Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c80.59

v2.c80.59

All this, however, means an advance, and not a deviation; it indicates an aspect of the growth of scholastic activity, which delighted in indulging in fine distinctions and minute classifications, and not a departure from the original standpoint. To later writers, however, it is not Bhāmaha but Udbhaṭa who is the authoritative exponent of this system and whose views are entitled to great respect from all schools of opinion. Bhāmaha indeed commands veneration due to his antiquity; but he was, in course of time, eclipsed by his commentator, and later theorists turn to Udbhaṭa's work as embodying the standard opinions on the subject. We have the testimony of Ānandavardhana, Abhinavagupta and Ruyyaka that some of the later speculations and controversies (e. g., those regarding *upamā*-divisions, or *śleṣa*) started from Udbhaṭa's time; and Udbhaṭa (as also Daṇḍin and Rudraṭa) probably showed the way to minute analysis and differentiation of poetic figures, which play such an important part in later theories. We can understand what influence Udbhaṭa's teachings exerted in this respect when we bear in mind that they guided very considerably the enquiries of two important later law-givers in Poetics, Mammaṭa and Ruyyaka, who fixed for the last time the definitions of most figures, analysed and arranged them on some general principle, and systematised their underlying doctrine. Although Kuntala elaborated one part of Bhāmaha’s teaching which he took as the basis of his own peculiar system of vakrokti, it was Udbhaṭa who properly carried on Bhāmaha’s tradition aud gave a systematic exposition of his work. Along with his great contemporary Vāmana, Udbhaṭa may be taken without exaggeration to have been the founder of the Kashmiri school of Poetics which produced its finest fruit in Ānandavardhana; for Udbhaṭa in Kashmir established the alaṃkāra-doctrine in Poetics at a time when Vāmana was skilfully constructing a theory of riti on the basis apparently of Daṇḍin’s teachings, and both of them prepared the way for Ānandavardhana.