Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c79.3

v2.c79.3

Apart from such surmises, the sixteenth chapter of Bharata's *Nāṭya-śāstra* gives us for the first time an outline of Poetics which is probably earlier in substance, if not in date, than the earliest existing *kāvya*. In this chapter, one meets with a developed dogma, if not a theory, of Poetics which enumerates four poetic figures (*alaṃkāras*), ten excellences (*guṇas*), ten defects (*doṣas*), and thirty-six characteristics (*lakṣaṇas*) of poetic composition. These apparently constituted the principal contents of the discipline as it existed at a very early period, which may be taken, in the absence of other data, as the first known period in the history of Sanskrit Poetics.