Per un’analisi preliminare della poiesi di Aśvaghoṣa: fra epica, retorica ed estetica

Aśvaghoṣa (I-II C.E.), the multifaceted buddhist author of the mahākāvyas Saundarananda and Buddhacarita, seems to have mastered the rhetorical devices of metaphora in absentia (rūpaka) and simile (upamā) in both of his works. These aspects will become systematised only until much later (VI-VII C.E.) and eventually investigated in contemporary cognitive linguistics studies (Black 1962; Levin 1977; Lakoff 1980). By means of a diachronic and synchronic approach, this article analyses the poetics and poiesis of the author through the lens of intertextuality and the dynamics of literary reuse in South-Asian and Buddhist literature. In this context, applying a synchronic approach means interpreting different types of rūpakas and upamās, foregrounding the author’s self-consciousness on rhetoric and stylistic forms. Similarly, the diachronic approach imposes a bidirectional criterion, namely a) the evaluation of a pre-systematised use of analogy forms in texts belonging to the epic genre (Itihāsa), and b) the assessment on already systematised analogy forms in later canonical alaṃkāraśāstras, from Bhāmaha’s Kāvyālaṃkāra (VII C.E.) to Mammaṭa’s Kāvyaprakāśa (XI C.E.).