4. CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

It has long been recognized that the Dhvanyaloka of the

ninth-century Kashmiri Anandavardhana marks a crucial turning

point in the development of Sanskrit literary theory

(Alamkārasāstra) . Anandavardhana's view Of dhvani

(suggestion), and particularly suggested rasa (aestheticized

emotion), as centrally important in the composition of

effective poetry comes ultimately to gain near-universal

acceptance among the practitioners of Alamkārasāstra. The

great seventeenth-century poet and literary theorist

Jagannātha Panditarāja speaks for most of the later

Alamkarikas when he declares Anandavardhana to have been "the

establisher of the course for Ālamkārikas" (alamkārika-sarani-

vyavasthapaka) .1

Modern scholars have likewise recognized the commanding

role played by the Dhvanyaloka in the development of

Alamkārasāstra. P.V. Kane hails it as "an epoch making work

in the history of Alamkara Literature" which "occupies the

same position in the Alamkarasastra as Pānini's sūtras in

Grammar and the Vedantasutras in Vedānta. #2 According to S.K.

De,

No other work on Sanskrit Poetics has indeed exerted so

1Jaggannatha Panditaraja, Rasagangadhara, ed. Kedāranātha

II, p. 559. Ojha, SarasvatI Bhavana Granthamala 113, Varanasi, 1981, Vol.

2P.V. Kane, History of Sanskrit Poetics, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1971 [fourth ed.], p. 161.

1

2

much influence as the Dhvanyaloka, which brought to a focus the tentative efforts of earlier thinkers, and by its thoroughness and masterly exposition eclipsed all its predecessors, dominating, as it did, thoughts of generations of theorists even down to the present time.3

K. Krishnamoorthy proclaims Anandavardhana's dhvani-theory to

be "the most perfect literary theory"4 and "the highest point

reached by Sanskrit literary criticism. "5

Yet I will argue that, despite the widespread recognition

of the crucial importance of Anandavardhana's work in the

development of Sanskrit literary theory and the attention that

has been lavished upon it, the transformation brought about in

the field of Alamkarasastra by the Dhvanyaloka has so far been

poorly understood. There are, as I see it, two main factors

which have impaired most previous efforts at assessing

Anandavardhana's role in the history of Alamkārasāstra. The

first is the largely unqualified adulation with which

Anandavardhana's dhvani-theory has generally been viewed; this

has led most scholars of Alamkārasāstra to denigrate and

downplay the significance of alternative theories of literary

aesthetics (both those of Anandavardhana's predecessors and

those of later theorists).

It is certainly true that Anandavardhana's theory

3S.K. De, History of Sanskrit Poetics, Calcutta, Firma KLM Private Ltd., 1976, Vol. II, p. 175.

'Krishnamoorthy, The Dhvanyaloka and its Critics, Mysore, Kavyalaya Publishers, 1968, p. 45.

5Krishnamoorthy, Essays in Sanskrit Criticism, Dharwar, Karnatak University, 1964, p. 62.

18

other; indeed, apart from a few later imitative works,27 it

is virtually in a class by itself. The overwhelming

preponderance of later Sanskrit poetry is, in Gerow's phrase,

"poetry on classical lines" and "within the classical kāvya

style", and it is this poetry (and not Gerow's "socially

alive" and "really viable" devotional lyrics) which continues

to absorb the attention of the Ālamkārikas (including

Anandavardhana and his followers)

As Gerow himself rightly notes, the kind of "devotional

lyric" he sees as the appropriate object of dhvani-based

literary analysis is typical not of Sanskrit poetry, but of

the poetry of the various regional vernaculars. Yet this

regional vernacular poetry is wholly ignored by

Anandavardhana, and, in fact, by all Sanskrit Ālamkārikas. It

is hard to see how one can reasonably argue that

Anandavardhana's reformulation of poetic theory was shaped by

a body of literature of which he displays no awareness

whatsoever.

