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XX. Bhamaha the Rhetorician

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

It is a matter of great importance that Bhāmaha's work on Rhetoric has been discovered, and we are now able to judge of his position among Sanskrit authors. A careful and critical study of the work will amply repay the trouble of the reader ; but from a cursory reading I have been able to gather the following particulars of the author and his work, which I trust may be of general interest to the Sanskritists of the present day.

Type
Original Communications
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1905

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References

page 535 note 1

page 535 note 2 The reading here ought to be , since the ending does not, according to Pāṇini, change the first vowel of the word into its vṛiddhi.

page 536 note 1 Cf. Siddhānta-Kaumudī (p. 150) under Taddhita:— (, v, 1, 10).

page 536 note 2 Cf. Chandragomin, identical with Chandra the grammarian (see Peterson's Introduction to Subhāshitāvaḷī).

page 536 note 3 Cf. the following names of Buddha found in the Amarakōśa and Trikāṇḍaśēsha referred to Jina by Hēmachandra:—(1) Jina, (2) Sarvajña, (3) Bhagavān, (4) Sarvadarśī, (5) Arhan, (6) Vītarāga, etc.

page 540 note 1

page 540 note 2 The authorship of this verse is indubitable. Śārṅgadhara, who is always very careful in tracing stanzas to their original sources, specifically ascribes this verse to Daṇḍin and explains it as follows:—

page 541 note 1 Most of these quotations are also to be found in Namisādhu's commentary on Rudraṭa's Kāvyālaṅkāra, XI, 24, etc.

page 541 note 2 We know of a Pauranik king called Aśmaka, of the Solar race (55th in descent from Ikshvāku), son of Saudāsa and Madayantī: see Vishnu Purāṇa, IV, 4. 72. We also know that the Aśmakas are a tribe mentioned in the Āndhra Inscriptions as being ruled by Gautamīputra. The ministers of an Aśmaka king are mentioned in an inscription at Ajaṇṭā published in the Archœlogical Survey of Western India, vol. iv.

page 542 note 1 Vide p. 2, Rudraṭa's Kāvyālaṅkāra (Kāvyamālā Series).

page 542 note 2 Tri-kāṇḍa-śēsha, Brahma-varga, verse 26.

page 542 note 3 Several, scholars assume, without sufficient evidence, that Rudra (-bhaṭṭa), the author of Sriṅgāratilaka, and Rudraṭa, the author of Kāvyālaṅkāra, are one and the same. The story about the mortgage of the letter bha by one Rudrabhaṭṭa referred to in the Kannaḍa inscription of the time of the Raṭṭa king of Saundatti (Sáka 1151), cannot, I think, be taken as applicable to Rudraṭa of the Kāvyālaṅkāra, for the following reasons:— (1) The poet of the inscription was a native of Kuntala-dēśa (N. Cannara, Bellary, etc.), belonged to Atri-gōtra, was a ruler of eighteen villages, and seems to have been a Kannaḍiga, as may be judged from the names of his descendants cited in the inscription; whereas the author of Kāvyālaṅkāra was a Kashmirian (see Encyc. Brit., vol. xxi, p. 294, 9th ed.), was also known as Śatānanda, and was the son of Bhaṭṭa-Vāmuka—names peculiar to N. India. Unless these apparently diverging facts could be reconciled, no credence can be attached to the above theory. (2) All the later rhetoricians and commentators unanimously call the author of Kāvyālaṅkāra by the name Rudraṭa, and there is not a single case where he is called Rudra(-bhaṭṭa). Even Namisādhu (whose commentary is so very elaborate) calls him Rudraṭa, and does not refer to this story at all, though he lived not very long after Rudraṭa. (3) Even if the story be taken as applicable to this Rudraṭa, we will have still to identify one Rudra, a well-known rhetorician, before Rudraṭa (see above).

page 544 note 1 This word most probably refers to Guṇā ḍhya, the author of the Paiśāchi Bṛihatkathā. If not, we should infer from this allusion the existence before Bhāmaha of some Sanskrit work based on Guṇāḍhya's Bṛihatkathā.