The Place of Kavyaprakasha in the Sanskrit Alankara Traditionand Its Relationship with Panini

சமஸ்கிருத அலங்கார மரபில் காவியபிரகாசத்தின் இடமும் அதுபாணினியோடு கொண்ட உறவும்

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of Kavyaprakasa in the Sanskrit rhetoric tradition and its intimate connection with the grammatical text of Panini. The oldest text of the Sanskrit literary tradition, Natyashastra, has short remarks on figures of speech (alankara), and the writings Kavyalankara and Kavyadarsha, completed in the 6th8th century CE, are the earliest texts to pay full attention to alankara. Mammata wrote kavyaprakasa in the 11 th -12 th century CE and is the third massive work written in this tradition that discusses alankara in depth and breadth over ten chapters. Although born in Kashmir, mammata studied and wrote in Banaras which was the holy seat of Hinduism and Sanskrit literature. The article is a systematic analysis of all ten chapters of Kavyaprakasa, which discusses issues like Mangalam (invocation), Tishrakshaptavrittayak (word usage), Arthabaya (sentence structure), Dhvani (suggestion/resonance), Gunibhutaya Vyangya (subordinated suggestion), Chitrakavya (visual poetry), Dosha (literary flaws), Guna (literary qualities), Sapthalankara (seven figures of speech), and Arthalankara (figure based The paper also explores these intense similarities between the explanation of simile (upamana) by Mammata and the grammatical sutras of the Ashtadhyayi and shows that Mammata adheres to the grammatical rules of Panini when developing his poetic examples, especially in the discussion of the cases of upama (simile) and the formation of compound words. The paper concludes that Kavyaprakasa holds a central role in Sanskrit alankara literature and that its intense identification with the grammar of Panini makes it one of the most important texts that unite poetry with linguistics.