Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c85.56

v2.c85.56

¹⁹ The theory of *pāka* and *śayyā* follows from the stress laid on felicity of expression, which depends on poetic genius and which lies at the root of all discussions on style, poetic figure and kindred topics. The word *śayyā* is old, having been used, apparently in this sense, by Bāṇabhaṭṭa in one of the introductory verses of his *Kādambarī*; while the *Agni-purāṇa* uses the word *mudrā* with a similar connotation. Vidyādhara and Vidyānātha develop it further as a special excellence of expression. The *śayyā* is defined as the repose of words in their mutual favourableness like the repose of the body in a bed, the similitude explaining the etymology of the term. This mutual friendship (*maitrī*) of words is so close that they cannot, as Mallinātha explains, be replaced even by synonyms : a theory of the immutability of words which *mutatis mutandis* would remind one of Flaubert's half-platonic view, developed by Walter Pater, that each idea has its fixed word-counterpart. The theory of *pāka* is very closely allied with this. The word *pāka*, meaning literally ‘ripeness’, ‘maturity’ or ‘fruition’, is as old as Vāmana. He speaks of *pāka* (I. 2. 21 *vṛtti*), resulting from the *vaidarbhī rīti* in a delightful effect on the connoisseur, as “that attaining which the excellence of a word quickens and in which the unreal appears as real”. Elsewhere he says that *śabda-pāka* occurs when the words are so carefully chosen that they cannot bear an exchange of synonym. Later theorists elaborate the doctrine as consisting of (1) *śabda-pāka*, which may be explained, after Vāmana, as maturity of expression due to the perfect fitness of a word and its sense, and (2) *artha-pāka* or depth of sense which is of various kinds brought about