2023-03-29 18:09:32 by ambuda-bot
This page has not been fully proofread.
24
INTRODUCTION
expression-a kind of elemental ordering or creation in the stuff of lan-
guage.
Despite the wealth of figures in the Indian poetic and despite the ex-
actitude and breadth of their exemplification in the treatises, modern
critics have not shown much interest in the universe implied by the figures,
preferring to extrapolate theories of poetic beauty from the rare and
sketchy references to terms like vakrokti, rīti, and Sobhā.30 If they are
concerned with the figures at all, it is philologically, as an exercise in
the history of a text tradition.37 Critics concerned with intellectual history
(Ingalls, for example) often adopt the point of view of the dhvani theorists
and are puzzled by the persistent emphasis on figuration.38
Verbal beauty is a consideration proper to poetics, but the initial task
of the discipline is to describe the expressive apparatus by which this
poetic comprehension is achieved. To begin with, the poetic charm of
language has to be taken for granted; it is not an object of investigation,
but a criterion of identification. The question necessarily posed by the
first figurationists was "how", not "what".39 Of course, in time, when
the formal apparatus had been more or less successfully delineated,
critics, under the impetus of newer poetic genres, began to speculate on
the problem of beauty itself and to seek a single principle which underlies
poetic language. We will take up this important transition in its place.
It would not be accurate to say that the ālamkārikas were insensitive
to beauty, but rather that their task was to define a concrete context in
which the discussion of beauty would have meaning. Their view of
beauty was that it was best revealed in its own structure (much as Euclid
must have thought that the intellectual delight of formal contemplation
was best served not in pure subjectivity but in a system of postulates and
theorems).
* Typical is Keith, who, with Jovian disregard, adds: "On the classification of
figures of speech no serious thought appears to have been expended" (SL, p. 398).
The Indian texts, on the contrary, are almost exclusively devoted to questions of
concrete definition: the number of figures and related poetic categories.
37 P. V. Kane's History of Sanskrit Poetics. The figures, or rather the definitions of
the figures, are meticulously examined for the light they throw on the chronology of
the texts.
38 Cf. D. H. H. Ingalls, "Sanskrit Poetry and Sanskrit Poetics", a part of the Introduc-
tion (pp. 2-29) to his translation of the Subhāṣitaratnakoşa (Harvard Oriental Series,
44). De has called for, but no one has yet provided, a study of the "development of
the different conceptions of individual poetic figures ..." (HSP, II, p. 70). This is
indeed a desideratum, and one which might well precede speculation on the nature and
aims of the alamkāra criticism.
30 Contra De, SPSA, p. 2. Even historically, poetry is the first form of expression,
according to the folklorists.
INTRODUCTION
expression-a kind of elemental ordering or creation in the stuff of lan-
guage.
Despite the wealth of figures in the Indian poetic and despite the ex-
actitude and breadth of their exemplification in the treatises, modern
critics have not shown much interest in the universe implied by the figures,
preferring to extrapolate theories of poetic beauty from the rare and
sketchy references to terms like vakrokti, rīti, and Sobhā.30 If they are
concerned with the figures at all, it is philologically, as an exercise in
the history of a text tradition.37 Critics concerned with intellectual history
(Ingalls, for example) often adopt the point of view of the dhvani theorists
and are puzzled by the persistent emphasis on figuration.38
Verbal beauty is a consideration proper to poetics, but the initial task
of the discipline is to describe the expressive apparatus by which this
poetic comprehension is achieved. To begin with, the poetic charm of
language has to be taken for granted; it is not an object of investigation,
but a criterion of identification. The question necessarily posed by the
first figurationists was "how", not "what".39 Of course, in time, when
the formal apparatus had been more or less successfully delineated,
critics, under the impetus of newer poetic genres, began to speculate on
the problem of beauty itself and to seek a single principle which underlies
poetic language. We will take up this important transition in its place.
It would not be accurate to say that the ālamkārikas were insensitive
to beauty, but rather that their task was to define a concrete context in
which the discussion of beauty would have meaning. Their view of
beauty was that it was best revealed in its own structure (much as Euclid
must have thought that the intellectual delight of formal contemplation
was best served not in pure subjectivity but in a system of postulates and
theorems).
* Typical is Keith, who, with Jovian disregard, adds: "On the classification of
figures of speech no serious thought appears to have been expended" (SL, p. 398).
The Indian texts, on the contrary, are almost exclusively devoted to questions of
concrete definition: the number of figures and related poetic categories.
37 P. V. Kane's History of Sanskrit Poetics. The figures, or rather the definitions of
the figures, are meticulously examined for the light they throw on the chronology of
the texts.
38 Cf. D. H. H. Ingalls, "Sanskrit Poetry and Sanskrit Poetics", a part of the Introduc-
tion (pp. 2-29) to his translation of the Subhāṣitaratnakoşa (Harvard Oriental Series,
44). De has called for, but no one has yet provided, a study of the "development of
the different conceptions of individual poetic figures ..." (HSP, II, p. 70). This is
indeed a desideratum, and one which might well precede speculation on the nature and
aims of the alamkāra criticism.
30 Contra De, SPSA, p. 2. Even historically, poetry is the first form of expression,
according to the folklorists.