Sahrdayaloka Part 01

SR No.: 006908
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Tapasvi Nandi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 2005
Total Pages: 602
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 14 MB

Page 89

SAHṚDAYALOKA
Agnipurana: in the seventh verse of its 337th chapter, the Agnipurāṇa attempts the definition of poetry which is qualified by clear alamkāras, guņas and is bereft of dosas :
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"kavyam sphurad alamkāram gunavad doșa-varjitam."
It should be noted that we have no faith in placing Agnipurana as an ancient document prior to Dandin and we honestly believe that Agnipurana carries clear influence of Dandin, and other earlier alamkarikas. Actually the author seems to be a devout follower of Dandin and hardly deserves the status of an independent thinker on literary aesthetics.
Mahima Bhaṭṭa: Among the near posterior writers of Anandavardhana, the names of Kuntaka and Mahima figure at the top. Of course, Abhinavagupta also kept the tradition of dhvani running high, but perhaps he was a junior contemporary of Kuntaka, and we accept this observation of Dr. K. Krishna-moorthy, but Abhinavagupta was a protegonist of vyañjana-dhvani-rasa thought-current and Kuntaka had slightly different ideas while Mahima, not unlike Bhatta Nayaka, challenged the very concept of vyañjana-dhvani, though of course accepting the pratīyamāna artha or implicit sense and explaining it in his own way and accepting also the supremacy of the concept of rasa, but not through the agency of vyañjanā.
Mahima has stoutly opposed the concept of vyañjanā as a word-power and has tried to give a totally new direction to the definition and scope of kavya or poetry. Anandavardhana, as we know, accepted the thought-currents promulagted by his earlier masters and tried to charge them with a new orientation of vyañjana and thus added a new dimension to literary criticism and aesthetics in general, a new direction, so to say. We will go to see later how this vyañjanā-prasthāna was challenged and opposed vehemently by critics such as Bhatta Nayaka in his now not available work called "Hṛdaya-darpaṇa", drafted specially for demolition of dhvani-theory i.e. 'dhvani-dhvamsa'. This challange and opposition to vyañjana is pursued with a greater gusto by Mahima, the protegonist of kāvyānumiti i.e. poetic inference. His sole object is to defy and demolish the concept of vyañjană which he has done in his work named "Vyaktiviveka" or discriminating thinking concerning vyañjanā. Instead, he favours 'anumiti' or 'inference' which he calls 'kāvyánumiti' or poetic inference. He establishes a new mile-stone on the high-way of literary aesthetics but he was not lucky enough to get staunch and strong supporters as Abhinavagupta in case of Anandavardhana, and so his lonely voice was, say, muffed up in the chorus of vyañjanā-dhvani-rasa theory. His shout in favour of poetic inference died down