A History of Sanskrit Literature c25.s2.22

c25.s2.22

Daṇḍin insists that to produce the effective poetry he has praised are necessary natural genius, which arises from impressions formed in earlier births, much study, and great application, and, recognizing that the first requisite may be unattainable, allows concentration on the second two. He then proceeds, in Book ii of the *Kāvyādarśa*, to define Alaṁkāras as those qualities which produce charm in poetry, some of which have been already mentioned in dealing with the difference of styles, while those common to both styles are enumerated in ii and iii, the figures of sense coming first, than those of sound, treated from our point of view at absurd length. The early state of Daṇḍin’s views is shown in his failure to distinguish quality and figure, and in his making no effort to explain the poetic effect of figures save by mere generalities. Nor has he any scheme of division of figures, and in a manner somewhat startling we find that he ranks as a figure, the first of all, Svabhāvokti, natural description as a thing appears to a poet. This figure—or rather ornament—is of a quite special kind, for it is classed as opposed to all the rest of the figures of sense, which are classed under Vakrokti, crooked, non-natural, figurative, speech. The meaning of the distinction must be that in the former case the poet, by his discernment, sees the essence of a thing—using that term in the widest sense, be it an individual thing, or a species, or a quality or action—and sets it out in plain speech: in the latter he describes not necessarily with special intuition, but with figurative language. He has already insisted, in his account of the qualities, on the supreme importance to the poet of the use of metaphor.