2023-03-29 18:09:51 by ambuda-bot
This page has not been fully proofread.
THE ADEQUACY OF THE "ALAMKARIKA" POETIC
poetics, but a statement so general that it encompasses the whole dramatic
vocabulary including modalities that are non-linguistic. Poetry and
drama are reunited in a theory emphasizing their common expressionistic
basis, perhaps testifying in part to the collapse of drama as a living art
form and its maintenance in primarily literary terms.
The internal differentiation of the dhvani shows how syncretistic it is.
Its purest form is rasa itself. A literary poetics has now taken over the
portion of dramatic theory previously reserved to the ensemble of largely
non-linguistic suggestions-gestures, identifications, etc. Language
becomes in this view a surrogate of the real, by its nature able to suggest
everything immediately-not only ideas but moods, feelings not as
secondary factors of ideas or as a contextual affectation of some figure.
It is a hardy theory, and is argued ably by Anandavardhana in the first
chapter of Dhvanyaloka. But the dhvani school allows the older forms of
ālamkārika vakrokti, too. In this guise, the dhvani appears as the discrete
idea or sense suggested by the non-literal modality of the figure, which
in contrast to dhvani as rasa, is primary to whatever rasa it may also
express. In this way the alamkāra is integrated into the dhvani theory
and, at the same time, its association with the rasa is explained. This
relationship for the first time allows the problem to be posed of the
context in which the figures are used: Ānandavardhana espouses the
doctrine of aucitya 'appropriateness', whereby the figure is to be employed
only as it furthers the predominant mood: the rasa. Otherwise the discrete
sense of the figure predominates over the rasa.174
Finally, a type of dhvani is defined which is realized neither as rasa,
nor as figure, but directly as a meaning. This variety corresponds to
discrete suggestion, which operates through inference or association:
when from the statement of one thing, another (often the contrary) is
understood, as for example, irony.175 In fact the alamkārikas considered
this last type, as they did the first, special types of alamkāra. We have
discussed several based on inference and suggestion under the heading
"System of Figures".176 The dhvani theory really does not add anything to
79
174 Dhvanyaloka 3.32-33, 37-38; type defined at 2.25. Cf. supra, n. 153.
175 Ibid., 2.26. The latter two types, in which the rasa occupies the rank of a subor-
dinate element (to the sense or the figure expressed) are thereby termed gunibhūta-
yangya. Poetry in which the rasa/dhvani is totally absent, though poetry only by con-
vention, is admitted into the system as citrakāvya ("pictorial poetry"): ibid., 3.42.
178 This paradox is explained by the tendency of the dhvani theorists to equate figure
with the figure par excellence-simile (upamā). They were not prepared, for obvious
reasons, to admit the universality of the definition of figuration implied by the alam-
kārika treatises.
poetics, but a statement so general that it encompasses the whole dramatic
vocabulary including modalities that are non-linguistic. Poetry and
drama are reunited in a theory emphasizing their common expressionistic
basis, perhaps testifying in part to the collapse of drama as a living art
form and its maintenance in primarily literary terms.
The internal differentiation of the dhvani shows how syncretistic it is.
Its purest form is rasa itself. A literary poetics has now taken over the
portion of dramatic theory previously reserved to the ensemble of largely
non-linguistic suggestions-gestures, identifications, etc. Language
becomes in this view a surrogate of the real, by its nature able to suggest
everything immediately-not only ideas but moods, feelings not as
secondary factors of ideas or as a contextual affectation of some figure.
It is a hardy theory, and is argued ably by Anandavardhana in the first
chapter of Dhvanyaloka. But the dhvani school allows the older forms of
ālamkārika vakrokti, too. In this guise, the dhvani appears as the discrete
idea or sense suggested by the non-literal modality of the figure, which
in contrast to dhvani as rasa, is primary to whatever rasa it may also
express. In this way the alamkāra is integrated into the dhvani theory
and, at the same time, its association with the rasa is explained. This
relationship for the first time allows the problem to be posed of the
context in which the figures are used: Ānandavardhana espouses the
doctrine of aucitya 'appropriateness', whereby the figure is to be employed
only as it furthers the predominant mood: the rasa. Otherwise the discrete
sense of the figure predominates over the rasa.174
Finally, a type of dhvani is defined which is realized neither as rasa,
nor as figure, but directly as a meaning. This variety corresponds to
discrete suggestion, which operates through inference or association:
when from the statement of one thing, another (often the contrary) is
understood, as for example, irony.175 In fact the alamkārikas considered
this last type, as they did the first, special types of alamkāra. We have
discussed several based on inference and suggestion under the heading
"System of Figures".176 The dhvani theory really does not add anything to
79
174 Dhvanyaloka 3.32-33, 37-38; type defined at 2.25. Cf. supra, n. 153.
175 Ibid., 2.26. The latter two types, in which the rasa occupies the rank of a subor-
dinate element (to the sense or the figure expressed) are thereby termed gunibhūta-
yangya. Poetry in which the rasa/dhvani is totally absent, though poetry only by con-
vention, is admitted into the system as citrakāvya ("pictorial poetry"): ibid., 3.42.
178 This paradox is explained by the tendency of the dhvani theorists to equate figure
with the figure par excellence-simile (upamā). They were not prepared, for obvious
reasons, to admit the universality of the definition of figuration implied by the alam-
kārika treatises.