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HEMACANDRA’S TREATMENT OF THE ALAMKARA AND RASA TRADITIONS
V. M. Kulkarni
At the outset I sincerely thank the authorities of the L. D. Institute of Indology for inviting me to deliver a lecture in Sri Hemacandra Navaśatābdi Vyākhyānamālā, organised under the auspicies of their Institute. Ācārya Hemacandra, the polymath, is a precious gift of the Jain community of Medieval Gujarat to our country. He was a great man not only of his age but of all ages. He had profound knowledge of almost all branches of learning known to Medieval India and he himself contributed to them by writing authentic compendiums/works which won him the covetable title Kali-kāla-sarvajña. I.pay homage to the sacred memory of this great Jain polymath/savant.
Now, I have been asked to speak on "Hemcandra's Treatment of the Alamkāra and Rasa Traditions". With the late Prof. R. C. Parikh I edited Hemacandra's Kävyānušāsana. This co-operative venture has a history. Prof. Parikh had just about that time brought out his critical edition of Mammala's Kavyaprakāśa with the Samketa Commentary of Someśvara Bhajta which was till then unpublished. Then I was working at the Gujarat College. He gave me a complimentary copy. When I glanced through the pages of the Samketa Commentary, I noticed questionmarks at a number of places indicating that those readings were corrupt. I was prompted by these question-marks to a comparative study and I wrote a review article correcting a large number of passages by identifying their sources, and gave it to Prof. Parikh for pre-view. He was highly impressed by that review article and within a few days he invited me to join him as co-editor in the task of bringing out a second revised edition of Hemcandra's Kävyänuśāsana, and I am happy to state that our edition has been welcomed by scholars in the field as a standard edition. I fully utilised the opportunity provided by Prof. Parikh, studied critically and comprehensively the work and the fruit of this study was my paper "The Sources of Hemacandra's Kävyānuśāsana". This paper was greatly appreciated by an outstanding alamkārika from Bengal, Prof. Siva Prasad Bhattācārya, who had earlier published his paper on "Hemacandra and the Eleventh Century Poeticists of Kashmir" in the Journal of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, 1957.
