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arena in which genius and talent were to manifest themselves. Of far
greater relevance here is the composition of individual stanzas, which
are poetry in the Indian sense of the term and which require only limited
attainments, such as the ability to speak, think, and compose on the
manifold levels of non-referential language. Many, if not most, poems
have no other unity.
 
(F) Phonemic limitations whose principle is not inherent (sausabdya),
but arbitrary, that is, which rest on some notion having nothing to do
with phonics.
 
INTRODUCTION
 
the pattern of repeated phonemes enables
the verse to be shown in pictorial form
the pattern of repeated phonemes enables
 
the verse to be shown in geometrical form duşkara
conundrums: the solution to a problem is
 
hidden in the verse expressing it, which needs
to be seen differently
 
puns: by another morphological analysis,
a different meaning is understood in the
sequence. Can be seen as a yamaka whose
repetition is only implicit
 
citra
 
prahelikā
 
śleşa (sabdaśleşa)
 
(IV) THE ADEQUACY OF THE ĀLAMKĀRIKA POETIC
 
(a) Kāvya
 
Contemporary critics have too long been dependent on the reformulation
of the alamkāra theory proposed by the dhvani writers, Anandavardhana
and Abhinavagupta, for whom the alamkarika viewpoint is deprived
of its independent status and reduced to a moment in a more all-embrac-
ing view. Histories of Indian poetics have been little more than attempts
to justify this ex post facto subordination. The theory should be con-
sidered in its own terms and not for what defects may be predicated of it in
terms of another aesthetic. We have tried to keep strictly within the
bounds of an alamkāra poetic in this introduction. The scope of the
discussion ought, at this point, to be broadened to a certain extent, for
the characteristic adequacy of a poetic will inevitably correspond in
some measure to the poetry with which it was intended to deal. The
adequacy of a poetic may be determined in three ways (excepting the
disputations which one poetic directs against another):