There is no evidence in the Dhvanyaloka itself that the

question of religious devotion (bhakti) plays any special role

in Ānandavardhana's poetics (and Gerow makes no attempt to

find any). Certainly there are among the many poetic examples

cited in the Dhvanyaloka several benedictory or other verses

dedicated to the praise of one god or another (which might

27Cf. M. Krishnamachariar, History of Classical Sanskrit Literature, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1989 [reprint], pp. 343-4.

19

therefore reasonably be described as "devotional"). But this

is true of the works of Anandavardhana's predecessors as well;

there is nothing in Anandavardhana's selection of examples to

suggest that he sees "devotional" poetry as an especially

important type of poetry, or as an especially appropriate test

case for his aesthetic theory.

While Anandavardhana's poetic theory, with its emphasis

on rasa, does give greater prominence to the emotional content

of poetry than those of earlier Ālamkärikas, there is nothing

in Anandavardhana's presentation of this theory to indicate

that religious devotion is in any way privileged over other

forms of emotional content; quite the contrary.

Anandavardhana's acceptance of Udbhata's typology of rasas and.

rasa-like phenomena28 would seem to indicate that for him, as

for Udbhata, religious devotion is not a rasa at all; on this

view love for a god, like all forms of non-sexual love (e.g.

love for a parent, child, or teacher) is a manifestation of

the bhava rati ("attraction") which, not being directed toward

an appropriate sexual partner, cannot develop into full-

fledged śrīgāra- ("erotic") rasa.29 Of course, this

28T.e. rasa, bhava, rasa- and bhava-abhasa, and rasa-, bhava- and abhasa-prasama; cf. below, Chapter Two, pp. 52-58 and Chapter Four, p. 133.

29Certainly this is the view of Anandavardhana's most important followers, Abhinavagupta and Mammata (cf. Locana on Dhvanyaloka 2.5 [ed. Pattābhirāma SāstrI, Kashi Sanskrit Series 135, Benares, 1940], pp. 191-2], and Kavyaprakāsa, Mysore: Oriental Research Institute Series 120, 1974, Vol. I, pp. 284-5).

20

conclusion regarding Anandavardhana's view of religious

devotion is necessarily hypothetical, since Anandavardhana

nowhere explicitly discusses such devotion or its role in

poetry.

The term bhakti, in its sense of religious devotion,

occurs only once in the Dhvanyaloka, in a verse of his own

which Anandavardhana cites as an example of the merging

(samkara) of an expressed alamkāra with a type of dhvani;30

the devotional character of the verse has no bearing on its

exemplary function, and Anandavardhana allows it to pass

without comment. It seems clear, then, that there is nothing

in Anandavardhana's selection of literary examples, or in his

presentation of his aesthetic theory, to suggest that the role

of devotionalism in poetry concerned him at all, let alone

that it was a major driving force in his formulation of this

theory.

Furthermore, Gerow' s claim that Anandavardhana's

transformation of literary theory is driven by changes in

literature itself completely ignores, and flies in the face

of, Anandavardhana's own explanation of the significance of

his theory and its relation to literary practice.

Anandavardhana defends his theoretically novel concept of

dhvani not with reference to some new body of dhvani-centered

poetry, but by attempting to demonstrate the pervasive

presence of dhvani in the recognized classics of Sanskrit

30Dhvanyaloka, op. cit., pp. 508-9.

