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The historicity of poetics
1) In its broadest sense, poetics at its text-inception was concerned with two different subject matters— natya, the 'Sanskrit' drama, and 'kavya', Sanskrit court (esp. epic) poetry. So strongly distinctive are the subject matters, by style, by means of composition, by aesthetic effect, that it is only in a nominal sense that we speak of "a" poetics at this period; in fact, there are two poetics, each with its "proper" subject matter and methods (and this continues to be the case even later, though not in the radical sense we dimly perceive ab origine). Natya-sastra, faced with a genre whose means of expression were largely, and perhaps even primarily, non-verbal (abhinaya, characterization, setting, etc.) seems to have identified its first problem in the question, "What indeed did (or 'could') the drama express?". And to have sketched a solution in terms of a different kind of emotional response (termed 'rasa') than the emotion ('bhava') that is commonplace in every experience. Alamkara-Sastra, on the other hand, employs only one means of expression— the verbal— whose expressive capacity is not subject to any naive doubt. Other possible means of expression— even abhinaya— have to be conveyed in words. The problem of kavya-sastra, was then seen in differentiating that particular expression we call "poetic" from other verbal means, sastra and narrative. And it sought a solution to this problem not in a theory of response but in theory of language that could reconcile grammatically (for it is language) with a comprehension or an understanding that did not appear to be derived from it. It is taken for granted that in the uses of language we consider normal, the understanding derived from a sentence is founded directly upon the powers of the words or their combination (the respective views of the two Mimamsa schools most cogently at issue here), a relation that can be conveniently termed denotative, on which is based the propositional truth value of the utterance. The distinctive feature of poetry, in this basic sense, lies in its sentences or propositions that are by that standard simply not true, yet which in terms of the knowing purpose of the poet are not only true, but usually are even more striking than the truth. Bhamaha's mention vakrokti is an early witness to this mode of thought— but is not in itself an 'aesthetic'.
2) Relation of poetic texts to other known works. The issue does not concern the intellectual relationships between poetics and its allied sastras, but rather the explicit relations between early poetic texts and other works: the Buddhist logics of Dinnaga and Dharmakirti (for Bhamaha is Avidely thought to be a Buddhist on the basis of his father's name); the academic poem of Bhatti (Bhattikavya) that systematically illustrates the same set of alamkaras given in Bhamaha and Dandin; and finally whether Dandin is also the author of the Dasakuniaracarita and Avantisundarikatha. Involved in these questions is the toughest chronological problem of the alamkarasastra: the relative priority of Bhamaha and Dandin.
3) Two kinds of texts are found in both the natya and the alamkara traditions: one, by definition older, is the puranic and authorless compilation: the Natyasastra itself, but also the sections of the Agni-and the Visnudharmottara puranas that deal with poetics; the other, works that by tradition and scholarly judgment are the compositions of individual authors. It is clearly more difficult to argue chronology among texts that are ex hypothesi not the product of a fixed time; when such texts are interspersed with datable texts, relations become quite complex if not indeterminate. The oldest 'dramatic' text (NatyaSastra) is a compilation (though attributed to Bharata) the oldest two texts of the alamkara tradition (Bhamaha, Dandin) are clearly not. One of the puranas (Agni) bears evident relations to Bhamaha and Dandin; the other seems rather to look to Bharata (or Bharata to it). Given their strict separation of theoretical outlook, the problems of chronology of the dramatic and strophic poetics can to some extent be mitigated by refusing to see them in a single development.
It is conventional to begin the text history of Indian poetics with the Natyasastra, a purana of materials pertinent to the staging of the classical (Sanskrit) drama. In its various recensions (none of its editions can yet be said to be critical) three of its approximately thirty-six chapters deal with the key issues of the two poetic traditions: rasa-bhava and alamkara-guna. Other chapters touch on related topics: plot, genre, metre, the latter reserved to a separate Rostra. By and large the text pertains to dramaturgy in its practical aspect, and thus does not concern us here.
Immediately later writers, Bhamaha, etc., mention Bharata by name but appear to associate him with the "other school"; his chapter on alamkarasastra is by most arguments of internal chronology considerably older than the chapters on rasa, natyasastra per se. We have for this reason, and because the otherwise oldest datable texts (Bhamaha, Dandin) are of the alamkara tradition, chosen to begin this history with an account of the kavya-oriented poetic.
~~Indian Poetics (from the Series "A History of Indian Literature" ed. Jan Gonda) -by- Edwin Gerow
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