Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c85.14

v2.c85.14

of defects; while others are sometimes positive defects. Thus, Vāmana’s śleṣa, samādhi and udāratā are comprehended by ojas; arthavyakti is merely an aspect of prasāda; samatā, consisting of a certain uniformity of style, is sometimes a fault; while saukumārya and kānti, defined repectively as freedom from harshness (or inauspiciousness) and vulgarity, are simply the reverse of the defects śruti-kaṣṭa and grāmyatva. These considerations simplify the classification of the guṇas and put a limit to their useless multiplication or differentiation (witness, e. g., Bhoja’s elaborate scheme of 24 guṇas). Mammaṭa, therefore, thinks that the distinction between śabda-guṇa and artha-guṇa is meaningless, for the latter need not be separately considered. The mental activity involved in the enjoyment of rasa, is made to justify only three (and not ten) guṇas which are thus brought into effective relation with the principal sentiment of a composition. Thus, the ojas is supposed to cause a brilliant expansion (vistāra) of the mind and resides in the moods of heroism, horror and fury; the prasāda, proper to all the moods, is taken as the cause of a quick apprehension of the sense, extending over the mind at once (vyāpti or vikāsa), like a stream of water over a cloth, or like fire among dry fuel (cf Bharata vii 7); while the mādhurya, residing normally in the erotic mood of love-in-union, but also appropriate to and rising successively in degree in pathos, love-in-separation and calm, is regarded as causing a softening or melting of the heart (druti). The three conditions of the mind, viz., expanding, pervading and melting, which accompany the poetic sentiments, are thus made the basis of the three guṇas: and though these mental states are sometimes mixed up and lead to various other mental conditions, these latter effects are equalised to the three *guṇas* defined by himself ⁴. Mammaṭa admits *doṣas* of *pada*, *vākya* and *artha*, as well as *doṣas* of *rasa*, a mode of treatment which are too many and too indistinct to be taken as the basis of new *guṇas*. This exposition follows and expands *Dhvanyāloka* ii 8-11 (see above pp. 218f); but it is possible that the original hint of associating these effects on the mental condition of the reader with the three *guṇas* was supplied by Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka (*Locana* p. 68) who speaks of the enjoyment (*bhoga*) of *rasa* as being characterised by the mental conditions of expanding (*vistāra*), prevading (*vikāsa*) and melting (*druti*). Viśvanātha substantially agrees with this view of Mammaṭa; but he takes the technical objection that the *ojas* etc. are not the causes of, but identical with, the process of expansion etc.