Ānandavardhana (c. 820 – 890 CE) was a Kashmiri court poet and literary critic, honored with the title of Rajanak during King Avantivarman's reign.
He wrote that dhvani (meaning sound, or resonance) is the "soul" or "essence" (ātman) of poetry (kavya).
[citation needed][1] The philosopher Abhinavagupta (c. 950 – 1016 CE) wrote an important commentary on Dhvanyāloka titled the Locana, or The Eye.
[7] Sushil Kumar De, along with Kane, considered there to be no work similar to the Dhvanyaloka in the corpus of Sanskrit literature.
Franklin Edgerton and Louis Renou also considered the work to ge exceptional in its treatment of poetic theory and aesthetics.