Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c83.85

v2.c83.85

This general scheme of Poetics outlined by the Dhvani school, in spite of the loopholes that may be detected in the doctrinal edifice, is accepted as canonical by all important writers coming after Ānandavardhana. Here and there an isolated theorist arose who dared to question the general creed, but he was at once put down as a heretic and condemned to neglect and oblivion. The immediately following systems of the Vakroktijīvita-kāra and the Vyaktiviveka-kāra were, in spite of their able and ingenious efforts, unable to supplant the *dhvani*-theory; and, finding no strong adherents, themselves languished and died out. These views are taken notice of by later writers only for the purpose of refuting them. Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, judging from the long quotations from his lost work in Abhinavagupta and others, seems to have made a greater impression; but even he does not appear to have been very successful. All these writers, no doubt, accept the concept of a suggested sense, but when they endeavour to explain it in a different way, they could hardly find a patient hearing. Even Viśvanātha’s attempt to push the theory to its logical extreme did not meet with universal approval. The labours, therefore, of all later writers, typified by Mammaṭa, consisted generally in working out the details of the *dhvani*-theory and the scheme of Poetics standardised on its basis; and they spent all their fine scholastic powers in refining and explaining but hardly in adding anything of abiding interest. No other work on Sanskrit Poetics has indeed exerted so much influence as the *Dhvanyāloka*, which brought to a focus the tentative efforts of earlier thinkers, and by its thoroughness and masterly exposition eclipsed all its predecessors, dominating, as it did, the thoughts of generations of theorists even down to the present time.