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Śabdavrttis, the nature of : Abhidhā
303 he has to give some name to this special poetic power of a word, he gives the name ‘abhidhā' to it, which is not the technical abhidhā of the Kashmir school.
Kuntaka, it seems, has no concern for the fool-proof scheme of word/ meaning/word-power, as seen in the Kashmir school of thought. He is concerned only with the poetic. On the otherhand we saw Mukul carrying on from grammar and Mimāmsā, but ending in poetry. Bhoja has a much broad-based scheme as we observed above but is trying to absorb both non-poetic and poetic literature. His scheme with twelvefold releationship of word and meaning of course aims at the poetic in the end. He takes care to illustrate the varieties and sub-varieties of first eight varieties of sāhitya from poetic literature and many of his illustrations are read as this or that variety of dhvani in the Dhv. So, clearly we have two trends of thought. One represented by Anandavardhana and his followers who present a perfect scheme and the other by such writers as Mukula, Kuntaka, Bhoja, Mahimā, Dhananjaya and Dhanika and some others who do not fall in line with the Kashmir school of thought. We will continue with Kuntaka who also forms part of the shaping influence that moulds Bhoja's thinking, Mukula being the earlier one.
As seen above Kuntaka, though not accepting the thinking of the Kashmir school in a sense that he does not welcome the fool-proof scheme of the functions of a word, on the other hand follows the author of the Dhv. when he talks of 'the unique expression' as 'word'. He observes : (VJ. I. 9 pp. 14, ibid) :
"sabdo vivakṣitárthaikavācako' nyeșu satsu api,
arthaḥ sahsdayā”hlāda-kāri
· sva-spanda sundarah.” "That unique expression which alone can fully convey the poet's intended meaning out of a hundred alternatives before him is to be regarded as 'word'. Similarly that alone which possesses such refreshing natural beauty as to draw the appreciation of deligated readers is to be marked as 'meaning'. (Trans. K. Kris. pp. 300-301, ibid) - That Kuntaka's scheme is broad enough to embrace vyañjana and vyangyártha is borne out by the famous illustration from Kumārasambhava, viz. "dvayam gatam” in which he pin-points the use of the special word “kapālinah”, that is the source of beauty. He observes : (pp. 15, ibid) :
"atra parameśvara-vācaka-sabda-sahasra-sambhavépi 'kapalina' iti bībhatsarasa-ālambana-vibhāva-vācakaḥ śabdah jugupsā"spadatvena prayujyamānaḥ kām api vācaka-vakratām vidadhāti." : "Though a thousand and one synonyms are
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