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to what extent the dhvani clarifies the aspirations of that poetry and the
manner of its prosecution vis-à-vis the stylized poetry of the classical era.
It does appear that several points can be made in outline from the angle
of our main interest, the alamkāraśāstra. The Gitagovinda, to take the
supreme example, is a poem in a sense that no classical kāvya is, be it
epic or anthologic: it aims at a religious goal which is secondarily a
poetic goal, at the single idea of love and its embodiment in the God
Kṛṣṇa and his consort Rādhā, an ideal to be evoked in the hearer by
sympathy and involvement. The work serves that purpose in a very
direct sense. It is not surprising that the dramatic theory of Bharata
suggested itself as a more adequate model for interpreting this new
poetico-religious form than did the grammatical and abstractly intellectual
alamkāra theory which emphasized the understanding. Written poetry
had at this time in fact begun to serve purposes which formerly were
considered more appropriate to the drama.
From classical times, there is only a single poem known to us which by
any stretch of the imagination could be called dramatic in these terms:
the Meghaduta of Kālidāsa. It is of course a stanzaic poem of very high
quality and observes the important canons of that form: ornate meter,
stanzaic independence coinciding with a single, many-sided image, and
extensive employment of arthālamkāra. Yet as a work the Megħadūta has
a kind of dramatic unity, almost a "plot": the separation of lovers, the
voyage of the cloud to the beloved, its message and promise of reconcilia-
tion. This form, which we owe to the originality of Kālidāsa, was, how-
ever, felt to be so peculiar that it excited only imitations. It constitutes a
"genre" of its own.
The impact of the Meghaduta, whatever its dramatic form, is never-
theless very different from that of the medieval devotional poem. It
does not convey a rasa; or rather, whatever rasa is understood (śrīgāra
in separation) is certainly understood first in the individual stanzas,
then in their aggregation in accordance with the figure rasavat. The
Meghaduta is a stanzaic poem held together by an emotional thread
instead of a theme or a legend. The genre epitomized by the Gitagovinda
demands an accounting of the poem as a whole (the rasa is embodied
in whole chapters or cantos), unlike the Meghadūta, wherein the narrative
unity of the work (the voyage of a cloud) becomes the pretext for a set
of lovel intaglios.180
The alamkāraśāstra does not sufficiently account for the older (pre-
INTRODUCTION
190 The figure bhävika in manifestation.
to what extent the dhvani clarifies the aspirations of that poetry and the
manner of its prosecution vis-à-vis the stylized poetry of the classical era.
It does appear that several points can be made in outline from the angle
of our main interest, the alamkāraśāstra. The Gitagovinda, to take the
supreme example, is a poem in a sense that no classical kāvya is, be it
epic or anthologic: it aims at a religious goal which is secondarily a
poetic goal, at the single idea of love and its embodiment in the God
Kṛṣṇa and his consort Rādhā, an ideal to be evoked in the hearer by
sympathy and involvement. The work serves that purpose in a very
direct sense. It is not surprising that the dramatic theory of Bharata
suggested itself as a more adequate model for interpreting this new
poetico-religious form than did the grammatical and abstractly intellectual
alamkāra theory which emphasized the understanding. Written poetry
had at this time in fact begun to serve purposes which formerly were
considered more appropriate to the drama.
From classical times, there is only a single poem known to us which by
any stretch of the imagination could be called dramatic in these terms:
the Meghaduta of Kālidāsa. It is of course a stanzaic poem of very high
quality and observes the important canons of that form: ornate meter,
stanzaic independence coinciding with a single, many-sided image, and
extensive employment of arthālamkāra. Yet as a work the Megħadūta has
a kind of dramatic unity, almost a "plot": the separation of lovers, the
voyage of the cloud to the beloved, its message and promise of reconcilia-
tion. This form, which we owe to the originality of Kālidāsa, was, how-
ever, felt to be so peculiar that it excited only imitations. It constitutes a
"genre" of its own.
The impact of the Meghaduta, whatever its dramatic form, is never-
theless very different from that of the medieval devotional poem. It
does not convey a rasa; or rather, whatever rasa is understood (śrīgāra
in separation) is certainly understood first in the individual stanzas,
then in their aggregation in accordance with the figure rasavat. The
Meghaduta is a stanzaic poem held together by an emotional thread
instead of a theme or a legend. The genre epitomized by the Gitagovinda
demands an accounting of the poem as a whole (the rasa is embodied
in whole chapters or cantos), unlike the Meghadūta, wherein the narrative
unity of the work (the voyage of a cloud) becomes the pretext for a set
of lovel intaglios.180
The alamkāraśāstra does not sufficiently account for the older (pre-
INTRODUCTION
190 The figure bhävika in manifestation.