This page has not been fully proofread.

GLOSSARY
 
131
 
utpreksā
 
utprekṣā, 'ascription': (1) a figure in which a property or mode of behavior
is attributed to a subject literally incapable of sustaining that property,
whereby an implicit simile is suggested whose subject (upameya)
is the subject eiving the attributed property and whose object
(upamāna) is the real basis of that property. (2) B 2.91 (92), D 2.221-34
(222, 224, 226), V 4.3.9, U 3.3-4, AP 344.24-25, R 8.32-37 (33, 35,
37), R 9.11-15 (12-13, 15), M 137. (3) kimśukavyapadeśena tarum
äruhya sarvataḥ dagdhâdagdham araṇyānyāḥ paśyativa vibhāvasuḥ
(Bhamaha; here the red flowers are portrayed as fire, consuming the
tree and looking for unburnt parts of the forest: "It is as though
fire had climbed the tree in the guise of kimśuka flowers and was
looking all about the forest for trees yet unburnt"). (4) "The yellow
fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes, / The yellow smoke
that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes / Licked its tongue into
the corners of the evening, / Lingered upon the pools that stand in
drains, / Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, /
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, / And seeing that it was
a soft October night, / Curled once about the house, and fell asleep"
(T. S. Eliot; the fog is portrayed as a cat). (5) The figure utprekșā
probably comes closer than any other to capturing the sense of the
vague term metaphor. Although rūpaka is generally translated
'metaphor' (a custom we have followed), its use in the Sanskrit
anthologies makes clear that a far more precise meaning is to be
attached to the term than 'metaphor' will allow. We have, when
the context required such precision, used the phrase "metaphorical
identification" for rūpaka, in the sense that two ontologically un-
related things are treated gramatically as one thing or, in other words,
are identified one with another. The relation of identification is of
course directly from one term to another and does not require the
interposition of properties, although these may implicitly substantiate
the identification. Carl Sandburg's "moon mist mourning veils" or
the standard cliché "face-moon" illustrate the necessary explicitness
of such identifications. The usual technique for constructing rūpakas
is the dvandva compound with the object of comparison (upamāna)
in the final position (gramatically free). In English we have elaborated
another mode of expression, probably because our language does
not encourage explicit compounding to such an extent: namely the
subjective genitive, as "the orb of her face", where the object of
comparison ("orb") is again the syntactically free term. Utprekşā