Bhamaha

Bhamaha (Sanskrit: भामह, Bhāmaha) (c. 7th century) was a Sanskrit poetician, apparently from Kashmir believed to be contemporaneous with Daṇḍin. He is noted for writing a work called Kavyalankara (Sanskrit: काव्यालङ्कार, Kāvyālaṅkāra) ("The ornaments of poetry"). For centuries, he was known only by reputation, until manuscripts of the Kāvyālaṃkāra came to the attention of scholars in the early 1900s.

Little is known of Bhāmaha's life: the last verse of the Kāvyālaṃkāra says that his father was called Rakrilagomin, but little more is known:

Later Kashmiri writers often treat Bhāmaha as the founding father of Sanskrit poetics and, by the same token, make him stand for everything that is old school, a trend that must have begun with Udbhaṭa (c. 800) and his vast commentary on Bhāmaha’s work. This Kashmiri connection has led many to assume that Bhāmaha, too, hailed from the northern vale. But if this is the case, then, unlike many of his followers, whose patrons, positions, and, in some cases, salaries are referred to by Kalhaṇa, Bhāmaha does not receive any mention in the famous chronicle of Kashmir’s courts, the Rājataraṅgiṇī (River of Kings).

Bhāmaha is rather seldom mentioned as a poet by later commentators, but seems to have had a significant reputation as a grammarian, being cited by the eighth-century Śāntarakṣita. The Bhāmaha who composed the Kāvyālaṃkāra might also be the same person as the one who composed a commentary on Vararuci’s Prākṛtaprakāáa, a Prakrit grammar, and a few other works have also been tentatively attributed to him.

The Kāvyālaṃkāra has, however, been widely recognised as similar to and in many ways in disagreement with the Kāvyādarśa by Daṇḍin. Although modern scholars have debated which scholar was borrowing from which, or who was responding to whom, recent work suggests that Bhāmaha was the earlier scholar, and that Daṇḍin was responding to him. 'This would place Bhāmaha no later than the early 600s'.

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