A History of Sanskrit Literature c25.s3.1

c25.s3.1

Rājaçekhara lived at a time when a new doctrine, that of Dhvani, tone, had been steadily winning its way to power. It is represented for us by the metrical Kārikās preserved in the *Dhvanyāloka*³ of Ānandavardhana of Kashmir (*c.* 850) with its super-commentary by Abhinavagupta, *Locana*.¹ The Kārikās assert that the doctrine is old, but if so we must assume that it had not won much success, and it may be that the author referred really to some not distant predecessor, justifying himself by the view that the doctrine was implicit in the older writers. His name was possibly but not certainly Sahṛdaya, which at best is merely an epithet, and he must have written early in the ninth century. At any rate by the ability of his commentators and by the adoption by Mammaṭa of the doctrine the new view won on the whole a dominant position in Indian poetics.