Book Title: Kavyanushasana Critical Study
Author(s): A N Upadhye
Publisher: A N Upadhye

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Page 439
________________ well as of the different shades of their feeling and gestures; and the sentiment of love is defined, analysed and classified industriously in all its finite moods and situations. The procedure, no doubt, possessed an attraction for mediacre scholastic minds, but it also throws a great deal of light on the practice of the later poets who often follow these prescriptions faithfully. In his character as a lover, the hero is classified, for instance, into the faithful (Anukūla) who confines himself to one, the gallant (Dakşiņa) whose attention is distributed equally among the many, the sly (Šatha) and the saucy (Dhūrta). ......... But the hero may also be high spirited, naughty, sportive or serene, according to his temperament in the same way, the heroine, in relation to the hero, may be his wife (Svīyā) or belong to another (Parakiyā) or be common to all (sämānyā). The sviyā is subdivided again into the adolescent and artless (Mugdha), the youthful (Madhyā) and the mature and audacious (Pragalbhā); or, in other words, into the inexperienced, the partly experienced, and the fully experienced. Of these the adolescent and artless heroine is the greatest favourite with the poets, who delight in depicting with a graceful touch the first dawn of love in her simple heart. Kālidās gives a fine description of the charms of adolescence in his picture of the girl Pārvati budding into womanhood; but the artless emotion of the adolescent heroine are best described by Amaru. ... Later theorists introduce greater fineness into the analysis by subdividing each of these heroines again, according to her temper, into the self-possessed, the not selfpossessed and the partly self-possessed; or, according to the rank, higher or lower, each holds in the affection of the hero. The Parikiyā or another man's wife, who is theoretically rejected in orthodox Poetics as a heroine, but who, according to other Sāstras is the highest type of the heroine, is twofold, according as she is maiden or married; while the Sāmānyā heroine, who is sometimes extolled and sometimes deprecated, is only of one kind, the Vesyā or the courtesan. The sixteen types of heroine thus obtained are further arranged according to the 414 Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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