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xxvi
 
A Handbook of Classical Sanskrit Rhetoric
 
period. Along with other topics of poetics, rhetoric and prosody
and vocabulary have been included. Here 19 alamkāras are defined
and classified along with their divisions (7 types of citra, 16 types of
prahelikā, and 10 types of yamaka).
 
10-11. Sarasvati-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 ciriticism. But the Sarasvati-
kanthabharaṇa (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 alamkāras (24 figures of sound, 24 figurs of sense and 24
mixed figures of sound and sense). The Srngaraprakāśa (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 Srngara (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, riti, vṛtti,
racanã) 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. Kävyaprakāśa: 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 Patanjali respec-
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN