Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c80.67

v2.c80.67

Rudraṭa, like other writers of this school, does not seem to attach much importance to the *rīti* or its constituent *guṇas*. He speaks, no doubt, of four *rītis* (and not two, after Daṇḍin, or three, after Vāmana) viz., *pāñcālī*, *lāṭīyā*, *gauḍīyā* and *vaidarbhī*; but in his exposition he is not influenced by the views of the Riti school. The classification of ‘diction’, he thinks, depends on the presence in varying degrees of short (*laghu*), middling (*madhya*) and long (*āyata*) compound words, or on their entire absence as in the case of the *vaidarbhī* which is, apparently for this reason, considered to be the best type. Bhāmaha, we have seen, adopts a similar principle of classification, not with regard to the *rīti* but to the three *guṇas* admitted by himself. The notion of *rīti*, therefore, belongs, in Rudraṭa’s opinion, altogether to the province of *śabda*, governed by fixed rules of verbal arrangement, or rather, of using compounds, and is therefore called the *samāsavatī vṛtti* of *śabda*. Rudraṭa does not speak of *dhvani*, nor does he appear to have been cognisant of its function; but he implies a suggested sense (as also Bhāmaha and Udbhaṭa do) ancillary to the expressed sense in a limited number of poetic figures, e. g., in figures like paryāya or paryāyokta and in the figure bhāva vii 38-41 ³⁰.