An Annotated Bibliography of the Alamkarasastra.

• Author: Gerow, Edwin
• Position: Book Review

An Annotated Bibliography of the Alamkarasastra. By TIMOTHY C. CAHILL. Handbuch der Orientalistik, sec. 2, vol. 14. Leiden: BRILL, 2001. Pp. xxiii + 364. $99.

The bibliography is in three parts: published primary texts, mostly in Sanskrit (pp. 3-107, 646 entries); studies in book or monograph form (pp. 111-83, 644 entries); and "article"-length studies (pp. 187-345, 1384 entries). Cahill's purpose in compiling the bibliography is "to update the primary sources presented by P. V. Kane and S. K. De in their respective histories of Indian poetics" (p. ix). The outlines of the enterprise are very well thus characterized: this work limits itself to the "Alamkarasastra" in its present academic sense, including works on rasa, but excluding dramaturgy and most allied subjects, such as metrics (p. x). The sabdavrtti (sabdabodha) literature is touched upon if the author is otherwise regarded as an alamkarika (Appaya, Mammata), but not if he is a grammarian (Nagesa) or a naiyayika (Gadadhara). A puzzling exclusion, "works relating to the Riti tradition" (p. x), is not, as far as I can see, justified or explained. Vamana, who is normally accounted the major exponent of that "tradition" is very much present (nos. 265-79, 714, 927). Some works of Tamil poetics are referenced (but not Ramanujan's studies thereon), and, somewhat surprisingly, a good many Tibetan commentaries, illustrating the penetration of the Kavyadarsa into that canon, are adduced (nos. 630-45), though I found no mention of any secondary Tibetological literature on the subject. Particular virtues of Cahill's bibliography are its many adductions of recent...