2023-03-29 18:09:31 by ambuda-bot
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HISTORY OF THE SEARCH FOR SYSTEM
23
is alliteration, which is an arrangement of the phonology of the language,
"poetic" because the regularities of recurrence and the limitations on the
occurrence of certain phonemes (or aspects of phonemes) is not charac-
teristic of usual speech, which is far more randomly organized. Most
other figures grouped as sabda are similarly regularizations of grammatical
features which ordinarily occur ad libitum. Yamaka ('cadence"), certainly
the most maligned of all the figures, is basically the Indian correspondent
to our rhyme: the repetition of a sequence of syllables at predetermined
positions in a metrical pattern, but not restricted to the end of lines as
in most Western poetry. Meter itself, though traditionally the subject of
another discipline and not treated as poetic, is still capable of the same
poetic regularization.
Much Indian scientific and religious literature is composed in simple
meters, often varieties of the epic śloka; poetic meters in contrast are
distinguished by their complexity, and by the absolute regularity of
their syllabic quantification (ārya meters apart, but these are non-Sans-
kritic in origin and even Jayadeva "poeticizes" them in these terms).
Instead of eight-syllable feet with only three syllables fixed as to length
(the sloka), poetic meters range in length from eleven to twenty-seven
syllables (averaging around twenty) with no variation permitted in the
quantification of individual syllables. Kālidāsa's meter, the mandākrāntā,
used so effectively in the Meghadūta, has quarters of seventeen syllables
arranged in the invariable sequence:
LLLL SSSSSL
LSLLSLL 35
The authors of the Dhvanyaloka make much of the difference in poetic
quality of the figures of artha and śabda, which they rechristened alamkāra
and citra kāvya, respectively; clearly, the deviation in the two cases has
different force, because the norms in the two cases are fundamentally
different. Poetry based on an intentional structure appeals to the intellect
and the understanding—the vakrokti has the aspect of true suggestion, of
meanings not said as such-whereas the poetry whose deviations are
grammatically based is addressed more to the ear and to those ineffable
harmonies which may stir the soul but whose sense is difficult to com-
prehend. The vakrokti in citrakāvya is not so much a conveying of mean-
ing as the imposition of modes of repetition (forms) on what is in principle
an inchoate, unstructured, and fundamentally unintentional level of
35 As kaś cit käntävirahaguruṇā svādhikärāt pramattaḥ (1").
23
is alliteration, which is an arrangement of the phonology of the language,
"poetic" because the regularities of recurrence and the limitations on the
occurrence of certain phonemes (or aspects of phonemes) is not charac-
teristic of usual speech, which is far more randomly organized. Most
other figures grouped as sabda are similarly regularizations of grammatical
features which ordinarily occur ad libitum. Yamaka ('cadence"), certainly
the most maligned of all the figures, is basically the Indian correspondent
to our rhyme: the repetition of a sequence of syllables at predetermined
positions in a metrical pattern, but not restricted to the end of lines as
in most Western poetry. Meter itself, though traditionally the subject of
another discipline and not treated as poetic, is still capable of the same
poetic regularization.
Much Indian scientific and religious literature is composed in simple
meters, often varieties of the epic śloka; poetic meters in contrast are
distinguished by their complexity, and by the absolute regularity of
their syllabic quantification (ārya meters apart, but these are non-Sans-
kritic in origin and even Jayadeva "poeticizes" them in these terms).
Instead of eight-syllable feet with only three syllables fixed as to length
(the sloka), poetic meters range in length from eleven to twenty-seven
syllables (averaging around twenty) with no variation permitted in the
quantification of individual syllables. Kālidāsa's meter, the mandākrāntā,
used so effectively in the Meghadūta, has quarters of seventeen syllables
arranged in the invariable sequence:
LLLL SSSSSL
LSLLSLL 35
The authors of the Dhvanyaloka make much of the difference in poetic
quality of the figures of artha and śabda, which they rechristened alamkāra
and citra kāvya, respectively; clearly, the deviation in the two cases has
different force, because the norms in the two cases are fundamentally
different. Poetry based on an intentional structure appeals to the intellect
and the understanding—the vakrokti has the aspect of true suggestion, of
meanings not said as such-whereas the poetry whose deviations are
grammatically based is addressed more to the ear and to those ineffable
harmonies which may stir the soul but whose sense is difficult to com-
prehend. The vakrokti in citrakāvya is not so much a conveying of mean-
ing as the imposition of modes of repetition (forms) on what is in principle
an inchoate, unstructured, and fundamentally unintentional level of
35 As kaś cit käntävirahaguruṇā svādhikärāt pramattaḥ (1").