Bhava Prakasham is a 12th century CE treatise on Sanskrit poetics by Acharya Sharada. Bhava Prakasham deals with bhavas (emotions) and rasas (sentiments) in poetry. Its author is Sharadatanaya (1175 – 1250 CE), son of Gopala Bhatta of Kerala.
Bhava Prakasham consists of chapters called adhikaras.
According to Sharadatanaya, kavya and rasa are like cause-and-effect. He agrees
with Abhinavagupta (10th-11th century CE), an authority on poetics, when he states
that rasa is the soul of poetry, but goes against him when Abhinava insists
that rasas must be realized only through vyangyartha or the suggestive meaning
of the words and not through their vachyartha or the expressed meaning. Sharada
does not give the vyanjanattava or the suggestive sense of the words in poetry
as status which is independent of their tatparya – shakti or explicit meaning.
According to him, vyanjana or dhvani stands only secondary to the meaning as
expressed in words; it is rather the ideas of poetry subordinate to its
tatparya shakti which refers to the meaning underlying the superficial words.
Sharadatanaya givens special importance to Shanta (peace),
as Bharata and Abhinavagupta, have expounded in Sanskrit poetics.
Even after many centuries, Bhava Prakasham of Sharadatanaya
remains unrivalled in the field of Alamkara Shastra (treatises on rhetoric). It
has served as a model for many other works like Kavya Kamadhenu.