Handbook of Classical Sanskrit Rhetoric /38

xxvi
 
period. A Handbook of Classical Sanskrit Rhetoric
 
period. Along with other topics of poetics, rhetoric and prosody

and vocabulary have been included. Here 19 alamṃkāras are defined

and classified along with their divisions (7 types of citra, 16 types of

prahelikā, and 10 types of yamaka).
 

 
10-11. Sarasvatiī-kaṇṭhābharaṇa and Śṛngāraprakāśa : Bhoja, the

king of Dhārā (now in Madhya Pradesh), is the author of these two

texts on poetics. He was a great monarch, a valiant fighter, famous

for many-sided qualities head and heart, a prolific writer, critic and

scholar and had to his credit 84 works though most of them are lost

to us. Both of his texts on poetics are voluminous in nature and
contain the entire topics of literary ci
contain the entire topics of literary criticism. But the Sarasvatiī-
kantha
kaṇṭhābharaṇa (or The Necklace of the Goddess of Learning), divided

into 5 chapters containing 63 kārikās along with their vṛttis, is basi-

cally a compendium of Sanskrit poetics. Here he defines and illus-

trates 72 alamṃkāras (24 figures of sound, 24 figures of sense and 24

mixed figures of sound and sense). The SrngaŚṛngāraprakāśa (or

Exposition of the Sublime Aestietic Realisation) is perhaps the most

voluminous work on Sanskrit poetics and deals with both literary

criticism and dramatics. Like Viṣvanātha Bhoja also discusses the

grammatical aspects of language. His main thesis centres round
the conception of Sr
the conception of Śṛngara (ie the height of aesthetic delight and

the sublimation of man's delightful identity manifested through

artistic contemplation) and that is why his work is entitled as

Śrngaraprakāśa. This book is divided into 36 chapters. The same

type of classification and the number of figures have been dis-

cussed here. Bhoja gives many new figures (such as guṇa, riīti, vṛtti,
racanã
racanā) and some of them are peculiarly his own discovery and not

to be found anywhere either in former or in later works. He has

also included some old and distinguished figures into his new-

found names.
 

 
12. Käāvyaprakāśa: Mammața (1050-1100 AD), the reputed

scholar and critic of Kashmir, is the author of the Kāvyaprakāśa (or

Manifestation of the Art of Poetry) which within a few centuries

became very famous and one of the standard works on Sanskrit

poetics. He is referred to as the brother of Ubaṭa and Kaiyaṭa (com-

mentators of the Vedas and the Mahābhāṣya of Patanñjali respec-
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