Sambodhi 2006 Vol 30

Author(s): J B Shah, N M Kansara
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 31

RUDRAȚA'S TREATMENT OF RASA
VIJAY PANDYA
Rudrata occupies a somewhat peculiar position in the history of Sanskrit poetics. In him finds a culmination of the old school of Alamkāra or one may say, he is the last Alamkārika belonging to the older school of Alamkāra, beginning with Bhämaha. Dandin and Vamana. He seems to be a slightly senior contemporary of Anandavardhana, though Anandavardhana does not take any notice of him.
In his kāvyālamkāra, Rudrata mainly deals with the kävyalamkāras, devoting some ten chapters to it and out of the remaining six chapters he treats Rasa in four and remaining two to blemishes in poetry and other sundry matters. So the treatment of alamkāras forms the main bulk of his kāvyālamkāra treatise, as his commentator Namisādhu points out in his commentary I CARI delfinaria Tere RTISTI: As noted above, he is the last of the early Alamkāra tradition and he can be called the first available, syncretist of Sanskrit Sāhityaśāstra or literary criticism, as for the first time he includes the topics of natyaśāstra i.e. chapters on hero, heroine. etc. in his work, whose main thrust, otherwise is alamkāra. Though while calling him to be a syncretist, it is to be made clear that Rudrata does not attempt at any theoretical synthesis of kavya and drama or alamkāra and rasa.
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Rudrata's way of treatment of rasa is such that a modern historian would call him and not incorrectly either, belonging properly to the alaṁkāra school.2
Rudrata's treatment of rasa has some unique features, though not taken any note of by the modern historians of the Sanskrit poetics. In his treatment of rasa, Rudrata is preceded by Bharatamuni. However, Rudrata has not followed Bharatamuni in his treatment of rasa as Rudrata does not quote ubiquitous rasasūtra, enunciated by Bhatatamuni. Again Bharatamuni has enumerated only eight