Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c80.47

v2.c80.47

prescribing general formulas as a means of attaining literary expression. Or, perhaps the idea of vakrokti was traditional or already too well known in his time to require detailed treatment At any rate, after enumerating and defining the poetic figures up to and including atiśayokti, he says generally saiṣā sarvaiva vakroktiḥ (ii 85), with a hint (as it appears from the context) of identifying the vakrokti in substance with the idea involved in atiśayokti. Kuntala appears to agree with Bhāmaha that some kind of atiśaya is involved in vakrokti, and thinks that the atiśaya is a necessary element in what he calls vicitra-mārga, where vakrokti-vaicitrya prevails (i 27). Daṇḍin probably arrives at the same conclusion in a different way when he speaks of all poetic figures as depending on atiśayokti, a view which is explained thus by one of his commentators : alaṃkārāntarāṇām api eṣa (=atiśayoktyalaṃkāraḥ) upakārī bhavati, atiśaya-jananatvaṃ vinā bhūṣaṇatayā na syād ityabhiprāyaḥ. Ānandavardhana’s remarks in this connexion are illuminating. He says that it is possible to include atiśaya in all poetic figures, as has been successfully done by great poets, for the purpose of increasing the beauty of poetic compositions ; and citing Bhāmaha’s idea of atiśayokti and vakrokti he remarks (pp. 208)²² : “There is an excellence of charm in that poetic figure in which the atiśayokti is established by the imagination of the poet; other figures are merely so called. Since it is able to enter into the body or composition of all poetic figures, it is, by assuming it to be identical with them, called their essence”. The *atiśayokti* therefore, is taken, in the words of Abhinavagupta’s explanation, as the common token or generic property of all poetic figures (*sarvālaṃkāra-sāmānya-rūpam*), or, as Mammaṭa puts it, as their life-breath or essence (*prāṇatvenāvatiṣṭhate*, p. 743). One can realise from this the close connexion between this important figure and Bhāmaha’s notion of *vakrokti*.