Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c80.2

v2.c80.2

In Bhāmaha’s *Kāvyālaṃkāra*, the different topics of Poetics are formulated not incidentally, as in Bharata, but in such well-defined outline as would indicate that the Alaṃkāra-śāstra had already attained the rank of an independent discipline. We have seen that Bharata considered certain important elements of poetry as devices for embellishing dramatic speech and as subservient to the principal purpose of producing the dramatic *rasa*. In Bhāmaha, on the other hand, the poetical embellishments form the principal object of study; and, while Dramaturgy and *rasa* are entirely ignored, we find for the first time a definite scheme of Poetics more or less systematically elaborated and authoritatively established. Bharata’s treatment would show that even before his time, some of the older poetic figures, most of the *guṇas* and *doṣas*, had been recognised and clearly defined, even if no particular theory of *alaṃkāra* had been in existence. But Bhāmaha throws into prominence these poetic embellishments and the consideration of *guṇas* and *doṣas* in their connexion, in conformity perhaps to a tradition from which the whole discipline appears to have received significant designation of Alaṃkāra-śāstra. We have attempted to explain in the preceding chapter that the comparative antiquity of this tradition or of this school of opinion cannot be denied; and the presumption is not unlikely that a system of alaṃkāra or an Alaṃkāra school¹ (if the term is allowed from the emphasis it puts on the consideration of alaṃkāra or the poetic figure as the principal element of poetry) existed side by side with the Rasa school or the dramaturgic rasa-system, and influenced it, as it was to a limited extent influenced by it, although this doctrine or system of Poetics is represented to us by a comparatively late writer like Bhāmaha, who was by no means its original founder.