Glossary of Indian Figures of Speech /7

PREFACE
 

 
It has been possible to compile the present work only by imposing strin-

gent limitations on method and subject matter. We have been concerned

with the figures as form and have treated them comparatively, as formula-

tions of the manifold poetic idea. The comparative emphasis is inevitable

if the figures are to be understood as a poetic. We have omitted a great

deal that could be said about the figures: we have not considered their

historical development, the vagaries of their individual formulation, or

the biases and peculiarities of the authors who discussed them. Such

questions have been exhaustively treated elsewhere, and they are only a

prolegomena to the study of the figures as a poetic. The method we have

used implies a system of figures, varieties of the poetic dicendum. We have

tried in the Introduction to distinguish this approach from others which

have been suggested.
 

 
We have studied systematically only the first third of the figurative

tradition: the pre-dhvani or early alamālaṃkārika period. We justify this
limitation on the ground that it is precisely in this period that the figures

limitation on the ground that it is precisely in this period that the figures
were studied as form. We thus emphasize the distinctiveness of the early

or formative period as a school of poetic criticism and attempt to establish

its presuppositions and achievements not merely in terms of what it

anticipated (the dhvani) but in terms of what it was: a serious study of the

käāvya, a poetic genre which was realized in classical India and which

remains the single most impressive monument of Indian literature.
 

 
The eight works used as a basis for this collection of figures of speech

are, in rough chronological order:
 

 
Bharata, Nāṭyaśāstra: part of the sixteenth adhyāya (16.40-84);

Bhāmaha, Kävyālamvyālaṃkāra: second and third paricchedas of six;

Dandṇḍin, Kävyäāvyādarśa: part of the first (52-68), all of the second, and

part of the third (1-124) paricchedas;
 

Vāmana, Kāvyālamıkäāravṛtti: the entire fourth adhikaraṇa;