21

literature -- the very same literature with which earlier

Alamkarikas were most centrally concerned. Anandavardhana

repeatedly argues that dhvani has played a central role in

poetry from its very origins.31 By his account, previous

Ālamkārikas failed to discuss dhvani not because they dealt

with an earlier literature in which dhvani played little or no

role, but because their analysis focussed on the directly

expressed level of meaning in poetry, rather than its

implicit, suggested meaning (conveyed by dhvani) .32

So, Anandavardhana's own account of his theory stresses

its applicability to just that literature for which Gerow

finds it to be inappropriate. There is nothing in

Anandavardhana's explanation of dhvani, or in his selection of

verses which exemplify it, to indicate that his innovations in

aesthetic theory are prompted by the rise of a new kind of

"devotional lyric" poetry. It is hard to see anything in

Anandavardhana's aesthetic theory or analytic practice which

would support Gerow's account of the rise of dhvani-based

poetics. What really drives this account is not a close

analysis of the works of Anandavardhana and his followers, or

of the development of Sanskrit literature during this period,

but an unquestioned assumption about the relationship between

poetic theory and practice.

31Cf. Dhvanyaloka, op. cit., pp. 84-93, 364-5, 529ff. and below, Chapter Four, p. 132.

32Dhvanyaloka, op. cit., pp. 47-49.

22

It is Gerow's contention that "Poetics, in India as

anywhere else, follows poetry"; for him, a major shift in

poetic theory necessarily presupposes, and can only be

explained by, a change in poetic practice. Anandavardhana' s

work certainly represents such a theoretical shift, so some

such change in literary practice must have taken place.

Devotional fervor is an emotional state, and Anandavardhana's

theory gives greater prominence to the emotional content of

poetry than its predecessors, so the rise of the "devotional

lyric" (though evident primarily in the vernacular

literatures -- ignored by the Ālamkārikas -- and certainly not

typical even of late Sanskrit poetry) seems a likely candidate

for such a theory-transforming change. The assumption that

changes in literary theory necessarily derive from changes in

literary practice forecloses another possibility: that a shift

in theory may be prompted by developments within the community

of theoreticians. As we shall see, this possibility opens a

far more promising avenue for explaining the rise of the

dhvani-theory and the eventual displacement of the formalist

poetic of the early Alamkarikas -- one which certainly finds

far more support in the works of Anandavardhana, his critics,

and his followers.

A useful model for analyzing the theoretical

transformation in ninth-century Kashmiri Alamkarasāstra can be

found in the works of the historian and philosopher of

science, Thomas Kuhn. In his The Structure of Scientific

23

Revolutions, Kuhn outlines a pattern of historical development

he finds to be typical of the sciences. Kuhn argues that,

contrary to the stereoptypical view, scientific knowledge does

not advance through a steady process of cumulative discovery.

Rather, an examination of the history of scientific knowledge

in any field reveals a discontinuous pattern of development:

long periods of theoretical and methodological stability

punctuated by occasional crises in which new theories and

modes of scientific practice displace existing ones -- what

Kuhn calls scientific revolutions. I would argue that the

rise of the dhvani-theory and its displacement of the

formalist mode of aesthetic analysis practiced by the early

Älamkärikas may profitably be viewed as something very like a

Kuhnian "scientific revolution".33

For Kuhn, the discontinuous, non-cumulative development

of scientific knowledge is explained by nature of scientific

33Whether or not we would wish to describe Alamkārasāstra as a science, the community of Alamkārikas possesses many of the features Kuhn sees as typical of scientific communities, and as crucially relevant to the pattern of development they display (cf. Kuhn, op. cit., pp. 162ff). Alamkārasāstra is practiced by a small community of highly trained specialists; the primary audience for Alamkara works (or at least the audience whose judgement seems to count most in determining the success or failure of such works) is the Ālamārika community itself. For long periods of time, members of the community operate under conditions of general agreement regarding the nature of their subject matter and the methods appropriate to their field. Kuhn himself observes that the kind of community structure he sees as typical of the sciences

Western may sometimes be observed in other fields; for example, in painting during the period when representation was presumed to be its proper goal (ibid., p. realistic

161. .

