Handbook of Classical Sanskrit Rhetoric /23

Introduction
 
Like bright and variegated paintings or decorations poetic
embellishments are alam
embellishments are alaṃkāras.
 

 
All the ingredients that add beauty to poetic composition are
called alam
called alaṃkāra.
 

 
Alamṃkāra is the agreeable combination of word and meaning

in artistic diction.
 

 
Alamṃkāras are the stylistic innovations of poet's language.
 

 
Following the Greek and Latin tradition the term Rhetoric has

been defined almost in the same manner in English poetics:
 

 
Rhetoric is language polished or heightened. It is the art of speaking

well, the using of words to their best advantage.
 
xi
 

 
More commonly, rhetoric is taken to refer specifically to tropes and fig-

ures of speech, those graces of style and patterns of words.
 

 
Rhetoric covers all the techniques by which a writer establishes rapport

with his readers.
 

 
Divisions of Alamṃkāras: Alamṃkāras or rhetorical figures may be

broadly classified into two main groups:
 

 
1. figures related to words or sounds (sśabdālamṃkāras or

verbal figures, Gk lexeos or the schemes, Gk schema is
ēma is
form, shape involving deviation from the ordinary pat-

tern or arrangement of words creating special charm

through sound effect for the reader),
 
Digitized by
 

 
2. figures of sense (artha-alamṃkāras or ideal figures, Gk

dianoias or the tropes, Gk tropein to turn ie a deviation

from the ordianry and principal signification of a word).

 
Therefore, the schemes signify any kind of variety or beauty

produced through harmony and symmetry of sounds or words, and

the tropes consist of any type of artful diction giving on the whole

an agreeable and charming sense. Word and meaning or sound

and sense are inter-related and, therefore, alamṃkāras of sound and

sense are also corelated and any such division as purely schemes or

tropes is not always viable. So Nagojibhaṭṭa has said that all figures

are a blend of both sound and sense (ubhaya-alamṃkāras).
 

 
In addition to these two main divisions mentioned above a
 
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN