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Hemachandra's theoretical affiliations with the Dhvani theory are not in question. He is a follower of Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta so far as the central principle of poetics is concerned. And according to these authorities, the purpose of a linguistic utterance cannot be accounted for either by the denotative power of language, which accounts for the primary conceptual content, or by the secondary power or the secondary conceptual content as Mammața makes it clear (Kavyaprakāśa II. 18 f. & 23). This purpose is always suggested and it is the Meaning of Meaning which characterises poetry,
Hemachandra is an aesthetician of the New School and hence he realises that, though the poet uses formally correct language as the medium of poetic expression, still the poet's purpose in using that language is not to denote, or even to indicate, but to suggest sentiments. And this differentiates the poetic speech from the other linguistic utterances which are utilitarian in character. This is, as Paul Valery asserts, "the poetical language in which words are no longer the words of daily, practical use. They associate no more according to the same attractions; they are charged with two values simultaneously engaged and of equivalent importance; their sound and their instantaneous paychic effect. ..... The purpose of poetry is not at all to communicate to someone a finite notion - for which prose should suffice...... wholly other is the function of poetry. While a unique meaning is asked of prose, here it is the unique form which ordains and survives. in a poem, therefore, sense must not prevail over form. ... A beautiful verse indefinitely rises from its ashes; it becomes again..... harmonic cause of itself".237
E. H. Gombrich admirably sums up this aspect of Art: "... Communication need not come into this process at all. ... substitution may precede portrayal, and creation communication ... a new frame of reference is created ..."2 38
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