24

communities and of the "paradigms" which guide their

researches. For Kuhn, what defines a mature scientific

community is its operation in accordance with a particular

paradigm -- a body of theoretical and methodological premises,

largely tacit, which regulate the activities of members of the

communities. The paradigm is a "constellation of group

commitments" which not only shapes a scientific community's

view of the world, but provides criteria for deciding what

problems constitute the legitimate concerns of scientific

research and what kinds of explanations may be countenanced as

solutions to such problems."4

A scientific community whose activities are governed by

a stable paradigm is practicing what Kuhn calls "normal

science". During periods of normal science the currently

reigning paradigm is assumed without question to be adequate

to the task of explaining those phenomena with which the

scientific community in question is concerned. Normal

scientific activity is not designed in any way to test the

validity of the paradigm or to seek alternatives to it; as

Kuhn says, "Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact

or theory and, when successful, finds none. "35 Rather,

taking the validity of the paradigm for granted, members of

the scientific community seek, through their researches, to

34Cf. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago University of Chicago Press enlarged ed.], 1970], pp. 40-42, 181-187. [second

35Ibid., p. 52.

25

extend the application of the paradigm to previously

unexplained phenomena, to derive more precise predictions from

existing theory (and to produce more precise experimental data

to confirm these predictions), and to show how any apparently

anomalous data can be adequately accounted for in terms of

existing theory.36

It is precisely because they accept the validity of their

paradigm without question that normal scientific communities

are so successful in producing detailed and specific

explanations of the phenomena with which they deal. According

to Kuhn,

once the reception of a common paradigm has freed the scientific community from the examine its first principles, need constantly to re- the members of that community can concentrate exclusively upon the subtlest and most esoteric of the phenomena that concern it. Inevitably that does increase both the effectiveness and the efficiency with which the group as a whole solves new problems.37

And,

By focusing attention on a small range of relatively esoteric problems, the paradigm forces scientists to investigate some part of nature in a detail and depth that would otherwise be unimaginable.38

The existence of a shared paradigm allows for a concentration

of professional attention and investigative effort which would

not otherwise be possible, and thereby greatly enhances the

problem-solving ability of the community for which the

36Ibid., pp. 23ff.

37Ibid., pp. 163-4.

38Tbid., p. 24.

26

paradigm is operative.

Yet a shared paradigm will not always guide research

effectively. The paradigm creates a set of expectations,

often very specific, regarding experimental results: when

observed data fail to conform to these expectations, they

represent an anomaly which poses a problem for scientists.

All scientific theories are regularly confronted by such

anomalies, but these do not ordinarily threaten the stability

of the dominant paradigm; it is assumed that they will

eventually be resolved by further research or by elaboration

of the theory in question. However, if such anomalies prove

to be sufficiently numerous or intractable, they create a

sense of crisis in the field, possibly paving the way for the

rise of a new paradigm.39

It is only when the dominant paradigm is faltering in

this way that the opportunity for radical innovation arises;

as long as the current paradigm serves as an effective guide

for research, there is nothing to prompt a search for

alternatives.40 Under such conditions of crisis, a new

theory may be propounded -- one under which the anomalies

confronting existing theory are satisfactorily accounted for.

If the new theory is able to gain even a few converts, and if

it proves for them to be an effective guide for further

research, it will gradually come to be seen as an attractive

39Cf. ibid., pp. 66ff. and pp. 77-80.

40Cf. ibid., p. 76.

27

alternative to the currently dominant theory. The new theory

(and, with it, a new set of research practices and

methodological commitments) will gain more and more adherents,

especially among new entrants to the field, and eventually

will come to dominate the field. Adherents of older theories

or modes of practice will fade from relevance and eventually

die off, and the community will embark on a new period of

normal scientific research, under the guidance of a new

paradigm.

