One of the luminaries in the field of alankara shastra was Bhamaha (7th to 8th century CE) who defined kavya (poetry) for the first time in the history of poetics. His definition of poetry as sabda (the word) and artha (meaning) characterized by togetherness resulted in developing the term sahitya for literature. Bhamaha heralded the alankara school in his work as Kavyalankara. The alankara shastra shaped into full-fledged discipline owing to his treatise and views.
Bhamaha’s sarcastic
remark that ordinary people will be at loss to enjoy such poems that could be
understood only with the help of a commentary, is taken by some scholars to be
a pointer to Bhatti who boasts of his scholarship in adopting a tense style which
only intelligent people would have access to. Bhatti, the author of Ravana-Vadha-Kavya
or simply Bhatti Kavya, seems to be an elder contemporary of Bhamaha. Though Bhatti
aims at illustrating the rules of Sanskrit Grammar, throughout the twenty-two
cantos of his mahakavya, there are three cantos, 10th to 12th,
called the ‘Prasanna-kanda’, which have relevance to the growth of alankara
shastra. The tenth canto illustrates as many as thirty eight figures of speech,
the eleventh deals with guna (the excellences) like madhurya (sweetness), etc.,
and the twelfth speaks of the figure bhavika as a prabandha-guna. The list of
alankaras treated by Bhamaha is the same even in order, at least for the first
twenty three figures, as that of Bhatti. Bhamaha defines and illustrates about
32 figures of speech.
The credit for
outlining kavya sarira the ‘body of a poem’ goes to Bhamaha. A poem is not just
a combination of word and sense, which even a speech in our day-to-day parlance
has. According to him, a poem has vakrata (obliquity), the essential quality of
alankara. Thus alankara abiding in sabda and artha (word and meaning)
constitutes the essential charm of kavya. When Bhamaha voices the views of ‘others’
who opine that figures like metaphor are only external, he indirectly disagrees
with them. He holds that alankaras have an intrinsic role to play in imparting
the real charm in poetry, which distinguishes it from other forms of
expression. The credit for classifying the alankaras as Sabdalankara and artha
alankaras, goes to Bhamaha. While the former will include figures such as
anuprasa (alliteration) and the like, the latter includes a good number of them
like the simile, metaphor, hyperbole, etc. Incidentally, Magha says that a good
poet will adopt both the sound and the sense. Though Bhamaha mentions svabhavokti,
which is of the nature of describing an object as such, he does not subscribe
to its acceptance, for want of wide appeal. For the same reason, he openly rejects
figures such as hetu, sukshma and lesha.
Prominent
followers of Bhamaha’s alankara school are Udbhata and Rudrata. Udbhata adorned
the court of King Jayapida of Kashmir, in the 8th to 9th
century CE. He is credited with the authorship of three works – Bhamaha-vivarana,
Kumarasambhava-kavya, and Kavyalarikara Sara Sangraha. The first one is not
available, while the second is available only in fragments. The third work
contains many verses from Udbhata’s Kumarasambhava Kavya, as illustrations. Udbhata
deals with three types of auprasa – cekanuprasa, latanuprasa and
vrittyanuprasa. He also speaks of four types of atisayokti (hyperbole). The
Kavyalankara-Sara-Sangraha has been commented upon by Pratiharenduraja, the disciple
of Mukula Bhatta.