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1048
SAHRDAYĀLOKA All this, and perhaps also a tendency to verbocity in his otherwise lucid and flowing style, makes him a lesser name to be ranked below the great names of A., Abhinavagupta, Mammața, Hemacandra, Appayya and Jagannatha, and perhaps even Ruyyaka, who though he treats of only alamkāras in his Alamkāra-Sarvasva, is otherwise every inch a dhvanivādin. True, K. is loaded, perhaps even infatuated with Ā., whom he follows at so many places, now borrowing phrases after phrases, or now accepting illustrations after illustrations from the Dhv., to explain his varieties of Vakrokti, which are very often, but new labels given to some varieties of dhvani. Actually, in his special moments, he refers to vyañjanā, but without making a direct mentioning of the term. But he errs only when he equates some charming illustrations of vyañjan, with those of abhidhā, perhaps equally exquisite from his point of view, and dumps them all on equal footing under the banner of 'vakrokti'. For him, varna-vinyāsa-vakratā and rūdhi-vaicitrya-vakratā stand on the same footing and this sounds rather fantastic to a devout follower of dhvani. But all the same, virtually he turns out to be, so to say, a super-dhyanivădin. like a newly convert, in the sense that he seems to be all “Ā. - drunk". At times he is only re-echoing what the great master has said earlier - "vad kiñcid apy anuranan sphutavati kāwā"lokam...". as it were, in the same way as is done by the great Abhinavagupta. He perhaps makes an effort to liberalise poetry from the network of vyañjanā. For him vyañjanā is only a cog in the wheel, a part of his wider scheme of vakratā, or beautiful poetic expression, which embraces in its fold, abhidhā, laksanā, and vyañjanā, at the poetic level, all alike. His vicitrā abhidhā is a precondition for poetry and for this, he is prepared to sacrifice the well-defined scheme of Ā., resulting in the recognition of dhvani, gunībhūta-vyangya and citra types of poetry. Perhaps he refuses to accept a casteist approach of the dhvanivādin, wherein abhidhā, laksaņā and vyañjanā remain in a way strictly separate. His vicitrā abhidhā is a field where all vșttis mingle and merge with one another. Thus, he fills up gaps left out by A., and perhaps goes ahead of him. But to class all vakratā on the same footing is something a true divanivādin can never either tolerate or forgive, and for this he may be placed outside the loyalist class of dhvanivādins. True, he has gone into subtler details and has labelled many charms exclusive to the fold of so-called abhidhā alone, but to equate a charm belonging to the vācyavācaka level with the one operating at the vyangya-vyañjaka level is a crime in the eyes of a dhvanivādin and the crime can never escape punishment. The whole point is unthinkable, and hence unpardonable, from the point of view of a true dhvanivādin. There are aesthetes and aesthetes who may pick up a never-ending
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