This kind of shift in group commitments, in which one

paradigm is abandoned in favor of another, is what Kuhn calls

a "scientific revolution". The shift to a new paradigm

entails not merely an addition to or expansion of existing

scientific knowledge, but rather a fundamental transformation

and reconfiguration of it. Indeed, as Kuhn sees it, the

transformation of existing knowledge brought on by a paradigm

shift is so radical that, in a very real sense, scientists

operating under a new paradigm are living in a new and

different world.i1

Seen in the light of the Kuhnian model of paradigm-guided

research, the development of Kashmiri Alamkārasastra and

Anandavardhana's role within it become more readily

explicable. Those features of pre-Anandavardhana and of post-

Mammata Alamkārasāstra which have so troubled and even

repelled modern scholars -- its persistent focus on matters of

41Ibid., pp. 111ff.

28

detail and its near total unconcern with fundamental aesthetic

questions -- become not merely understandable but entirely

predictable. During these periods, the behavior of

Ālamkārikas is precisely what one would expect of a research

community engaged in "normal science". As long as the

formalist paradigm governing the researches of the early

Ālamkārikas was functioning effectively, they might be

expected to ignore fundamental questions and concentrate their

attention on more specific and esoteric problems.42 It is

only when the dominant paradigm is faltering and a new

paradigm candidate is struggling for acceptance that one would

expect consideration of fundamental theoretical issues to come

42Given the tendency to divide the early Alamkārikas into rival schools (the alamkara-, rīti- and rasa-schools -- cf. above, pp. 36-37), one could argue that the history of the field before Anandavardhana might more appropriately be viewed as its "pre-paradigm period" -- a time when research is carried on under multiple, incompatible theories, and their is as yet no single dominant paradigm (ibid., pp. 10ff). I will argue, however (below, Chapter Two, pp. 45-47), that the grouping of the early Alamkarikas into "schools" is superficial and masks a basic agreement among them regarding the nature of poetic beauty and the proper methods of poetic analysis. case, significant deviation from an alamkāra-based poetic In any

emerges only in the works of Vamana (c. 800 AD) and Rudrata (c. 825 AD) -- Dandin [c. 750 AD], often classified with Vamana as a member of the "riti-school", states clearly that all elements which beautify poetic language, including gunas, are alamkāras (cf. Kāvyādarša 2.1-3). Both Vamana and Rudrata incorporate thorough analyses of the alamkaras in their work, but give prominence to other poetic elements which they treat as distinct from the alamkaras: gunas ("qualities", the formal constituents of ritis) in Vamana's case, rasa in Rudrata's. Both these authors are near predecessors of Anandavardhana, and the deviations from alamkära-based analysis in their works may be seen as a preliminary indication of breakdown in the dominant paradigm; as Kuhn says, "proliferation of versions of a theory is a very usual symptom of crisis" (Ibid., p. 71).

29

to the fore -- exactly what happened in Kashmiri Alamkārasastra

beginning in the mid-ninth century. When, in the wake of

Mammata's Kavyaprakaśa, controversy over Anandavardhana's

dhvani subsides and the new paradigm reigns unchallenged,

questions regarding the fundamental bases of the field recede

from prominence and attention is once again directed toward

more specialized problems.

The transformation of Alamkāraśāstra initiated by

Ānandavardhana also resembles a scientific revolution in that

it totally reconfigures existing knowledge in the field,

rather than merely adding something to it. Anandavardhana's

work does not simply add a previously unrecognized poetic

element -- dhvani -- to those already dealt with by earlier

theorists; rather, it develops a completely new understanding

of the nature of poetic beauty and of the kind of question

with which literary analysis must deal.

For the early Ālamkarikas, poetry is language rendered

beautiful by the incorporation within it of a variety of

individually beautiful formal components (figures of speech,

etc.); these beautifying components function independently,

and without regard to the contexts in which they are employed.

The role of literary analysis, as these early theorists see

it, is to provide a catalogue, as exhaustive as possible, of

the formal elements which poets have employed or may employ to

beautify their works (and of those features [dosas -- "poetic

defects"] which detract from the beauty of a work and should

30

be avoided) .

