Studies in Jain Literature

SR No.: 001868
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: V M Kulkarni
Publisher: Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre
Publication Year: 2001
Total Pages: 114
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Literature, & Story
File Size: 14 MB

Page 198

180 STUDIES IN JAIN LITERATURE published his paper on "Hemacandra and the Eleventh Century Poeticians of Kashmir" in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, 1957. Hemacandra and The alamkara tradition Let us begin with Hemacandra and the alamkara tradition. It appears that in ancient times kavya and natya (poems and plays) were looked upon as separate compartments. Poetics developed in distinction from dramaturgy. There were certainly predecessors of Bhamaha and Dandi whose works they have freely used but which are no longer extant. These alamkarikas--writers on poetics, literary thinkers in the course of their aesthetic investigation discovered that the prime source of beauty in kavya is the alamkaras. This discovery of theirs gave the name alamkarasastra to poetics, and the word alamkarika or alamkarakara for a writer on poetics. The word alamkara in its widest sense denotes saundarya or vakrokti or atisayokti (beauty, figurative speech or an extraordinary striking mode of expression). It is at the basis of each and every alamkara. It constitutes the very life of kavya (poetry). It distinguishes kavya from sastra (science) or ordinary everyday language of life (lokaprasiddhabhasavyavahara). It is a deviation from ordinary or natural mode of expressing things or facts of any sort in order to produce a certain striking effect (vicchitti or vaicitrya) or an imaginative turn of speech (bhangibhaniti). In this sense it applies to figures of speech because they beautify kavya. Dandi uses the term alaskara in the restricted sense of figures of speech and in the widest sense also to cover anything which lends beauty to the poem : काव्यशोभाकरान्धर्मानलंकारान् प्रचक्षते। a arafu fara menant soit bolatait agafa 11 - Kavyadarsa II. 1 and, यच्च सन्ध्यङ्ग-वृत्त्यङ्ग-लक्षणाद्यागमान्तरे / aforafta agunichaita 7: |--Kavyadarsa II. 367 Bhamaha, the greatest exponent of the alamkara tradition, insists on the alamkaras as the most essential feature of kavya. He emphatically declares : 7 colouf frete farifa afiangy 1 ---Kavyalamkara I. 13cd Not that these alamkarikas were not aware of the rasa theory but they gave the rasas 'a subordinate place from the point of view of the alamkarikas who held rasa or rasadi (dhvani) to be the soul of poetry.Bhamaha and others defined such alamkaras as rasavat, preyas etc., 'making rasas subordinate to alamkaras. Mammata defines poetry as