Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c80.60

v2.c80.60

Pratīhārendurāja’s interpretation of Udbhaṭa is not always reliable as an indication of Udbhaṭa’s standpoint, for the commentator flourished a little over a century later than the text-writer and frequently reads his own notions into the text. For instance, Udbhaṭa can be taken, as we have seen, to have been cognisant of a suggested sense, though he never speaks of dhvani or deals with it directly; but Pratīhārendurāja refers to it in clearest terms and attempts by forced interpretation to make out that Udbhaṭa deliberately included it in the treatment of poetic figures. There is no doubt, again, that Pratīhārendurāja was a great deal influenced by the views of the Riti school of Vāmana. Discussing the mutual relation of guṇa and alaṃkāra (pp. 75 f), Pratīhārendurāja not only cites Vāmana but closely follows his exposition. To Bhāmaha, the distinction between *guṇa* and *alaṃkāra* was hardly of any theoretic importance, and Udbhaṭa appears to have been of the same opinion; for Ruyyaka distinctly states *udbhaṭādibhis tu guṇālaṃkārāṇāṃ prāyaśaḥ sāmyam eva sūcitam* (p.7), and Hemacandra adds in the same way *tasmād yadarikā-pravāheṇa guṇālaṃkāra-bheda iti bhāmaha-vivaraṇe.....bhaṭṭodbhaṭo'bhyadhāt* (p. 17). Vāmana on the other hand, putting greater stress on *rīti* elaborately distinguishes between the *guṇas* and the *alaṃkāras*; and Pratīhārendurāja apparently reads Vāmana's views into Udbhaṭa. Udbhaṭa omits all mention of *rīti* which Bhāmaha had only referred to in passing, but Udbhaṭa speaks of the three *vṛttis*, which are connected in particular with the figure *anuprāsa* but which correspond roughly to the three *rītis* of Vāmana, and like the latter, again, to the three *guṇas* recognised by Ānandavardhana and his followers ²⁷. But even then it can not be said that Udbhaṭa's *vṛttis* cover the same ground or possess the same functional value as the three *rītis* of Vāmana or the three *guṇas* of Ānandavardhana. Udbhaṭa, according to Abhinavagupta, regards (p. 134) the *guṇas*, again, as the properties of *saṃghaṭanā*, but this *saṃghaṭanā* cannot be taken as equivalent to Vāmana's *rīti* ²⁸ In the same way, Pratīhārendurāja speaks of *rasa* as the ‘soul’ of poetry (p. 77), although there is nothing to warrant the supposition that Udbhaṭa, fully aware as he appears to be of the importance of this element, would regard it as anything but a subservient factor in some special poetic figures ²⁹.