Ānandavardhana completely overturns this particularistic

understanding of literary beauty. For him, the formal

components of a poetic work do not operate independently;

rather, they are part of a hierarchically ordered and

functionally unified whole. Any coherent literary work must

be directed toward a single, overriding goal -- typically, the

communication of a single, dominant rasa -- to which all the

component elements of the work must be directly or indirectly

subordinated. Hence, the alamkäras and other formal poetic

features analyzed by previous Alamkārikas are to be valued not

for their intrinsic beauty, but for their ability to

contribute to the overall goals of the particular works in

which they are employed. Questions of context, wholly

irrelevant to earlier literary analysis, suddenly assume

tremendous importance. Features which are aesthetically

valuable in one setting may be detrimental in another,

depending on the larger aesthetic goals of the works or

passages in which they are introduced. Obviously, literary

analysis can no longer limit itself to the cataloguing of

discrete formal features. These features must be considered

not in isolation, but with a view toward their functional

relationships with each other and with the larger textual

units in which they are embedded. One must always ask not

only whether a particular element is beautiful in and of

itself, but whether it is appropriate to the aesthetic

31

objective of the work viewed as a whole. By shifting the

focus of attention from the isolated components of poetic

language to the complete, functionally unified text,

Anandavardhana opens up new possibilities in the area of

literary criticism; literary analysis demands, in addition to

the study of generalized and repeatable poetic features, the

examination of particular existing literary compositions,

viewed as wholes. Thus Anandavardhana's revolutionary

transformation of poetic theory entails a completely new

understanding of the nature of literary beauty and of the

proper task of literary analysis.

In his application of Kuhnian paradigm-analysis to the

history of political theory, J.G.A. Pocock introduces several

notions which would seem to shed a useful light on the

development of Kashmiri Alamkarasastra from the ninth to the

eleventh century. One is the idea that paradigms may

sometimes be transferred from one discipline to another; he

argues that the paradigms of legal, theological, or economic

theory have at times been brought into play in the realm of

political thought, shaping its development in important ways.

Another is the idea that paradigm transference of this kind

may have consequences unforeseen and unintended by those who

bring it about. For Pocock, the paradigms governing political

theory are "languages", sets of conceptual terms and

categories through which discussion is conducted; when a new

"language" is introduced, it brings with it a new set of

32

presuppositions and implications, foregrounding certain issues

and marginalizing others. By applying a new conceptual

vocabulary within an existing field, one alters the

possibilities of expression within that field in ways one

cannot control.43

The transformation of Kashmiri Alamkärasastra in the

ninth century involves a paradigm transfer of this kind. As

we shall see, the hierarchical model of textual organization

on which Anandavardhana bases his approach to literary

analysis is not original to him. It is rather the

application, within the realm of Alamkārasastra, of a model

first developed in the field of MImamsa (Vedic exegesis). For

the Mimamsakas any coherent text (Vedic or otherwise) must be

functionally unified; the text must have a single, overriding

purpose, and all its component elements must ultimately

subserve this purpose. Interpretation must proceed

teleologically: the significance of every sentence, every

word, every morpheme in a text must be assessed in terms of

its relation to some single, ultimate goal. The need to

maintain the functional unity of complete texts guides the

43Cf. J.G.A. Pocock, Politics, Lanquage and Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989 [second ed.]), pp. 3-41 (especially pp. 21-26). The usefulness of Pocock's paradigm analysis for the history of political theory is best displayed in his The Macchiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), which carefully charts the deployment of the conceptual vocabulary of Italian republicanism in seventeenth century English constitutional renaissance

theory and its effects on the subsequent development of British and early American political thought.

33

Mīmamsakas at every turn in their interpretation of particular

Vedic words and sentences. Anandavardhana applies the same

understanding of textual coherence to the analysis of literary

works and, with it, many of the specific interpretive concepts

and techniques devised by the Mīmamsakas. The language of

Mīmāmsa interpretive theory suddenly assumes a major role in

the discussion of literary texts, a role which it continues to

bear in the works of later Ālamkārikas.

