Agnipurana 346

English (machine translation) 346

Language: English

346.9 — 2 parts
346.19 — 4 parts
346.30 — 2 parts
346.40 — 3 parts

346.1

Agni said: / A fault is that which causes distress to cultured critics; and it is sevenfold, / through the application of one, two, or all three of speaker, expression, and the expressed.

346.2

Therein, the speaker is known as the poet, and he is distinguished / as fourfold: doubtful, ill-mannered, ignorant, and learned.

346.3

The signifier touches the meaning through its occasion and conventional usage; / its divisions are twofold, word and sentence; the definition of both has been declared.

346.4

Ungrammaticality and lack of usage are indeed two faults of a word; / the wise know ungrammaticality to be contrariety to grammar.

346.5

Lack of usage is said to be absence of employment by the learned; / archaism, unclearness, and harshness,

346.6

unconventionality, and vulgarity—thus it is fivefold. / Archaism belongs not to ordinary speech; unclearness arises from non-comprehension.

346.7

Obscure meaning, perverse meaning, doubtful meaning, / and unclear meaning are its varieties; among these, obscure meaning is that

346.8

wherein the meaning is understood with difficulty; perverse meaning, again, / is an impure cognition of a meaning of a word other than the intended one.

346.9

Having an unintended meaning and incapacity verge upon this very [fault].

346.9.p2

1 [Variant] "by the intellect" in the manuscript ja..
[Page 232]

346.9_2

They declare doubtful meaning to be that wherein the signified is dubious.

346.10

It incurs faultiness without distressing the cultured; / harshness is difficulty of pronunciation; lapse from convention

346.11

is unconventionality, which sages have declared must be deduced. / Vulgarity, however, is a vile cognition of a base meaning.

346.12

It is threefold: through the utterance or even recollection of an unmentionable vulgar signified, / and through phonetic similarity with the word signifying that.

346.13

The fault of meaning is twofold: common and specific. / That which touches many parts is traditionally considered common.

346.14

Loss of verb and syntactic factor, hiatus, tautology, / and broken connection—these five are regarded as common.

346.15

Absence of a verb is loss of verb; loss of syntactic factor, again, / is absence of the agent and other factors; hiatus is a defect of euphonic junction.

346.16

It is twofold: absent junction or contradictory junction; / contrariety of junction arises from a harsh metrical foot or the intrusion of an inappropriate meaning.

346.17

Tautology is an utterance made repeatedly; it is twofold: / repetition of meaning and repetition of words; repetition of meaning is also twofold,

346.18

through the very word previously used, or by another word; / in repetition of words, the signified is not repeated, but the word is repeated.

346.19

Broken connection is [where] a well-formed syntactical connection [is disrupted] due to separation, / the manifestation of another connection, or the generation of another connection.

346.19.p2

1 [Variant] "faults" in manuscripts ka.. and ja..

346.19.p3

2 [Variant] "from a harsh metrical foot through a succession of another meaning" in manuscript ṭa..

346.19.p4

3 [Variant] "through a word used before" in manuscripts ja.. and ña..
[Page 233]

346.20

Even in the absence of both, it is threefold through intermediate separation; / between words and sentences, it is subdivided into two.

346.21

Because it is sought as the object of meaning, the signified is twofold in words and sentences; / it is divided into that which has already been derived and that which is yet to be derived.

346.22

Incapacity of the logical reason is that which brings about the subversion of the thesis; / likewise, unprovenness, contrariety, and inconclusiveness,

346.23

similarly, having an equally valid counter-thesis, being vitiated by time, and fallacious confusion; / presence in the subject and in the positive instance, and presence in the negative instance.

346.24

In poetry, this may not be painful even to members of an assembly; / elevenfold meaninglessness is not a fault in difficult verses and the like.

346.25

Obscure meaning does not distress critics in difficult compositions; / vulgarity does not cause agitation because of its currency in worldly speech and treatises.

346.26

Grace exists despite the loss of a verb through the ellipsis and supply of the verb, / and despite the loss of a syntactic factor when the factor is supplied by force of implication.

346.27

In a non-coalescing vowel, a defect is not at all perceived through hiatus; / hiatus due to harsh reading is not unpleasing in difficult-to-pronounce passages and the like.

346.28

In alliteration, repetition of words and broken connection are auspicious; / in conveying the meaning, a fault does not attach through inverted order and the like.

346.29

Where there is no agitation to the wise regarding case-ending, nominal base, and gender, / there, difference in number between the standard and subject of comparison

346.30

is auspicious: of many with one, and likewise of many with many. / The traditional usage of poets is celebrated as convention.

346.30.p2

1 [Variant] "elevenfold rejection" in manuscript ña..
[Page 234]

346.31

It is twofold, like properties: general and particular; / that which is established without dispute among proven theorists

346.32

and poets is regarded as the general convention, / by which all theorists move without transgression,

346.33

or by which only some move; thus it is twofold. / Another may arise from differing doctrinal tenets, or from the delusion of some, such as:

346.34

the logical knowledge of one sage, the momentariness of another, / the sentience of the material elements of one, the self-luminosity of knowledge,

346.35

the perceived grossness [of consciousness], the manifoldness of words for the Jaina, / and the doctrine of the adherents of the Śaiva, Vaiṣṇava, Śākta, and Saura systems,

346.36

Brahman as the cause of the universe, and for the followers of Sāṅkhya together with the Pradhāna. / Moving among one another in this realm of Sarasvatī,

346.37

what they compose discerning [it] through specific [conventions] is declared; / through the acceptance even of the unreal, and the non-acceptance of the real,

346.38

its twofold nature is sung when it is differentiated. / That which is contradicted by means of valid knowledge such as perception, they know as unreal.

346.39

That is to be accepted by poets, [such as] the luminosity of knowledge; / whatever produces causal efficacy, that alone is ultimately real.

From ignorance, but by knowledge, the one Brahman alone is ultimately real; / that Viṣṇu is the cause of heaven and other realms, embodied as verbal ornament; / there is the lower and the higher knowledge; knowing that, one is liberated from worldly existence.

Other recensions (1)

Agnipurāṇa (Nag Publishers edition, Delhi) — Sanskrit

Linked texts (1)

Agnipurāṇa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit

Agnipurana 346

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