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632
SAHṚDAYALOKA
it is a means to realise his end, so also does one who is ultimately interested in the suggested meaning proceed by first evincing interest in the conventional meaning." (Trans. K.Kris. PP. 17, ibid)
He establishes that vacyártha i.e. the conventioned expressed sense collected at the level of abhidha, being instrumental in arriving at the implicit sense, resulting from the operation of the suggestive power i.e. vyañjanā, is equally important for both the poet pratipādaka kavi, and also the reader i.e. pratipādya. True, vācyavācaka-bhāva, i.e. abhidhā is basic to poetry and even a poet having his ultimate interest in suggestion, has to pay respect to it, but the ultimate goal for a first-rate poet is suggested sense according to Anandavardhana. Or, we may say Anandavardhana's criticism has a bias for the suggested sense and suggestivity of poetic words. This perhaps was not wholly acceptable to Kuntaka, and there were others in Mahima and Dhanika who rose against the theory of vyañjanā. This we will see later. But Anandavardhana with this introduction proceeds to define what he calls 'Dhvani' or principal suggested sense and also 'Dhvani kavya', or variety of poetry with the charm of suggested sense principally. He gives a definition at Dhv. I. 13. which covers both 'dhvani' and 'dhvani-kāvya' alike, though with all his tilt towards this suggestion-oriented-criticism, he never shows enthusiasm to brand 'Dhvanikavya' as 'uttama' as done by Mammata and the rest. He proceeds to discuss this variety of poetry throughout the course of his second chapter and right upto Dhv. III. 33, wherein he successfully assimilates, or better say shows the culmination or merger of all other prevailing thought-currents into his all-pervasive theory of dhvani. The essence, for him, of great poetry, is rasa-dhvani and all other factors subserve this prime object of delineation of rasa i.e. aesthetic pleasure in poetry. Even the expressed sense and the expressive word (vācya-vācaka) has to be an instrument in the suggestion of rasa. Actually he declares that, the main task of a great poet is the proper marshalling of all the contents and the expressions in the direction of rasa-realisation which is necessarily experienced at the level of suggestivity and never at the level of expression or abhidha. He observes:
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"vācyānām vācakānām ca yad aucityena yojanam, rasā"diviṣayeṇaitat
karma mukhyam mahākaveḥ." (Dhv. I. 32)
He observes: "The main business of a first-rate poet is none other than the proper marshalling of both contents, i.e. plots, and expressions used in setting them
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