However, the adoption of the Mimamsakas' mode of talking

and thinking about texts pushes Alamkārasastra in directions

seemingly unintended by Anandavardhana himself.

Anandavardhana's interest in teleological text analysis of the

kind practiced by the Mīmamsakas stems primarily from its

usefulness as an evaluative tool. It provides a reliable

criterion for literary criticism -- one may judge existing

literary works in terms of the effectiveness with which their

individual components work together to convey a single,

predominant rasa -- and a basis for the formulation of rules to

guide future poets in composing aesthetically effective

works -- certain features of composition may be shown to be

appropriate for works intended to convey one rasa but

inappropriate for works intended to convey another. But the

adoption of the Mimamsa interpretive paradigm raises new

theoretical questions which increasingly absorb the attention

of the Kashmiri Alamkarikas, and which serve ultimately to

marginalize considerations of literary criticism and

34

compositional rules.44 Discussion comes to focus more and

more on the cognitive process by which poetic meaning is

understood, and less and less on the requirements of poetic

composition; Alamkārasāstra becomes something like an

epistemology of poetic comprehension, just as Mimamsa serves,

in effect, as an epistemology of Vedic comprehension.45

Chapter Two of this dissertation will examine the

paradigm guiding the analyses of Anandavardhana's predecessors

in the field of Alamkarasastra, and the anomalies which faced

these authors in their efforts to explain the role of rasa in

poetry -- anomalies which paved the way for Anandavardhana's

theoretical innovations. Chapter Three will briefly examine

the Mimamsakas' approach to textual analysis. Chapters Four

through Six will deal with Anandavardhana's application of

this teleological mode of analysis to the study of poetic

975 44The one major exception to this tendency is Kuntaka (c.

Anandavardhana's pioneering efforts in the area of literary AD) who, in his Vakroktijīvita, follows up on

criticism and for the most part sidesteps the questions of semantic theory with which his contemporaries concern themselves. But, as we shall see (cf. below, Chapter Eight), Kuntaka's avoidance of these questions is coupled with a general rejection of Anandavardhana's teleological, Mīmāmsa- derived model of textual coherence. Precisely because he rejects the Mimamsa paradigm and avoids the semantic questions it raises, Kuntaka's work, whatever its intrinsic merits, is largely irrelevant to what have by his time become the central

Ālamkārikas. questions of Alamkarasastra, and is generally ignored by later

45The real mission of Mimamsa is not to discover the proper procedure for particular rituals enjoined in the Veda -- this is already common knowledge -- but to show how exactly we can know that the Vedic text authorizes just this procedure and no other.

35

language, the encounter with extra-poetic language philosophy

precipitated by his new theory of literary semantics, and his

efforts in the area of literary criticism. Chapters Seven

through Ten will examine the response to Anandavardhana's

theoretical innovations in the works of the major Kashmiri

Alamkärikas up to the end of the eleventh century (after which

time the controversy raised by Anandavardhana's work subsides

and the dhvani-theory gains more or less universal

acceptance) .46

46The confinement of attention to Kashmir is justifiable. During this period Kashmiri Alamkarasastra is entirely self- contained; while literary and dramatic theorists working outside Kashmir (e.g. Rajasekhara [c. 900], Dhanika [c. 1000], and Bhoja [c. 1050]) are well aware of recent developments in Kashmiri aesthetic theory and respond to them in their works, the Kashmiri theorists wholly ignore these non-Kashmiri works. This intellectual isolation is not general: while the Kashmiri Ālamkārikas pay no attention to non-Kashmiri works on aesthetic theory, they quickly become aware of, and draw examples from, new literary works from outside Kashmir -- e.g., while Rajasekhara's work on poetics is entirely overlooked, his plays, especially his Balaramayana, are among the most frequently quoted texts in late-tenth and eleventh century Kashmiri works on aesthetic theory.