काव्यप्रकाश (आचार्य मम्मट - सम्पूर्ण १० उल्लास सटीक)

KĀVYAPRAKĀSHA
'Light of Poesy'
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
It was in a fit of juvenile enthusiasm that I permitted the first
edition of my translation of the Kāvyaprakāsha to appear in the
‘Pandit’ of Benares ; otherwise, under ordinary circumstances, it
would be sheer audacity on the part of a boy of eighteen to put
himself forward as the interpreter of a book which, apart from its
subject-matter, is regarded, in point of style and expression, as one
of the tersest, and hence the most difficult, in the Sanskrit language.
The boy of eighteen, however, had his justification; he had written
out a rough translation of the work in course of his preparation for
the M A. Examination ; and when, on passing that examination, he
had his ambition for authorship aroused by the example and precept
of his late lamented tutor, Dr. Arthur Venis of Benares, he sent his
aforesaid translation to him and asked him if he thought it fit for
publication. Apparently with a view to encouraging his pupil, the
doctor wrote to him—" room could be found in the Pandit for your
translation of the Kāvyaprakāsha", and the work was allowed to go
forth to the public. The boy of eighteen has since grown to be an
old man of fifty, and numerous have been the volumes with which
he has thrust himself before an indulgent public ; and after all these
years, when he came to look into his earlier work, he felt that he owed
it to the public to revise at least such of his works as had secured a
number of readers. Foremost among these appeared to be the
Kāvyaprakāsha, the translation of which, imperfect as it is, has had to
be read, more or less, by numerous candidates for the M. A. degree,
for whom the original is prescribed by almost every University in
India Thus it is in the spirit of repaying a debt long over-due that I
am setting my hand to doing what is practically the rewriting of the
translation of the work which, during all the centuries that have
elapsed since it was written in far-off Kāshmīr, has held the supreme
position in the world of Sanskrit rhetorical literature.