The History of Bhavika in Sanskrit Poetics

V. Raghavan traces the development of the concept of bhāvika (bhāvikatva), a literary quality in Sanskrit poetics. He begins with Bhāmaha, who mentions bhāvikatva as a guṇa pervading an entire composition rather than a single verse. Raghavan notes that Bhāmaha’s contemporaries considered bhāvikatva a form of alaṃkāra, but later poets such as Daṇḍin distinguished between bhāvikatva and rasavat. Through readings of the Kāvyādarśa, Nāṭyaśāstra and commentaries by Ānandavardhana and Abhinavagupta, he shows how bhāvikatva evolved to mean the quality that evokes the natural presentation of time and space in a composition. He discusses examples where poets depict past and future events with such vividness that they appear present to the reader and explores how the concept intersects with rasadhvani, vakrokti and aucitya. The article analyses the debate on whether bhāvikatva is an alaṃkāra or a component of rasa theory, noting that later theorists like Mammata considered it a prerequisite for rasa. Raghavan concludes that bhāvikatva underlines the poet’s ability to make readers emotionally present in the imagined world, bridging the gap between description and experience.

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