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FOREWORD I have great pleasure in writing a Foreword to this book which is based on the thesis presented by my friend, Prof. A. M. Upadhyay for the Ph.D. Degree in Sanskrit of Gujarat University, Ahmedabad. There are eleven Chapters in this ibook and, with the exception of the concluding chapter, A Synoptic View of Ācārya Hemacandra's Life and Works, each chapter treats of some of the leading topics or Concepts in Sanskrit Poetics (and Aesthetics) - a subject in which Indian mind has achieved particular excellence.
The present work mainly deals with a critical study of Acharya Hemacandra's Kāvyānusāsana. This work has been generally belittled and undeservedly criticised by the historians of Sanskrit Literature and Sanskrit Poetics. Keith dismisses it in four lines : "In the contemporary of Mammața, Hemacandra, we find a placid borrowing from Mammata, Abhinavagupta, Rājasekhara, the Vakrokti-jivita and so on. His Kāvyānuśāsana, with the Viveka by himself, is destitute of originality, but contains a section on dramaturgy." P. V. Kane condemns it in these words : "The Kāvyānušāsana is a compilation and exhibits hardly any originality. It borrows wholesale from the Kāvyamimāṁsā of Rajasekhara, the Kävyaprakāśa, the Dhvanyaloka and from Abhinavagupta's works." S. K. De in his Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics charges Hemachandra of plagiarism. These historians are however not fair to Acārya Hemacandra and his Kāvyānuśāsana. It is indeed surprising that such a scholarly, carefully designed, well organized work on poetics should have remained almost entirely unacknowledged. The work makes no claim to originality like Dhivanyaloka but Kavyānuśasana deserves to be treated as a respectable compendium of previous noteworthy writings, like Kāvya-prakāśa. Instead of briefly summarising in his own language the theories and doctrines of his predecessors, too illustrious to be mentioned by name, he presents them in their original form. We will be only betraying
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