Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c79.97

v2.c79.97

that certain poetical *guṇas*, *doṣas*, *alaṃkāras* and *lakṣaṇas* were known to Bharata and treated by him even as decorative devices of the dramatic speech. It would not be wrong to presume from this fact that the study of Alaṃkāra-śāstra, even if it was not yet fully developed and self-conscious, was probably older than Bharata himself. It follows from this conclusion that the tradition of opinion, which crystallises itself in the oldest available manuals of Bhāmaha and Daṇḍin, or in the memorial verses of the Dhvanikāra, comes to us in a definite shape indeed at a date much posterior to Bharata, but it is probable that in substance, if not in actual formulation, it may have been much anterior to Bharata, who himself gives an indication of such teachings. Excepting what we get in Bharata, however, the history of this process of crystallisation (for the different systems appear in a relatively developed form in Bhāmaha and others) is not known to us; but it must have covered a tentative stage whose productions, if they had been extant today, would have shown Bhāmaha, Daṇḍin and the Dhvanikāra in the making, and would have partly filled up the long gap between Bharata and these earliest formulators of Poetics.