Hemacandras Kavyanusasana, Kapitel 1 und 2.

• Position: Book review

Hemacandras Kavyanusasana, Kapitel 1 und 2. By LEO BOTH. Drama und Theater in Sudasien, vol. 2. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2003. Pp. 372.

The Kavyanusasana (hereafter KA) is a work on poetics by Hemacandra, the prolific twelfth century scholar and monk whose works on grammar, metrics, logic, religion, and traditional lore formed a veritable curriculum for Jaina students. The text's eight chapters in 208 sutras contain a gloss (the Alamkaracudamani) and autocommentary (the Viveka) plus over eight hundred collected verses in Sanskrit and Prakrit. Apart from his encyclopedic knowledge, Hemacandra is important for his summaries and his long quotations of works whose textual transmissions are lost or corrupt. Leo Both's fine new German translation of the first two chapters includes all three components of KA (sutra, gloss, and autocommentary). My remarks on the merit of the translation only refer to its clarity and accuracy; I am not competent to judge the literary merit of Both's renderings of the poems cited as illustrations. Apart from a few minor disagreements noted below, the author has admirably achieved his goal of providing an easy-to-understand and accessible introduction to the bases of Indian poetics.

In the introduction Both initially treats a few issues current to scholarship in the field. He argues briefly (and in earnest) for the indispensability of Indian poetics in any reassessment of Sanskrit poetry and then turns to a synopsis of Hemacandra's life and literary works. Those familiar with Hemacandra can move through this part of the introduction quickly as it relies on well-known sources. Of note is Both's defense of his author against the charge of plagiarism, levelled by several eminent scholars of the past century on the basis of Hemacandra's adoption of many lengthy passages of earlier works without citation. To be sure, the motives and assumptions of traditional Indian scholars make such charges hard to sustain--and doubly so for Hemacandra. a monk whose vows allowed him to accept no gain for his efforts. Yet Both's appeal to Rajasekhara does not quite apply, since the relevant passage in the Kavyamimamsa pertains only to the theft or adaptation of poetry, not to scholarly endeavors. (Better just to dismiss such charges of "plagiarism" as anachronistic.) After providing some context for viewing Hemacandra as a proponent of the Rasa-dhvani school, the introduction provides an overview of the contents of the two chapters...