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Introduction
theory, is its whole purport (tātparya). The two schools of Mimāṁsā
explain this semantic concept thus:
a) abhihitänvaya: ie words of a sentence first denote their indi-
vidual meanings and then the meaning of the complete sen-
tence is revealed.
b) anvitābhidhāna: ie a sentence as a whole reveals its meaning
through the words which are always inter-related and have no
separate enteaty, and only after the revelation of the meaning
words may be separately analysed grammatically.
History of literary criticism in Sanskrit covers a period of more
than two thousand years and throughout this period a good many
works on literary criticism and rhetoric have been written by expert
critics and scholars. In ancient Indian tradition, rhetoric along
with grammar was one of the prominent and dominant academic
disciplines and like some other branches of ancient and traditional
human knowledge (such as ānvīkṣiki or Science and Logic, trayi or
Religion and Philosophy, vārtā or Social science and Economics)
poetics and dramaturgy was cultivated and taught by eminent mas-
ters and erudite pundits. Etymology, versification, syntax, seman-
tics, rhetoric and prosody are the anatomy and physiology of
poetry. The ancient śāstras or branches of knowledge exhibit the
history of their development by establishing their theories and for-
mulating different codes for their practitioners. Ancient grammari-
ans have rightly observed that their approach to language is purely
analytical and has nothing to do with the aesthetic value of litera-
ture. But the rhetoricians' approach to art of poetry is both objec-
tive and subjective and, therefore, encompasses intimate analysis of
its syntactical and grammatical features as well as its artistic evalua-
tion through different angles which go by the name of alamkāra,
guna, riti, rasa etc.
Sanskrit literature has been made conspicuous for the excel-
lences of its most sophisticated grammar and philosophy of lan-
guage as well as most analytical and artistic concept of criticism. All
the fundamental theories of literary criticism, whether it is
alamkāra, guṇa, riti, vakrokti or dhvani, deal with grammatical fea-
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Original from
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
theory, is its whole purport (tātparya). The two schools of Mimāṁsā
explain this semantic concept thus:
a) abhihitänvaya: ie words of a sentence first denote their indi-
vidual meanings and then the meaning of the complete sen-
tence is revealed.
b) anvitābhidhāna: ie a sentence as a whole reveals its meaning
through the words which are always inter-related and have no
separate enteaty, and only after the revelation of the meaning
words may be separately analysed grammatically.
History of literary criticism in Sanskrit covers a period of more
than two thousand years and throughout this period a good many
works on literary criticism and rhetoric have been written by expert
critics and scholars. In ancient Indian tradition, rhetoric along
with grammar was one of the prominent and dominant academic
disciplines and like some other branches of ancient and traditional
human knowledge (such as ānvīkṣiki or Science and Logic, trayi or
Religion and Philosophy, vārtā or Social science and Economics)
poetics and dramaturgy was cultivated and taught by eminent mas-
ters and erudite pundits. Etymology, versification, syntax, seman-
tics, rhetoric and prosody are the anatomy and physiology of
poetry. The ancient śāstras or branches of knowledge exhibit the
history of their development by establishing their theories and for-
mulating different codes for their practitioners. Ancient grammari-
ans have rightly observed that their approach to language is purely
analytical and has nothing to do with the aesthetic value of litera-
ture. But the rhetoricians' approach to art of poetry is both objec-
tive and subjective and, therefore, encompasses intimate analysis of
its syntactical and grammatical features as well as its artistic evalua-
tion through different angles which go by the name of alamkāra,
guna, riti, rasa etc.
Sanskrit literature has been made conspicuous for the excel-
lences of its most sophisticated grammar and philosophy of lan-
guage as well as most analytical and artistic concept of criticism. All
the fundamental theories of literary criticism, whether it is
alamkāra, guṇa, riti, vakrokti or dhvani, deal with grammatical fea-
Digitized by
Original from
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN