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Glossary of Indian Figures of Speech / 264 Image 264 of 348 (Page 264)

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262

GLOSSARY

shows how the idea of a figure can be treated quite independently
of the expressive modes which it may entail. A conversation is
here reproduced, not in its accustomed time continuum, but quite
simultaneously, indifferent to time.

śleşa 'double-entendre': (1) a type of vakrôkti in which the second sense is
conveyed through a rejoinder based on a pun or a play on words.
(2) R 2.14 (15), M 103. (3) kim gauri mām prati ruşă । nanu gaur
aham kupyāmi kām prati । mayîty anumānato'ham jānāmy atas ।
tvam anumānata eva satyam (Rudraţa: "ŠIVA: Why are you angry
with me, Gauri? SHE: Why am I deemed a cow [gaur] by you? With
whom should I be angry? HE: I know by inference [anumănato]
that you are angry with me. SHE: indeed, you are anumānato [anumā-
nata: not devoted to Umã, another name for Gauri]"). (4) "POLO-
NIUS: My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of
you. HAMLET: You cannot sir take from me anything that I will
more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my
life** (Shakespeare). (5) As in śleșa arthântaranyāsa, a second topic
is intimated through a pun, but here that duality is comprehended
in the form of repartee-a conversation (or monologue) on two planes.
vakrôkti (II): (1) a figure wherein a word is used in a figurative sense
based on similitude; metonymy of resemblance. (2) V 4.3.8. (3)
samsthānena sphuratu subhagaḥ svarcişă cumbatu dyām (Vāmana;
"kiss" is used in a figurative sense: "May the blessed one be brilliant
with excellence; may he kiss the day with his darting rays"). (4)
"She stood breast-high among corn, / Clasp'd by the golden light
of morn" (Thomas Hood). (5) The Indian writers distinguish several
types of figurative usage (lakṣaṇā), depending on the kind of relation-
ship existing between the literal and secondary senses. For example,
the relation of proximity underlies "the grandstand roared with
approval"; that of whole-part in "Washington was scandalized by
it". Vāmana specifies that the relation be understood in this figure
as being restricted to similitude only: though light cannot "clasp"
anything, the meaning is obtained here through the striking simil-
arity of that act with the literal effective manifestation of the light.
The figure utprekṣā, as described by Dandin, appears identical with
this one, but involves a totally different orientation.

This one figure, sauf erreur, marks the only effort of an Indian
ālamkārika to define a poetic figure in the referential usage of single
words (trope, metonymy) which plays such a large role in our own
rhetorics. See the Introduction.

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