Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c84.16

v2.c84.16

It is possible that he admits a suggested sense, as the essence of poetry (*rasa-dhvanis tu tenaivā-tmatyāṅgīkṛtaḥ*, *Locana* p.15); but from Abhinava's twitting him on this score it is probable that he denied *vastu-dhvani* (*kiṃ tu vastu-dhvaniṃ dūṣayatā rasa-dhvanis tadanugrāhakaḥ samarthyata iti suṣṭhu-tarāṃ dhvani-dhvaṃso'yam*, p. 29). Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka maintains in a verse attributed to him by Abhinava (p. 27), Hemacandra (p. 4), Māṇikyacandra (p. 4) and Jayaratha (p. 9) that the distinction between various kinds of literary composition lies in the fact in the *śāstra*, *śabda* predominates, *artha* in the *ākhyāna*, (=probably *itihāsa*), while in the *kāvya*, both *śabda* and *artha* are subordinated (*guṇībhūta* or *nyagbhāvita*). Elsewhere he is represented by Abhinava (p. 68) as saying that the verbal composition (*śabda*) which makes up poetry is different from other species of verbal composition by the fact that it possesses three elements. Of these elements, *abhidhā* or Denotation belongs to the province of expressed meaning, *bhāvakatva* or power of generalisation to that of *rasa*, and the *bhojakatva* or the power of enjoyment to the appreciating audience; thus we have three functions attributed to the three elements of poetry. If Denotation, among these, is taken by itself (i.e. without the other two), then what is the essential difference, he asks, between the poetic figures and the dogmas which form the method of *śāstras*? Or, if this manifold distinction of functions is without importance (metaphorically as well as intrinsically), then why avoid faults like unmelodiousness (*śrutiduṣṭa*)? These considerations, Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka thinks, would give us the second function, viz., *bhāvakatva*, by which generalisation is accomplished of poetry as well as of its factors (*vibhāvas*). It is on account of this function that *abhidhā* or Denotation is also Indication (*lakṣaṇā*), i.e., the Denotion can give to the expressed sense a metaphorical significance as the basis of *rasa*. After the *rasa* is thus generalised (*bhāvita*), comes its enjoyment or *bhoga* which, we have seen, Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka represents, after the Sāṃkhya philosophers, as a process of disinterested contemplation akin to the philosophic contemplation of Brahma.