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passages to corroborate his views so as to make his work as authentic, reliable and durable as possible. It was to prepare "a good text-book lucidly setting forth various topics of Alamkāraśāstra in the very words of the masters and serving as a good introduction to the study of the well known authorities that Hemachandra wrote the Kavyānušāsana, and not to lay claim to any unique originality.297 And after going through the whole work, at three levels, it can be said with confidence that the Kāvyānušāsana represents a remarkable attempt at presenting a wide range of poetical topics in terms of the Rasadhvani doctrine. Thus, in the field of poetics, Hemachandra's. work, as a scholar and a teacher, "is far more important than of those who put forward extracts from different authors or commentators and heap them up in a loose disorderly fashion. In a country where much of its valuable heritage has faced the risk of being irretrievably lost, the services of such writers can hardly be overestimated."2 98
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