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

FOURTH ADHYĀYA 151
Page. 12.
*[l. 1. मेधाविरुद्र was a rhetorician too. cf. ननु दण्डिमेधाविरुद्रभामहादि-
कृतानि सन्त्येवालङ्कारशास्त्राणि। नमिसाधु's commentary on Rudraṭālaṅkāra p. 2.
His name occurs in भामह too.]
l. 1. Both Medhāvirudra and Kumāradāsa were born blind
but became great poets. Kumāradāsa is well known as the author
of the Jānakīharaṇa, an excellent but long Kāvya work comprising
20 Sargas. He is said to have ruled over Ceylon and is believed
to be a contemporary of Kālidāsa. Two incomplete editions of the
Jānakīharaṇa have been published, one from Jaypore in 1893
and the other from Bombay in 1907. The undernoted verse
also occurs in the Sūktimuktāvali regarding the poetic skill of
this blind author :
जानकीहरणं कर्तुं रघुवंशे स्थिते सति ।
कविः कुमारदासश्च रावणश्च यदि क्षमः ॥
Medhāvirudra is known from the references of Namisādhu and
Bhāmaha, but more as a rhetorician than as a poet. It is also
doubtful whether Medhāvirudra is the name of a single person or
of two, namely Medhāvi and Rudra. The single name of Medhāvi
is mentioned by Bhāmaha, while that of Rudra appears as the
name of the author of the S'ṛṅgaratilaka where the author exhibits
his skill as a poet.
l. 2. In this sentence, the meaning of किञ्चन is doubtful because
of the two constructions किंच न and किंचन. In fact, the author here
makes an attempt to prove his contention with two arguments. He
seeks to prove that poets endowed with प्रतिभा can mentally conceive
everything that they want to describe without ever actually
perceiving them. To prove this, he first points out that even those
who were born blind have become excellent poets. If we take
two words as किञ्च and न, the second argument will be in the form of
a question: Do the poets not visualize and describe the customs
and manners of the people belonging to other countries and
islands without the personal knowledge of those things ?. The
obvious answer is : they do so describe with the faculty of their
प्रतिभा. This fact is stressed upon in the following verses taken
at random from the works of Kālidāsa. If the word किंचन is taken
as one word, it should be construed as an adjective to the word
व्यवहृतिम्.