Anandavardhana is a formulator of the theory of dhvani (suggestion) in the Sanskrit poetics/literary theory/aesthetic theory. Dhvanyaloka of Anandavardhana is one of the most celebrated works in Sanskrit poetics. He elaborately enumerates the theory of dhvani, a technical term conveying ‘suggestion’, which according to him is the ‘soul of poetry’. Anandavardhana lived in the second half of the 9th century CE in Kashmir.
Dhvanyaloka, divided in four udyotas, consists of three
constituents – karikas (aphorisms in verse, numbering 129, vritti (prose
exposition of metrical karikas) and illustrations, mostly quoted from Sanskrit
and Pali/Prakrit poets. Ananda Vardhana critically reviews all the theories and
criticism by his predecessors like Bharata, Bhamaha, Dandin, Vamana and others,
convincingly refutes or modifies most of them, and integrates them with the concept
of rasa-dhvani, the principal and most essential element in an excellent poem.
His analysis of the two epics in respect of the delineation of rasa in the main
is a masterpiece as found in the fourth udyota. Locana (literally, eye) is a
lucid and learned commentary on Dhvanyaloka by Abhinavagupta (990-1020 CE), an
erudite scholar of great reputation in the domains of poetics, philosophy,
tantra, music and mystic systems.
There is, however, a controversy about the authorship of Dhvanyaloka.
According to some writers, headed by Abhinavagupta, the karikas were composed
earlier by Sahrdaya, while Anandavardhana subsequently wrote vritti thereon and
added illustrations. Mahimbhatta and others, on the other hand, attributed both
karikas and vritti to Anandavardhana. Despite this, Anandavardhana has been rightly
regarded as the founder of the Dhvani school, a dhvanikara par excellence.
Besides Dhvanyaloka, Anandavardhana composed Tattvaloka, Arjuna-charita (an
epic in Sanskrit), Vishamabanalila (a work in Prakrit), Devisataka (a hundred
devotional verses) and Dharmottama, a commentary on Pramana-Viniscaya of
Dharmakirti (a celebrated Buddhist philosopher and logician of 7th
century CE). But Dhvanyaloka has been indisputably accepted as an epoch-making
work in literary aesthetics.