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INTRODUCTION
with which the novelist-cum-poet works are more vague, more disparate,
not so exclusively oriented to problems of expression. It becomes legitimate
to discuss the conception of the total work of art, the manner in which it
reflects its time, the leading ideas of the period, and the like, because the
poet is to a great extent concerned with representations of these broader
issues. The issue of the genius and the imagination of the poet, under-
stood not as a minor sort of combinatory facility ¹65 but as the real
fountainhead of the unity-now seen as structure-of a very complicated
work, may with justification be posed as a category of serious criticism.
But when we deal with the poetry of classical India, these notions have
little force; they are in fact impositions upon the subject matter. The
kävya poetry was complete in the stanza. The ability of a poet like Kāli-
dāsa to compose great works was in fact an ability to compose many
beautiful stanzas; the multiplication of stanzas does not alter the critical
point of view, for it was not a creative multiplicity. The alamkāra poetics,
in describing the materials and the technique of stanzaic composition
(to which the notion of concrete subject matter was either conventional or
irrelevant), adopted the only possible point of view adequate to the poetry.
(b) Natya
The foregoing does not imply that there were no other points of view
expressed even in classical times. Indeed the internal history of Indian
poetics gives much evidence for competing doctrines. But it is conclusive
for our view that the doctrines were conceived of as competing only
when the poetic genres referred to or implied were losing or had lost their
independent status. 166 The dhvani doctrine testifies to this amalgamation
of previously separate traditions. During the early creative period of the
alamkāraśāstra, as far as the texts show that tradition (7th-10th centuries),
another poetics coexisted alongside the figurative with little evidence of
interaction: that poetics which took as its problem the drama, and which
elaborated as its decisive concept the rasa.
The oldest extant work of Indian "poetics" is devoted to the drama:
the Nāṭyaśāstra of Bharata.167 It is a compendium of topics relating to
105 Above, p. 67 re the figure bhāvika.
168 Viz. the dramatic and the stanzaic genres. See below.
167 Bibliography in De, HSP, I, pp. 44-45; we have used throughout this work the
edition of the Gaekwad Oriental Series, ed. M. Ramakrishna Kavi. Currently appear-
ing is the first complete English translation by Manomohan Ghosh, in the Bibliotheca
Indica, Calcutta, 1959-.
INTRODUCTION
with which the novelist-cum-poet works are more vague, more disparate,
not so exclusively oriented to problems of expression. It becomes legitimate
to discuss the conception of the total work of art, the manner in which it
reflects its time, the leading ideas of the period, and the like, because the
poet is to a great extent concerned with representations of these broader
issues. The issue of the genius and the imagination of the poet, under-
stood not as a minor sort of combinatory facility ¹65 but as the real
fountainhead of the unity-now seen as structure-of a very complicated
work, may with justification be posed as a category of serious criticism.
But when we deal with the poetry of classical India, these notions have
little force; they are in fact impositions upon the subject matter. The
kävya poetry was complete in the stanza. The ability of a poet like Kāli-
dāsa to compose great works was in fact an ability to compose many
beautiful stanzas; the multiplication of stanzas does not alter the critical
point of view, for it was not a creative multiplicity. The alamkāra poetics,
in describing the materials and the technique of stanzaic composition
(to which the notion of concrete subject matter was either conventional or
irrelevant), adopted the only possible point of view adequate to the poetry.
(b) Natya
The foregoing does not imply that there were no other points of view
expressed even in classical times. Indeed the internal history of Indian
poetics gives much evidence for competing doctrines. But it is conclusive
for our view that the doctrines were conceived of as competing only
when the poetic genres referred to or implied were losing or had lost their
independent status. 166 The dhvani doctrine testifies to this amalgamation
of previously separate traditions. During the early creative period of the
alamkāraśāstra, as far as the texts show that tradition (7th-10th centuries),
another poetics coexisted alongside the figurative with little evidence of
interaction: that poetics which took as its problem the drama, and which
elaborated as its decisive concept the rasa.
The oldest extant work of Indian "poetics" is devoted to the drama:
the Nāṭyaśāstra of Bharata.167 It is a compendium of topics relating to
105 Above, p. 67 re the figure bhāvika.
168 Viz. the dramatic and the stanzaic genres. See below.
167 Bibliography in De, HSP, I, pp. 44-45; we have used throughout this work the
edition of the Gaekwad Oriental Series, ed. M. Ramakrishna Kavi. Currently appear-
ing is the first complete English translation by Manomohan Ghosh, in the Bibliotheca
Indica, Calcutta, 1959-.