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V. M. Kulkarni
There cannot be any kavya worth the name in the absence of rasa etcetera; rasa doubtless is the life-breath of kavya but sometimes even a vyabhicari-bhāva which is subservient to rasa causes greater aesthetic relish.R
Abhinavagupta is one with Anandavardhana in asserting that a thing, although marvellous in itself, does not cause any wonder if it is universally known."
Sources of Literary Beauty
The earlier writers on poetics recognised abdalaṁkāras like anuprāsa) arthalamkaras (like upama), gunas (like madhurya), vrttis (like upanagrikā) or ritis (like Vaidarbhi) and doṣābhava (absence of defects) as sources of literary beauty. To the later writers on poetics like Anandavardhana, however, dhvani (suggestion, the suggested sense) is the first and foremost source of literary beauty. This suggested sense may take the form of rasa or alamkara or vastu. Of these three kinds the rasadi (rasa, bhava, etcetera) dhvani takes the place of pride.
Anandavardhana asserts that all figures of speech like rupaka attain beauty only when they embody suggested sense that is subordinate. Abhinavagupta illustrates the truth of this statement by citing illustrations of upama, rupaka, 31: 83, yathasamkhya, dipaka, sasamdeha, apahnuti, paryayokta, tulya-yogita, aprastuta prasamsa, akşepa, and atibayokti which are all prosaic, dry and devoid of any touch of suggested sense. They answer the external requirements of the definitions of the concerned alamkaras all right, but are devoid of their very lifebreath, the guni-bhūta-vyangya. For instance,
Upamā
Rūpaka
Dipaka
: "The ox is like a cow.'
The rammer is a sacrificial post...... : 'Bring the cow and the horse."
Sasaṁdeha : 'Is that a person or the tree-trunk?' Apahnutiḥ : 'This is not silver (but a pearl-oyster).' Paryayokta: 'This fat (Devadatta) does not eat by day.'....
Atisayokti
:
Jain Education International
(i) 'The kundika (spouted water-jug) is samudra (an ocean).'
(ii) 'The Vindhya mountains grew (high) upto the sun's path in the sky."
All these examples are bald and devoid of any suggested sense and thus want in beauty and therefore they cannot be termed as alamkaras,10
Abhinavagupta's contention that "a man free from passions (a saint) does not see things topsy-turvy: If he hears the sound of lute, he does not think he has.
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