Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c81.s1.67

v2.c81.s1.67

It will be seen from this brief enumeration that Vāmana’s guṇas differ considerably from those of Bharata or Daṇḍin. Vāmana’s ojas, for instance, would correspond to Daṇḍin’s śleṣa, while Daṇḍin’s mādhurya is split up into pṛthak-padatva and agrāmyatva. Vāmana brings in the idea of rasa in the artha-guṇa kānti (cf Bharata’s kānti), thereby admitting it in one of the essentials of poetry, while Daṇḍin acknowledges it in some of the non-essential poetic figures. Vāmana’s artha-guṇa arthavyakti would be regarded by Daṇḍin as an instance of svabhāvokti-alaṃkāra. But it must be observed that Vāmana’s scheme, while being more systematic and thus marking an advance on the speculation of Daṇḍin’s is hardly satisfactory as a whole. The somewhat pedantic classification of guṇas, into external and internal, verbal and ideal, is in itself open to objections and has been controverted by later theorists²². The distinctions are sometimes unconvincing, and it is natural to suspect that they are made for the sake of symmetry of having two sets each of ten excellences. Taking the individual *guṇas*, it appears that Vāmana himself was perhaps conscious of the defective nature of some of his definitions, although he must have elaborated the ten *guṇas* according to some fixed convention. For instance, his *śabda-guṇa prasāda* is merely a negation of his *ojas*; Vāmana himself admits this and adds the qualification that the *prasāda* is an excellence when appearing along with *ojas* and not by itself, for when it appears by itself it is clearly a defect. If it is objected that there cannot be a combination of two such contradictory *guṇas*, Vāmana replies that such a combination is a fact of common experience. Vāmana’s *śleṣa* is rejected by Mammaṭa as an independent excellence, inasmuch as it is only a particular form of *ojas*. In the same way, the *saukumārya* is not admitted by later theorists on the ground that it is merely the negation of the defect of harshness, just as Vāmana’s *udāratā* is a negation of vulgarity (*grāmyatva*). His *samādhi* as an *artha-guṇa* is different from Daṇḍin’s *samādhi*, but it is hardly an ‘excellence’. It is supposed to consist in comprehending the original meaning, but this happens in the case of all compositions, for there can hardly be any poetry, worth the name, of which the meaning is not comprehended. These and other objections are brought forward by Mammaṭa and his followers, who protest against this needless multiplication and differentiation of the *guṇas*, and who sum up the literary ‘qualities’, which they admit as an embellishment of the principal sentiment (*rasa*) of the composition, under three broad categories, differentiated on entirely psychological grounds, viz., *ojas* (energy), *prasāda* (lucidity) and *mādhurya* (sweetness).