193. 216 SCHAPTER IV

216 SCHAPTER IV

importance of Ananda Vardhana, but for whom probably there would have been no Abhinavagupta's theory of meaning. Just as probably there would have been no Monistic Vedanta of Sankara, but for Badarāyaņa's Vedānta Sūtra.

The writers of this period can be divided into three groups as follows :- 1. The supporters of the theory.

2. Its opponents. 3. Those who considered it to be identical with Lakşanā.1

Among those of the first class are included also those, who believed that there was something like Dhvani, though they could not properly define it.

Before the writer of the Dhvani Karika, there was no book presenting the views of either the exponents or the opponents.2 This, however, does not mean that the earlier thinkers of Sanskrit poetics had no idea of Dhvani. The fact, on the contrary, is that the theory was well formulated and had its opponents too, long before the time of the Karika, but all that was simply a matter of oral tradition, handed down from generation to generation.8 The thinkers of the third school, in marked contrast with the above two, more or less, recorded their views in the books, which we still possess. To this class belong such early writers on poetics as Bhatta Udbhata, and Vamana. The view of the school of opponents also had begun to be systematised before Ananda Vardhana

1. Dh., L., 3. 2. Dh. L., 3. 3. Dh. L., 3. 4. Dh. L., 10.