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A History of Sanskrit Literature c25.s1: 1. The Beginnings of Theory on Poetry

A History of Sanskrit Literature c25.s1

Language
English

1. The Beginnings of Theory on Poetry

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IT is very possible to exaggerate the effect of theories of poetics¹ on Indian poetry and to ignore the fact that in India as elsewhere the poets set the models on which theory was built, and that it was only gradually that the effect of the textbooks on poetics came to be of ever-increasing importance. It is little short of absurd to imagine Kālidāsa as laboriously striving to conform to rules which in his time were, to the best of our knowledge, only in process of formulation, and which in any case were, as we can see from our extant sources, always being laid down with distinct divergences of emphasis and detail. Of the age of the study of poetics we can say little, but the fact that Pāṇini does not mention Alaṁkārasūtras, while he does recognize Naṭasūtras, certainly suggests that dramaturgy came before a general survey of poetics, even if we do not believe that Pāṇini knew a fully developed drama. With this accords the fact that, beyond vague references to Kāçyapa and a Vararuci, and Yāska’s knowledge of discussions of similes, Upamās,² we have no certain information on poetics until it occurs as a subordinate element in chapter xvi of the *Bhāratīya Nāṭyaçāstra*, which is essentially a treatise of dramaturgy and which may be placed conjecturally somewhat earlier than Bhāsa and Kālidāsa, though there is no strict proof of date. The great merit of this treatise, a compilation unquestionably from previous works, is that it develops the doctrine of sentiment, Rasa, with its eight subdivisions as erotic, comic, pathetic, and those of horror, heroism, fear, disgust, and wonder. Sentiment is a condition in the mind of the spectator of a drama, or, we may add, the hearer or reader of a poem, produced by the emotions of the characters, and the emotions, Bhāvas, are excited by factors which may either be the object of the emotion, as the loved one is in the case of love, or serve to heighten it, as does the spring season. The emotions manifest themselves in effects of various kinds, and they are essentially distinct in psychological character among themselves, while the sentiments, though subdivided according to the emotions which excite them, are nevertheless essentially one in feeling, and this feeling, which later authorities seek more clearly to define, is a special purely aesthetic emotion comparable to the bliss obtained in contemplation of the absolute by the intellect which can comprehend it.¹

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¹ See S. K. Dé, *Sanskrit Poetics* (1923–5); P. V. Kane, *Sāhityadarpaṇa* (1923); Hari Chand, *Kālidāsa et l’art poétique de l’Inde* (1917); V. V. Sovani, *Bhandarkar Comm. Vol.*, pp. 387 ff.; Trivedī, pp. 401 ff.

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² *Nirukta*, iii. 13; cf. Pāṇini, ii. 1. 55 f., 3. 72.

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¹ See Keith, *Sanskrit Drama* (1924), pp. 314 ff.

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This, however, is not the side of the *Nāṭyaçāstra* which was fated to elicit the chief attention of writers on poetics as opposed to dramaturgy. Poetics developed, if it did not originate, in distinction from dramaturgy, and writers on it were long content to refer merely to that science. The topics which were to engage writers on poetics, however, appear in elementary, though not undeveloped, form in the *Nāṭyaçāstra*. It recognizes four figures of speech, the simile, Upamā, the metaphor, Rūpaka, the Dīpaka, in essence the use of one predicate to many subjects or one subject to many predicates, and the Yamaka, repetition of syllables or alliteration. There is no distinction of figures as those of sound, Çabdālaṁkāra, and of sense, Arthālaṁkāra, and it is significant of early poetry that there are given ten kinds of Yamakas, but only five of Upamās. The Yamakas remain prominent in the older school of poetics, including Bhaṭṭi, Daṇḍin, Vāmana, Rudraṭa, and the *Agni Purāṇa* section on poetics, but Bhāmaha already admits but five kinds and Ānandavardhana and Mammaṭa make it clear that the figure has no real aesthetic importance, though in later as well as older poetry, for instance, the *Ghaṭakarpara*, it is freely used, serving in lieu of rhyme. Further, serving like the figures to bring out the sentiment, are given the ten qualities and the ten defects; it is characteristic of the beginnings of the science that the defects are given positively and the qualities given as the negation of the defects, while in fact it is impossible thus to connect the two lists. Moreover, the details of the lists are obscure, and differently interpreted both by the later writers on poetics and by the commentators on the Çāstra. On one view¹ the defects are: absence of a complete meaning; incongruity with the context; tautology; ambiguity; violation of syntactical regularity; grammatical errors; break of metrical rules as to pause; misuse of long or short syllables in metre; breach of euphonic rules; and inconsistency as to place, time, artistic usage, popular belief, logic, or science. The qualities are: Çleṣa, possibly in the sense of suggested sense; Prasāda, clearness; Samatā, evenness implying ease of comprehension; Samādhi, superimposition of something special in the sense; Mādhurya, sweetness; Ojas, strength arising from the use of compounds with respect to suitable concatenations of letters; Saukumārya, smoothness arising from happy metres and conjunctions; Arthavyakti, explicitness of sense; Udāra, elevation of subject and sentiment; and Kānti, loveliness, delighting the mind.

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¹ Bhāmaha, iv; logical faults are given in v. For Bharata's list see xvi. 84 ff.

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Of developments after the Çāstra we know nothing definite, and we can only guess at the stages by which new figures were found out. If we can take Bhāmaha's account as helping us historically—which is a pure assumption not suggested in any way by that author—we may hold² that the first step was to distinguish Anuprāsa, alliteration, from Yamaka, the former affecting only single letters, the latter involving the repetition of syllables. But it is much more dubious if the fact that Bhāmaha mentions after this set of five a set of six has any chronological conclusion, and the figures themselves are rather more complex than can be supposed to have been early. They are: Ākṣepa, paraleipsis, the denial of one thing to imply another; Arthāntaranyāsa, corroboration, the adduction of some instance or principle to prove an assertion; Vyatireka, contrast by dissimilitude; Vibhāvanā, abnormal causation, when something comes about by some unusual reason; Samāsokti, brevity, suggestion by metaphorical expressions; and Atiçayokti, hyperbole. Possibly to this period has been referred the figure Vārttā, which, however, was not generally accepted, though Daṇḍin perhaps,³ treats it as a sort of Hetu, cause. Our trust in the whole theory is seriously undermined when we find that to a third period of development are assigned three new figures: Yathāsaṁkhya, relative order; Utprekṣā, poetical fancy; and Svabhāvokti, description of the nature of a thing in its reality as appreciated by the poetic imagination; and that the fourth period is made to recognize the large number of figures, twenty-four more, in Bhāmaha. What is really clear is that the *Bhaṭṭikāvya*,¹ Daṇḍin, and Bhāmaha all had before them a large number of figures which they treat in slightly different ways, Bhāmaha for instance rejecting the forces of cause, Hetu, Sūkṣma, and Leça, accepted by Daṇḍin. To assert even a common source for Daṇḍin and Bhāmaha as opposed to Bhaṭṭi is beyond our means of proof, and to ascribe to Medhāvin the invention of Utprekṣā is quite invalid.

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² Jacobi, SBA. 1922, pp. 220 ff.

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³ If Jacobi rightly refers ii. 244 to it.

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¹ Cf. on Canto x Nobel, in *Muséon*, xxxvii.

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