Art. XVII.—Notes on Alaṅkāra Literature

Extract

The presentation of the Rules and Examples of the Kāvyaprakāśa, in skeleton form, traced as far as possible to their sources, is the object of the present paper. I wish, however, that I had been able to achieve greater success as the result of the immense labour bestowed upon it. Most of the quotations from the older writers were found when studying the work in Poona, twenty-one years ago, with Krshna Śāstrl Vaijāpurkar; but many others were obtained from the literature unearthed by my friend Dr. Bühler during his famous tour in Kashmir and edited by the late Pandit Durgaprasad and by Dr. Peter Peterson. Doubtless many of those which have defied my efforts to track them were composed by the joint authors themselves; whilst others may have come from works no longer extant, a remark which applies very specially to the large number of untraced Prākrta passages. Yet, in spite of all this, I feel that the task might have been performed in more scholarly fashion but for the complete breakdown of my eyesight three years ago, which has considerably circumscribed my work ever since. And, now, a second attack of Glaucoma incapacitates me still more, and seems even to demand the complete abandonment of Oriental studies.