Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c85.100

v2.c85.100

The next chapter proceeds to discuss other varieties of suggestion, including suggestion based on the *lakṣaṇā*, which is treated of in detail, and then takes up the poetic figures (to the number of about 70) to which the rest of the work, breaking off in the middle of the figure *uttara*, is devoted. The poetic figure or *alaṃkāra* comes in as the source of the charm or *ramaṇīyatā* essential in the principal suggested element of poetry already defined (*prāg-abhihita-lakṣaṇasya kāvyātmano vyaṅgyasya ramaṇīyatā-prayojakā alaṃkārāḥ*, p. 156). The aesthetic pleasure (*camatkāra* or *lokōttaratva*) into which this *ramaṇīyatā* resolves itself is an essential element in the poetic figure, and Jagannātha harmonises his own conception of poetry with Ruyyaka's theory of the *alaṃkāra* (which he accepts and elaborates) as involving this *camatkāra* (also called hrdyatva, cārutva, saundarya, or denoted by the technical terms vaicitrya, vicchitti-viśeṣa or bhaṇiti-prakāra) imparted by the conception of the poet (kavi-pratibhā). Kuntala, from whom Ruyyaka appears to have derived his analysis, laid down that in every poetical production the activity of the poet, which consists in an act of the productive imagination (pratibhā), is the principal point, and it should result in poetic expression. Jagannātha asserts that the pratibhā alone is the source of poetry and therefore of poetic expression, and as such it fixes the nature of the alaṃkāra. The special charm (vicchitti-viśeṣa), which is thus imparted to poetic figure by the imagination of the poet, is taken (pp. 466, 470) as the basis upon which the poetic figures distinguish themselves in their special peculiarities, and is explained as an act of imaginative production on the part of the poet in so far as it is produced in the poem, or as that aesthetic pleasure³⁶ which is thereby brought into being. As to how this vicchitti is determined, Jagannātha settles the question by resting it not only upon established usage (sampradāya) but also upon one’s own imagination and intuition (anubhava). On this fundamental principle, the various figures are minutely defined, differentiated, illustrated and classified; and this portion of Jagannātha’s work, in spite of its subtlety and polemic attitude, is one of the soundest, though unfortunately uncompleted, treatment of the subject.