Alamkaras mentioned by Vamana
by Pratim Bhattacharya | 2016 | 65,462 words
This page relates ‘: Alamkara-shastra according to Vishvanatha’ of the study on Alamkaras (‘figure of speech’) mentioned by Vamana in his Kavyalankara-sutra Vritti, a treatise dealing with the ancient Indian science of Rhetoric and Poetic elements. Vamana flourished in the 8th century and defined thirty-one varieties of Alamkara (lit. “anything which beautifies a Kavya or poetic composition”)
22 : Alaṃkāra-śāstra according to Viśvanātha
Viśvanātha’s Sāhityadarpaṇa is a concise and compact handbook of Sanskrit rhetoric and it deals with both Poetics and Dramaturgy. He deals with the poetic figures in the last chapter of his work alike Mammaṭā. He, like his predecessors Mammaṭāand Ruyyaka, has considered alaṃkāras as irregular or non-permanent attributes of word and its sense.
They only enrich the beauty of word and sense in poetic composition and thus indirectly enhance and embellish the ‘rasa-realisation’—
śabdārthayorasthirāye dharmāḥ śobhātiśāyinaḥ/
rasādīnupakurvanto'laṃkārāsteaṅgadādivat//
—Sāhitya-darpaṇa (of Viśvanātha) 10.1.