intimately connected therewith. Abhinava, for instance, while discussing the verse *bhama dham-mia vīsattho*, which is given by Ānandavardhana as an instance of suggestion with an expressed injunction implying a prohibition, refutes Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka’s opinion as to this negative implication. In another place, Abhinava criticises the significance attached by Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka to the word *aham* in the verse *attā ettha nimajjai*, which is discussed by Ānandavardhana as an example of suggestion of a contrary kind where the expressed prohibition implies an injunction. It is evident from these references that Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka’s work, like Mahimabhaṭṭa’s, was designed not merely as a refutation of the general theory of *dhvani*, but also as a special attack on Ānandavardhana’s exposition of the same. To take a minute point, the Dhvanikāra in i 13 uses the verb *vyaṅktaḥ* in the dual number with a special object in view, as Ānandavardhana’s (as well as Abhinava’s) explanation rightly indicates. Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka seems to have attacked this use of the dual number, upon which Abhinavagupta remarks: *bhaṭṭa-nāyakena yad dvi-vacanaṃ dūṣitaṃ tad gaja-nimīlikayaiva.*¹

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¹ Mahimabhaṭṭa also refers (p. 19) to this discussion, quoting these words of Abhinava from the *Locana*.

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It is apparent, therefore, that the *Hṛdaya-darpaṇa* was not a commentary on Bharata, but a metrical treatise in the *anuṣṭup* metre, dealing with the question of *dhvani*, and incidentally with the question of *rasa-dhvani*. No doubt, Abhinava in his own commentary on Bharata, as well numerous other later writers taking their cue from Abhinava, criticises at some length Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka’s theory of *rasa*, along with those of Lollaṭa and Śaṅkuka and with special reference to Bharata’s particular *sūtra* on the subject; yet Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka is nowhere mentioned directly as a commentator on the same text. It is probable that Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka’s peculiar theory of *rasa* (which, however, bears a resemblance to Abhinava’s own) called for a special refutation in the hands of this champion of the *dhvani*-theory, because Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka denied the expressive function of *dhvani* and attempted to explain the concept by postulating the function of *bhogīkaraṇa*. But there is no definite indication to shew that this theory of *rasa*, being a corrollary to Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka’s general theory of expression, was not incidental to his main thesis, directed towards the demolition of the new idea of the *dhvani* and establishment of another explanation of the fact of Suggestion (*dhvani*). This may be the reason why Śārṅgadeva, in his enumeration of Bharata’s commentators before his time, omits the name of Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka.¹

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¹ See p. 26-27 above, footnote. Similarly Ruyyaka, while reviewing the different systems which obtained before his time, mentions Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka not as a commentator but

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There can hardly be any doubt that Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka was familiar with the text of the *Dhvanyāloka*, including Ānandavardhana's *vṛtti*, and should, therefore, be placed in a period later than the date of Ānandavardhana. This conclusion is supported by the statement of Jayaratha (p. 12) that Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka lived after the Dhvanikāra, by whom Jayaratha, like many other later writers, invariably means Ānandavardhana without distinguishing him from the so-called Dhvanikāra. On the other hand, the oldest writer to cite Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, is Abhinavagupta, from whom he does not appear to be chronologically very distant. Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, therefore, flourished between the last quarter of the 9th century and the last quarter of the 10th; and it will not be wrong if we assign him to the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 10th. This date makes it likely that he is identical, as Peterson suggested, with the Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka who is mentioned by Kalhaṇa (v 159) as having flourished in the reign of Śaṅkaravarman, son and successor of Avantivarman of Kasmir.

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