काव्यमीमांसा (महाकवि राजशेखर - कवि-रहस्य एवं देश-विभाग सटीक)

notice the towering figures of Dharmakīrti, Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla. This period was immediately preceding the period in which Rājaśekhara was born and flourished, and it is very unlikely that he would not be influenced by the endeavours of his predecessors in writing a comprehensive work and reduce the Alaṅkāra literature to a system. The time was also not unripe for such an attempt. Round the classical work of Bharata, already had grown a considerable literature which was enriched with the contributions of Bhāmaha, Daṇḍin, Rudraṭa and Ānandavardhana. Such a rich material on the one hand pressing for a com- prehensive review, and the comprehensive works of the philo- sophical systems on the other, must have created an enthusiasm in the mind of Rājaśekhara and actuated him to make an attempt to reduce the Alaṅkāra literature to a system by writing an encyclopædic work like the present one-the Kāvyamīmāṁsā- which was to treat the different methods of poetics and the schools of literary criticism, with a view to put everything on a tho- roughly scientific basis. In doing so, he not only followed in the footsteps of Kauṭilya and Vātsyāyana, in arranging the subject- matter, but also the great authors of Dharmamīmāṁsā and Brah- mamīmāṁsā; and this is evident from the very title of his work, the Kāvyamīmāṁsā. He also ascribes to his Kāvyamīmāṁsā, a divine origin following in the wake of other great systems, and gives for the first time a legendary list of succession of Gurus and disciples, and of the progenitors of the different branches of the science of poetics. The division of his subject-matter in eighteen branches like the eighteen points of law is not only novel but also interesting and systematic. In this, however, Rājaśekhara was forestalled to a certain extent by Rudraṭa,¹ but nevertheless his classification is much fuller and much more exhaustive. Rudraṭa, for instance, had no knowledge of such branches as Vainodika, Aupaniṣadika, etc. which were Rājaśekhara's own. The Aupaniṣadika chapter occurs also in the Arthaśāstra and the Kāmasūtra, and this may have induced the present author to include a chapter on Aupa- niṣadika in his Alaṅkāra work, giving directions to dullards as to how through Mantras and such other mystic means one may attain poetical eminence, when natural gifts are entirely wanting.

1. See. Infra Notes. pp. 123-124. 3