काव्यप्रकाश (आचार्य मम्मट - सम्पूर्ण १० उल्लास सटीक)

XII
ction under the most favourable circumstances to the court of his
royal patron.
Mammaṭa was a member of a true Pandit family ; he was the son
of Jayyaṭa, the joint author with Vāmana of the celebrated grammatical
treatise, the Kāshikā; and the brother of Kayyaṭa, the author of the
standard gloss on Patañjali's Great Commentary and of the above-
mentioned Uvvaṭa, the author of a Bhāshya on the Vedas and other
Vedic works, which, however, have been superseded by the later
works of Sāyaṇa and Mādhava. Mammata is said, by Bhīmasena in
the opening verses of his commentary on the Kāvya-Prakāsha to have
travelled to Benares for purposes of study. The times of Mammaṭa
seem to have been times of a general outburst of literature and learn
ing in Kashmir, which had most likely something to do with the
Buddhist literature and learning, then on its way out of India to its
present Tibetan home across the Himālayas. A lot of literary names
ending with the characteristic syllable ṭa are to be found in the books
of this period, Vajjraṭa, Rudraṭa, Bhallaṭa, Vābhaṭa, Allaṭa, &c. How
these outbursts and revivals travel about from place to place is a phe-
nomenon which is observable in the literary history of ancient and
modern Europe also. Sāhitya in India appears to have passed on
from Kashmir to Mithilā, and thence to Bengal ; it is now almost
confined to the Deccan.
The mention of Allaṭa leads us to the fact that the Kāvya-Prakāsha
could not be completed by Mammaṭa, notwithstanding the inevitable
maṅgalācharaṇa, the propitiation of the appropriate Goddess of
Speech. Apparently in accordance with the very satisfactory ex-
planation of the ingenious Naiyāyika, the past evil karma of Mammaṭa's
previous births was too voluminous to be dispelled by the amount
of maṅgalācharaṇa he made, and so the thread of his life broke short !
But it broke short when he was in sight of his goal ; and he has prac-
tically completed his work. About a third of the last chapter on
Figures,—or rather as they are more becomingly named in Sanskrit,
Ornaments of Speech—which third amounts roughly to a tenth of
the whole work,—was written by Allaṭa, from the second half of the
118th verse onwards, (page 244 of the translation*). This is expressly
stated by Anand in his commentary entitled the Nidarshana on the
Kāvya-Prakāsha, who again, in explaining the last verse of the work
*Not in the present edition.