Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/299

294 is Viçvanātha Kavirāja, the author of the Sāhityadarpaṇa, a general treatise on poetics. His handling of the drama is based largely on the Daçarūpa and its commentary, but he introduces a good deal of matter from the Nāṭyaçāstra in his sixth chapter, including details of the characteristics and ornaments of the drama, which the Daçarūpa omits. In this Viçvanātha indicates his servile character, which, however, renders his work the more valuable as an exposition of the orthodox doctrine. Of his ancestry and his own works he makes free mention, but the most definite evidence of his date is the existence in the library at Jammu of a manuscript of his work whose date appears to be A.D. 1383. The lack of order and the errors in his work are made the basis of criticism by Rūpa Gosvāmin in the early part of the sixteenth century, but his own Nāṭakacandrikā shows little improvement on the work of his predecessor, whence it draws much of its material; its real purpose is to eulogize the saint Caitanya, whose disciple Rūpa was and in whose honour he composed dramas of no merit. Equally dependent on Viçvanātha and the Daçarūpa is Sundaramiçra, whose Nāṭyapradipa was composed in A.D. 1613. Many other treatises on drama are known by name or exist in manuscript, but none apparently of any great importance or repute. Of the fourteenth century also is the Rasārṇavasudhākara of Çin̄ga Bhūpala, lord of Rājācala and the land between the Vindhya and Çrīçaila about A.D. 1330, who cites Vidyādhara.

The development of a theory of drama progressed in the closest relation to the general theory of poetics, for the Indian theory of poetry does not admit any distinction in essence between the aesthetic pleasure produced by the drama and any other form of poetry. Thus we find in Abhinavagupta in full application to the drama the theory of suggestion, Dhvani, as the essence of poetry, which appeared in strength about A.D. 800 and was rendered popular by Ānandavardhana (A. D. 850) and by Abhinavagupta himself in his comment on the Dhvanyāloka of the former. Attacked by Mahiman Bhaṭṭa, author of the Vyaktiviveka (A.D. 1050), the doctrine was again developed with special