Vada in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c10.s3.4

c10.s3.4

*Vakrokti* as an *alaṁkāra* is defined as “the utterance of one person misconstrued by the other on the basis of pun or intonation”.¹⁵ *Vakrokti* in this way is an aesthetic rendering of *chala*. In Sanskrit lyric poetry, this idea of *vakrokti* led to the cultivation of a genre entirely resting on debate between two persons and thousands of stanzas, and even long poems were created as *vakrokti-kāvyas*. This is being taken up in a next section.