Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c82.s1.4

v2.c82.s1.4

This will be obvious from a reference to the views of Bhāmaha and Daṇḍin on this subject. To Bhāmaha, the most important element in poetry is *alaṃkāra* or *vakrokti*. He does not seem to possess any clear notion of the function of *rasa* in poetry, the only direct reference to it occurring in the definition of the figure *rasavat*, which, in his opinion, must manifest the *rasas* clearly (*rasavad darśita-spaṣṭa-śṛṅgārādi-rasam*, iii 6). The *rasa* is thus included in the scope of a particular figure only and given a very subordinate place in his system². Bhāmaha seems to have been aware of the existence of the *śṛṅgāra* and other dramatic *rasas*; but the speculations regarding the origin and function of *rasa* do not appear to have started in his time; and, in common with Daṇḍin, he never thought it necessary to use the technical terms *vibhāva*, *anubhāva* etc., so familiar to later writers on this subject. In Bhāmaha’s opinion, the *rasa* need not be invariably present in poetry, but it may sometimes be delineated in *vakrokti*. In i 21, no doubt, Bhāmaha lays down that a *mahākāvya* must separately depict all the *rasas*; and in v 3, he speaks of the *kāvya-rasa* as mitigating the rigour of the *śāstras*, a sentiment which is endorsed by Rudraṭa (xii 1-2) and which probably inspired the dictum of Abhinavagupta that the śāstra is prabhu-sammita, while the kāvya is jāyā-sammita. The term kāvya-rasa is used here probably to indicate ‘the flavour of poetry’ in an untechnical sense; but even if we read, with Abhinavagupta (*Locana* p. 182), a technical meaning into it, it only shews that the earlier authors were content with assigning a pleasing but extraneous function to rasa³.