Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c76.2

v2.c76.2

An attempt was made in the first volume to settle a working Chronology and indicate the original Sources of Sanskrit Poetics; the present volume is concerned with the more difficult task of tracing the development of the Systems and Theories. While I could not ignore the content in investigating the growth of the discipline, I thought it more useful to lay stress on the essentials of the doctrines and omit minor details, my object having been more historical than expository. I could not, for instance, give in this volume a technical analysis of individual rhetorical "figures", with which the Alaṃkāra-śāstra is traditionally and popularly associated; but I have dealt with the general doctrine of poetic figures, in so far as they are not mere tickets of nomenclature but positive agents in the production of stylistic beauty or aesthetic pleasure. The study of analytical rhetoric, apart from its value as a formal discipline, may be regarded as pedantic and futile, but Sanskrit Alaṃkāra-śāstra possesses a speculative interest by involving, besides mere Rhetoric, a great deal of what is known as Criticism, Aesthetics or Poetics ; for it was almost impossible for the Ālaṃkārikas, concerned as they were with form and technique, not to busy themselves with the general phenomena of literature or theorise on general principles. My omission, again, of all consideration of such peculiar development of the rasa-theory as we find in Vaiṣṇava devotional works may be criticised, but my concern here is not with bhakti-rasa but with ālaṃkārika rasa, although I have referred in passing to this erotico-religious application of the theory in Rūpa Gosvāmin's Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi.