Agnipurana 341
English (machine translation) 341
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Contents
341.1
Agni said: / Bringing the meanings [of a text] forward [to the spectators], it is to be understood by the wise as dramatic representation (abhinaya); / its arising is fourfold, resting upon inner temperament, speech, bodily limbs, and external ornamentation.
341.2
Stupefaction and the like is sāttvika; the exertion of voice is vācika; / the movement of the body is āṅgika; the production of intelligence and costumes is āhārya.
341.3
Then the application of the rasas and the like is explained through ego-consciousness; / without it, independence for all [rasas] is entirely meaningless.
341.4
The erotic (śṛṅgāra) is remembered as twofold: in union (sambhoga) and in separation (vipralambha).
341.4.p1
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341.4_2
These two are further of two kinds: hidden and open.
341.5
The erotic [rasa] known as separation is of four kinds: / that called first love, travel, [separation], and of the nature of compassion.
341.6
Arising from these, another characterized by union / unfolds in four ways, and it does not proceed beforehand.
341.7
Its arising belongs to a man and a woman; its productive cause is love (rati). / All the involuntary states (sāttvika) are present there, except paleness and fainting.
341.8
The erotic [rasa] is heightened by duty, wealth, pleasure, and liberation, / and constantly by specific primary determinants and their particulars.
341.9
One should know laughter to be twofold: consisting of speech, costumes, and action. / Laughter is of four kinds; when the teeth are invisible, it is called a smile (smita);
341.10
with the tips of the teeth slightly visible and the eyes blossoming, it is gentle laughter (hasita); / vihasita is accompanied by sound, while mocking laughter (upahasita) is crooked;
341.11
loud laughter (apahasita) has sound, and excessive laughter (atihāsita) is without sound. / And that which is called the pathetic (karuṇa), that rasa is threefold:
341.12
arising from the destruction of righteousness, and produced from agitation of the mind; / sorrow arises from sorrow; the permanent state [is sorrow]—the first-born is considered a permanent state.
341.13
The furious (raudra) rasa is also threefold, through body, costume, and words; / its productive cause is anger (krodha), [accompanied by] sweat, horripilation, and trembling.
341.14
Heroism in charity, heroism in righteousness, and heroism in battle: this is the triad / of the heroic (vīra), and zeal (utsāha) is accepted as the cause of its accomplishment.
341.15
Where in beginnings it occurs, it follows the heroic alone.
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The fearful (bhayānaka) is a rasa whose producing cause is fear.
341.16
The odious (bībhatsa) is considered twofold: agitating and repulsive; / it is agitating by leaps and the like, and repulsive by blood and the like.
341.17
Disgust (jugupsā) is its initiator, and its involuntary component recedes. / The attributes that produce beauty in poetry are declared to be ornaments (alaṅkāra).
341.18
Desiring to ornament, they [ornament] sound, sense, or both, in three ways. / Those which, through derivation and the like, are capable here of ornamenting sound—
341.19
the knowers and critics of poetry call them ornaments of sound (śabdālaṅkāra). / Chāyā (reflection), Mudrā (seal), likewise Ukti (expression), Yukti (union) together with Gumphanā (weaving),
341.20
Vākovākya (dialogue), Anuprāsa (alliteration), Citra (pictorial poetry), and Duṣkara (difficult composition): / these are to be known as the nine ornaments of sound, without confusion.
341.21
Among them, Chāyā is the imitation of another's utterance, and it is fourfold, / through the imitation of the speech of common folk, the clever, children, and a single speaker:
341.22
Common speech is proverbial speech; those [proverbs] are common to everyone. / That which follows common speech, the wise consider to be the Chāyā [of common folk].
341.23
The clever (cheka) are the witty, and wit is an intellect skilled in the arts; / portraying that, the Chāyā of clever speech is intended by the poets.
341.24
Uncultivated speech is characterized by all as the speech of children; / thus the Chāyā of children's speech imitates their speech alone.
341.25
The words of an intoxicated person have confused syllables and improper content; / that which is the Chāyā of an intoxicated person's speech, when spoken, shines brightly.
341.26
Revealing the power of the poet through a particular intention,
341.26.p1
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341.26_2
giving delight—that is Mudrā; and that same [quality] is also called repose (śayyā) in our view.
341.27
Ukti (expression) is said to be that in which even an insignificant meaning possesses plausibility, / and through the rule of the ways of the world delights the hearts of the virtuous.
341.28
Injunction and prohibition, both restriction and absence of restriction, / option and exclusion: these are its six modes of expression.
341.29
The joining together of two words—expressed sense and expressing word—/ that seem unconnected, devised [by a poet], is called Yukti by the wise.
341.30
A word, the meaning of a word, a sentence, and the meaning of a sentence, / a topic, and an expansion: its scope is of six kinds.
341.31
Gumphanā (weaving) is the practice of composition pertaining to the arrangement of sound and sense; / by imitation of sounds, and by sequence of senses, this is threefold in succession.
341.32
A speech consisting of utterance and reply is Vākovākya (dialogue); it is of two kinds, / through the division of straightforward and crooked speech; among them, the first is natural speech.
341.33
It may be twofold: pūrvapraśnikā and praśnapūrvikā. / But oblique expression (vakrokti) occurs by an indirect turn; intonation (kāku) is made twofold by it.
341.33.p1
Thus ends the three hundred forty-first chapter, named 'Exposition of Dramatic Representation and Related Topics', in the section on poetics in the great Agni Purāṇa.
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341.33.p3
Now, the three hundred forty-second chapter.
341.33.p4
Figures of sound.
341.33.p5
Agni said:
Other recensions (1)
- Agnipurāṇa (Nag Publishers edition, Delhi) — Sanskrit
Linked texts (1)
- Agnipurāṇa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit