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"Concept of Rasa" as seen in Anandavardhana and......
1279
principally suggested sense is for him three-fold viz. vastu-dhvani or suggestion of an idea or matter of fact, alamkaradhvani or suggestion of a poetic figure or a descriptive device, and rasa-dhvani or suggestion of sentiment or emotive stuff in general. It may be borne in mind that suggestion of emotive stuff is not congruent to 'rasa', but is one of the aspects of rasa. This rasa-dhvani-both in its emotive context and in its wider context is regarded as the highest type of dhvani by Anandavardhana (= A.). For him, this 'rasa' as seen by us under his treatment of Dhvani (Ref. Ch. XI) is never the object of direct statement i.e. it is never 'sva-sabdavacya', meaning it is never realised just by naming it or using its proper name. Rasa is always realised indirectly, i.e. it is suggested through the delineation of proper vibhāva, anubhāva and vyabhicāribhāva i.e. determinants, consequents and ancillaries, of course described through words, as Abhinavagupta explains in Locana i.e. sabda-samarpyamāṇa-in poetic art. These vibhāvā"dis are visually presented in dramatic art. They take different forms through different media in various different arts as dance, music, painting, sculpture and the rest. Thus A. seems to have achieved a great point while harmonising the concepts of rasa as seen in the dramatic art or art in general and that of the verbal power, the vyañjana function in poetry.
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We have underlined two streams of thought viz. the one pertaining to śabdavṛttis, with particular reference to vyañjana and dhvani in literature, and the other pertaining to the origin and development of the concepts of rasa and cognate ideas. In the Dhvanyaloka, we find these two currents meeting and merging with each other in a clear scheme not read as such in the ancient alamkarikas from Bhāmaha to Rudrata or others not known to us. A. seems to bring forth, to the best of our knowledge and also to the knowledge of Abhinavagupta, for the first time, a harmonious and integrated theory or vyañjana-dhvani-rasa.
We will try to analyse A.'s integrated theory in greater detail. In earlier chapters on vyañjana and dhvani (i.e. Chs. VIII & XI) we have outlined A's theory. A. himself states that he had to lay down clearly the theory of dhvani as its form was negatived by some of his anteriors. But, it may be noted that, as we have not been able to find the earlier theorists who propagated dhvani (as stated by A. in his remark - "samāmnāta-pūrvaḥ"), in the same way, we do not know exactly who opposed dhvani prior to him, which prompted him to write his monumental work. We have however, found theories about the two functions of the word viz. primary and secondary i.e. bhakta, without of course putting it systematically, and we have found the seeds of vyañjana in these. We also looked into the various darśanas for
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