301. 334 CHAPTER V

334 CHAPTER V

RUYYAKA.

HIS DATE.

There is no controversy about the date of Ruyyaka; because he belongs to a literary period in the history of Kashmir literature, the dates of the writers of which can be fixed with certainty in relation to Abhinavagupta, who mentions the dates of composition of at least three works of his. And Kuntaka was a younger contemporary of Abhinava. Mahima came after both, whom he quotes and criticises. Ruyyaka, being a commentator on Mahima's work, came after the latter. But the fact that deserves special notice is that Ruyyaka came fairly long after Mahima Bhatta. For, by the time Ruyyaka took up the Vyakti Viveka to write a commentary on it, there were already different readings of many passages, to which he refers1. He may therefore, be admitted to belong to the middle of the 12th century A. D.

Ruyyaka was a very great defender of the school of Dhvani. He was a well-read scholar of cool thinking. He not only answers all the main objections of Mahima Bhatta against the theory of Dhvani, as propounded by Ananda Vardhana, and clarifies the position of the Dhvani- vadin, but also points out the errors of Mahima Bhatta himself. He also refers to the self-contradictions of Mahima Bhatta in the Vyakti Viveka. He refutes the view that the word 'Dhvani' should be used for poetic composition in the secondary sense. He shows that those defects, which Mahima Bhatța points out in the verse of Kuntaka "Samrambhaḥ Karikīța" etc. are present in his own verse 'Kāvyakancana' etc., which so smells of arrogance. He wrote many works to which he refers in the course of his 1. V. V. 260.