Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c87.30

v2.c87.30

In the next chapter we have elaborate classifications of the poet from different points of view. Poets may be grouped generally into three classes, the *śāstra-kavi*, the *kāvya-kavi* and the *ubhaya-kavi*. The *śāstra-kavi* may either compose the *śāstra*, or produce *kāvya*-effect in the *śāstra* or *śāstra*-effect in the *kāvya*. The *kāvya-kavi* is classified elaborately, if not very logically, into eight groups, viz., *racanā-kavi*, *śabda-kavi*, *artha-kavi*, *alaṃkāra-kavi*, *ukti-kavi*, *rasa-kavi*, *mārga-kavi* and *śāstrārtha-kavi*. Then we have an enumeration of ten grades of apprenticeship through which a poet has to pass until he becomes a *kavi-rāja*, which is indeed not the highest distinction but which, according to Rājaśekhara, who was himself so designated, indicates a status even higher than that of a *mahākavi*. Elsewhere in ch. x, he gives an account of the test or literary examination of poets for such honour and recognition, in which the successful poet is conveyed in a special chariot and crowned with a fillet (*paṭṭa-bandha*). He speaks also of purity of body, speech and thought necessary for a poet, and describes the house of the poet, his attendants, his writing materials, the division of his whole day into eight parts and duties appropriate thereto. The chapter under discussion concludes with a reference to the theory of *pāka* ¹⁸, of which as many as nine varieties, named after the taste of different fruits, are mentioned.