काव्यमीमांसा (महाकवि राजशेखर - कवि-रहस्य एवं देश-विभाग सटीक)

notice the towering figures of Dharmakīrti, Śāntarakṣita and
Kamalaśīla. This period was immediately preceding the period
in which Rājaśekhara was born and flourished, and it is very
unlikely that he would not be influenced by the endeavours of his
predecessors in writing a comprehensive work and reduce the
Alaṅkāra literature to a system. The time was also not unripe
for such an attempt. Round the classical work of Bharata, already
had grown a considerable literature which was enriched with the
contributions of Bhāmaha, Daṇḍin, Rudraṭa and Ānandavardhana.
Such a rich material on the one hand pressing for a com-
prehensive review, and the comprehensive works of the philo-
sophical systems on the other, must have created an enthusiasm
in the mind of Rājaśekhara and actuated him to make an attempt
to reduce the Alaṅkāra literature to a system by writing an
encyclopædic work like the present one-the Kāvyamīmāṁsā-
which was to treat the different methods of poetics and the schools
of literary criticism, with a view to put everything on a tho-
roughly scientific basis. In doing so, he not only followed in the
footsteps of Kauṭilya and Vātsyāyana, in arranging the subject-
matter, but also the great authors of Dharmamīmāṁsā and Brah-
mamīmāṁsā; and this is evident from the very title of his work,
the Kāvyamīmāṁsā. He also ascribes to his Kāvyamīmāṁsā, a
divine origin following in the wake of other great systems, and
gives for the first time a legendary list of succession of Gurus and
disciples, and of the progenitors of the different branches of the
science of poetics.
The division of his subject-matter in eighteen branches like
the eighteen points of law is not only novel but also interesting
and systematic. In this, however, Rājaśekhara was forestalled
to a certain extent by Rudraṭa,¹ but nevertheless his classification
is much fuller and much more exhaustive. Rudraṭa, for instance,
had no knowledge of such branches as Vainodika, Aupaniṣadika,
etc. which were Rājaśekhara's own. The Aupaniṣadika chapter
occurs also in the Arthaśāstra and the Kāmasūtra, and this may
have induced the present author to include a chapter on Aupa-
niṣadika in his Alaṅkāra work, giving directions to dullards as to
how through Mantras and such other mystic means one may
attain poetical eminence, when natural gifts are entirely wanting.

1. See. Infra Notes. pp. 123-124.
   3