नाट्यशास्त्रम् (प्रथम भाग - अभिनवभारती एवं हिन्दी टीका सहित)

LXVIII

actually brings in a few other relevant matters scattered over other parts of this comprehensive work.

Any careful student of the Nāṭyaśāstra will easily discover that Dhanañjaya in restating the principles of dramaturgy in a more concise and systematic form has carried too far the work of his abridgment and left out quite a number of important matters. The special stress which he lays on the literary aspect of drama by his exclusion of its histrionics and other technical sides, very clearly indicates the general decadence of India's aesthetic culture at the time. With his professed reverence for the rules of the Nāṭyaśāstra (ascribed to Bharata), he seems to have misunderstood the aims and objects of its author who composed his work for the playwrights as well as the producers of plays.⁴³

But whatever be its limitation, the Daśarūpa, and its commentary Avaloka without which it was only half intelligible, attained in course of time a wide popularity and gradually superseded the Nāṭyaśāstra which seems to have become very rare with the passage of time. And the Daśarūpa so thoroughly supplanted other dramaturgic works as existed before its time, that with the exception of the Nāṭyaśāstra it is the most well-known work on the subject and very frequently drawn upon by the commentators of plays as well as later writers on dramaturgy like Viśvanātha.

(b) Nāṭakalakṣaṇa-ratnakośa. Slightly earlier than the Daśarūpa or contemporaneous with it,⁴⁴ is the Nāṭakalakṣaṇa-ratnakośa (briefly Nāṭakalakṣaṇa) of Sāgaranandin. Till about a quarter of a century ago our only knowledge of the work consisted of a few quotations from it in different commentaries. But in 1922 the late Sylvain Lévi discovered its Ms. in Nepal and published a report on its contents and other relevant matters (Journal Asiatique, 1922, p. 210). Since then the work has been carefully edited by M. Dillon and published (London, 1937). Just like Dhanañjaya, Sāgaranandin too discusses in his Nāṭakalakṣaṇa, dramaturgy in detail and mentions only incidentally certain topics connected with histrionics. But unlike the Daśarūpa the Nāṭakalakṣaṇa does not treat exclusively of dramaturgy, but refers to histrionics whenever necessary. Though the author professedly depends on no less than seven different authorities such as Harṣa-vikrama, Mātṛgupta, Garga, Aśmakuṭṭa, Nakha-kuṭṭa, Bādari (Bādarāyaṇa), and Bharata (the mythical author of the Nāṭyaśāstra) yet his dependence on the last-named one seems to be the greatest. A large number of passages have actually been borrowed by him from the same.⁴⁵ Besides these borrowings the extent of Sāgaranandin's

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⁴³ Ag. I. p. 7.
⁴⁴ See R. Kavi, 'Date of Sagara-Nandin' in Indian and Iranian Studies presented to D. Ross. Bombay. 1939. pp. 198ff.
⁴⁵ See NL. pp 143-144.