Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c85.52

v2.c85.52

Vidyādhara, for instance, models his text (consisting of kārikā and vrtti) on the Kāvya-prakāśa of Mammaṭa, and in the treatment of poetic figures follows Ruyyaka in the main ¹⁷. After characterising the kāvya as dhvani-pradhāna¹⁸, and setting forth its purpose as well as the qualifications necessary for the poet, he devotes the first chapter to the establishment of the dhvani or suggested sense in poetry. In this connexion, he refutes at some length the views of those schools which maintain the non-existence of dhvani or its inclusion in other processes, drawing mostly on the Dhvanyāloka and the Kāvya-prakāśa. The second chapter deals with the three functions of word and sense, viz. abhidhā, lakṣaṇā and vyañjanā, while the third chapter classifies the dhvani-kāvya, in which the suggested sense excels the expressed, explaining incidentally the different theories of rasa, which constitutes the province of one of the eight varieties of the imperceptible process of suggestion (asaṃlakṣya-krama vyaṅgya). The second class of poetry, the guṇībhūta-vyaṅgya kāvya, is taken up in the next chapter. The fifth chapter defines the guṇas, distinguishing them from the alaṃkāras, and concluding with the treatment of the rīti, with an incidental attack of older views and general support of Mammaṭa's position. The next chapter is concerned with the doṣas, while the last two chapters deal with the poetic figures, the śabdālaṃkāras and arthālaṃkāras respectively, adhering in general to the treatment of Ruyyaka. This brief enumeration of the contents of Vidyādhara's work will sufficiently indicate the scope and nature of these subsequent treatises, as well as the fact that they embrace the same topics as are dealt with in the Kāvya-prakāśa, even the different chapters sometimes corresponding, in regard to their subject-matter, to the different ullāsas of the latter.