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46
INTRODUCTION
probably because of the highly stylized and conventional status which
relations of concomitance had come to occupy in Sanskrit poetry. We
have only to think of the pearls in the hoods of snakes, and the five
arrows of the Love God to realize how insipid the exploitation of such
conventional associations had become.¹¹1 It is often the function of
hetu thus to exploit the association, to draw out its conclusions, as shown
in these examples from Dandin: "The wind out of the south, touching
springs and sandal forests in the southern mountains, is destined to
relieve the weary wanderer",112 and, "The forests are sending forth new
shoots, the tanks are full of lotuses, the moon is full; but love turns all
this to poison in the eyes of the traveller [separated from his beloved]."¹1
Bhāmaha seems to adopt the special point of view that vakrokti in
such borderline cases, though formally present, is no longer recognized
as such and may therefore be considered nonexistent. The problem is
no more acute than that of any poetic idiom which becomes stereotyped
and imitative. Dandin is not so willing to dismiss these figures, thinking
that Bhāmaha's objection is misplaced. It is not the figure which lacks
vakrokti but its application; the poet remains free to exploit other
associations, which have not yet been stereotyped. Any figure, in the
view we are attributing to Dandin, could be denied poetic value on the
basis of conventional application (as Shakespeare's sonnet on stereotyped
similes descriptive of a woman's form).114
Conventional usage has been a problem from the earliest period of
grammatical speculation, but Indian thinkers have generally preferred
to consider it a special variety of literal usage and not itself inherently
poetical. What it amounts to in this view is the innovation of a term or a
form in a specific, but heretofore unattested, use. The desired meaning,
which is assumed and fixed, has, as it were, selected another means of
expression as precise as the literal one. ¹15 Such is not the case of the usage
styled vakrokti, for the meaning and the form are in essentially negative
correlation: all that can be said is that the meaning is not conveyed by the
112 Kävyādarśa, 2.238.
113 Kävyädarsa, 2.242.
114 Sonnet CXXX: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; / Coral is far more red
than her lips' red: / If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; / If hairs be wires,
black wires grow on her head...".
For example, the cliché "he hit the nail on the head"; its sense is so strictly deter-
mined as the substitute for what it means ("his remark was à propos"), that it may be
said to have supplanted that more literal expression. Its usage is as strictly regulated
as would be the phrase for which it stands; all attributes of the literal expression have
been transferred to the cliché, including that of literalism.
INTRODUCTION
probably because of the highly stylized and conventional status which
relations of concomitance had come to occupy in Sanskrit poetry. We
have only to think of the pearls in the hoods of snakes, and the five
arrows of the Love God to realize how insipid the exploitation of such
conventional associations had become.¹¹1 It is often the function of
hetu thus to exploit the association, to draw out its conclusions, as shown
in these examples from Dandin: "The wind out of the south, touching
springs and sandal forests in the southern mountains, is destined to
relieve the weary wanderer",112 and, "The forests are sending forth new
shoots, the tanks are full of lotuses, the moon is full; but love turns all
this to poison in the eyes of the traveller [separated from his beloved]."¹1
Bhāmaha seems to adopt the special point of view that vakrokti in
such borderline cases, though formally present, is no longer recognized
as such and may therefore be considered nonexistent. The problem is
no more acute than that of any poetic idiom which becomes stereotyped
and imitative. Dandin is not so willing to dismiss these figures, thinking
that Bhāmaha's objection is misplaced. It is not the figure which lacks
vakrokti but its application; the poet remains free to exploit other
associations, which have not yet been stereotyped. Any figure, in the
view we are attributing to Dandin, could be denied poetic value on the
basis of conventional application (as Shakespeare's sonnet on stereotyped
similes descriptive of a woman's form).114
Conventional usage has been a problem from the earliest period of
grammatical speculation, but Indian thinkers have generally preferred
to consider it a special variety of literal usage and not itself inherently
poetical. What it amounts to in this view is the innovation of a term or a
form in a specific, but heretofore unattested, use. The desired meaning,
which is assumed and fixed, has, as it were, selected another means of
expression as precise as the literal one. ¹15 Such is not the case of the usage
styled vakrokti, for the meaning and the form are in essentially negative
correlation: all that can be said is that the meaning is not conveyed by the
112 Kävyādarśa, 2.238.
113 Kävyädarsa, 2.242.
114 Sonnet CXXX: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; / Coral is far more red
than her lips' red: / If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; / If hairs be wires,
black wires grow on her head...".
For example, the cliché "he hit the nail on the head"; its sense is so strictly deter-
mined as the substitute for what it means ("his remark was à propos"), that it may be
said to have supplanted that more literal expression. Its usage is as strictly regulated
as would be the phrase for which it stands; all attributes of the literal expression have
been transferred to the cliché, including that of literalism.