Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c84.7

v2.c84.7

This is, in brief, the general position of Abhinavagupta as a champion of the new system established by Ānandavardhana. The final dominance of this system in later speculation is due not only to the instrinsic worth of the theory itself and its masterly formulation by Ānandavardhana, but also probably to the authority which Abhinava’s exposition as well as his reputation lent to it. We find in the immediate followers of the system, however, not the extreme position of Abhinavagupta, but the theory and the scheme as finally outlined by Ānandavardhana. With Ānandavardhana, the dhvani-theory, which was itself ancient, came to prevail; but with him also was evolved a more or less complete scheme of Poetics in which the divergent gleams of earlier thought and the accumulated stock of recognised ideas meet and are rationally adjusted. This scheme, with the concept of *dhvani* (especially *rasa-dhvani*) at its centre, was summed up and uttered in the concise form of a systematic text-book by Mammaṭa, another Kāśmirian, whose influence perhaps was no less potent than that of Abhinavagupta in raising it to almost exclusive authority in later times. This system, which for convenience we have called the Dhvani system, absorbed and overshadowed all previous schools and systems, and came to reign supreme, only to be improved in detail by the large crowd of its followers who form the bulk of post-dhvani writers on Poetics. Jagannātha, one of the latest writers of this group, very aptly remarks, therefore, that the authors of the *Dhvanyāloka* settled the path to be followed by later writers on Poetics (*dhvanikṛtām alaṃkārika-saraṇi-vyavasthāpakatvāt*, p. 425).