Chapter 26.8 - Conclusion

"Mahamahopadhyaya Prof. S. Kuppuswami Sastriar puts the whole evolution of Sanskrit Poetics from Alankara to Aucitya in a Karika and illustrates it with a graph. Within the big circle of Ksemendra's Aucitya, there are three viewpoints in the shape of a triangle. The topmost point of the triangle is the undisputed Rasa of Bharata., which Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta accept as the soul of poetry and which the critics of Dhvani like Bhatta Nayaka and Mahimabhatta and other theorists like Kuntaka accept. Lower down, the two points of the triangle are the prominent theories, opposed to each other, regarding the process of realizing Rasa, viz., the Dhvani of Anandavardhana and the Anumiti of Mahimabhatta. Anumiti is mentioned only as 'upalaksana'and it stands for other anti-dhvani theories also, like the Bhavana and Bhoga of Bhatta Nayaka, Tatparya, etc. Within this triangle is a smaller circle named after the Vakrokti of Kuntaka. This circle again contains a triangle within it, the topmost of which is Vamana's Riti, a concept decidedly superior to and more comprehensive than the two lower points called Guna and Alankara of Dandin and Bhamaha. Beginning with Alamkara, the theories get superior or more comprehensive one by one. The Alankara-Guna-Riti modes of criticism deal with diction and style in the lower sense of the terms and are classed under one bigger current of the study of form culminating in the cc-comprehensive a Vakrokti-circle of Kuntaka, which is also an

approach to poetry from the formal side. The next, the bigger triangle begins the current of the study of the content, of the inner essence of poetry, viz., Rasa and the process, the technique by which the poet delineates it and the Sahrdaya gets it. All these are comprehended in the outermost circle of Aucitya which pertains to Rasa and everything else in Kavya. All the other theories only run at the back of Aucitya which leads the van. If there is a harmony or a beauty as such, innate in every part of a great poetry, it is this Auciti. 020 The Karika and the graph explained above are given below: aucitim anudhavanti sarve dhvanirasonnayah/ gunalankrtiritinam nayas canrjuvanmayah//" "All theories concerning Dhvani and Rasa, as also Gunas (qualities), Alankaras (figures of speech), Ritis (styles) that are off-beat literary forms race after propriety." TH: aucityam vakroktih ritih gunah alankrtih safer: anumitih Raghavan, V., Some Concepts of the Alankarasastra, The Adyar Library, Adyar, 1942, pp. 256-7.