A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s2.25

v3.c35.s2.25

The Agnipurāṇa, which deals with poetics in chapters 336—346, includes chapters 337—341 devoted to the drama exclusively, approaching the Bhāratīya-Nāṭyaśāstra scheme even literally. Whilst, however, Bharata knows only ten types of drama, in the Agnipurāṇa there are enumerated its 27 varieties. Chapter 340 in particular treats of mimicry in detail. Here we are told, for example, that there are 13 different kinds of postures for the head, 7 different kinds of movements for the eye-brows, 36 ways of expressing sadness eyes, 58 love through eyes, 6 turns for the nose, 24 gestures for the hand, etc. Then, poetic embellishments themselves are divided into "embellishments of the sound" (śabdālaṅkāra) and "embellishments of the meaning" (arthālaṁkāra)—a division yet unknown to Bharata. The highly complicated figures of speech enumerated in the Agnipurāṇa show that this section on Indian poetics does not go to a very high antiquity².