Mahimabhatta's analysis of poetic flaws.

• Author: McCrea, Lawrence

The revolutionary Dhvanyaloka of the mid-ninth-century Kashmiri literary theorist Anandavardhana challenged many of the doctrines and presuppositions of both earlier Sanskrit literary theory (Alamkarasastra) and general linguistic philosophy. While Anandavardhana's radical views eventually gained more or less universal acceptance among Sanskrit literary theorists, they at first drew a good deal of hostile response from defenders of earlier modes of literary theory as well as non-literary language theory. The most aggressively determined, and also the last, major critic of Anandavardhana's views within the tradition of Alamkarasastra is the mid-eleventh-century Kashmiri Mahimabhatta. Mahimabhatta's only surviving work, his Vyaktiviveka ("An Analysis of Suggestion"), (1) is a concerted attack on one of the central components of Anandavardhana's theory.

Anandavardhana argues that the beauty of literary language depends crucially on its capacity to convey certain meaning-elements that are not explicitly stated--unstated vastus (narrative elements), alamkaras (figures of speech), and, most importantly, rasas (aestheticized emotions). One of the primary objectives of Anandavardhana's work is to show that the capacity of poetry to convey these unstated meanings cannot be explained in terms of the two modes of signification generally recognized by theorists of non-literary language (the literal [abhidha] and the figurative [laksana or gunavrtti]), and that it is therefore necessary to postulate a third, specifically poetic, mode of expression, which he calls "suggestion" (dhvani or vyanjana).

It is around the question of the existence or non-existence of suggestion as a distinct mode of signification that controversy most hotly rages in the two and a half centuries following the appearance of the Dhvanyaloka. Mahimabhatta, like many of Anandavardhana's critics, defends orthodox language theory against the challenge presented by Anandavardhana's semantics of poetic language. According to Mahimabhatta there is no need at all for literary theorists to postulate "suggestion" as a previously unrecognized and specially poetic mode of expression; the facts of poetic expression can be accounted for entirely in terms of already recognized semantic and cognitive processes. While fully accepting Anandavardhana's claims for the importance of unstated meaning, particularly rasa, in poetry, he argues that all the types of allegedly "suggested" meaning dealt with by Anandavardhana are, in fact, understood through a process of inference.

Mahimabhatta explicitly states in the opening verse of the Vyaktiviveka that the objective of his work is to demonstrate that Anandavardhana's dhvani is entirely reducible to inference. Yet, surprisingly, a huge portion of the work is devoted to a topic that bears no obvious relation to this stated objective--the detailed analysis of a particular set of "poetic flaws" (dosas). Mahimabhatta's Vyaktiviveka is divided into three chapters. The first offers a detailed critique of Anandavardhana's definition of dhvani, and of the notion of suggestion generally, demonstrating that dhvani can be explained only as a kind of inference. The third gives a detailed examination of Anandavardhana's own examples of dhvani, showing in each case the inferential process by which the allegedly "suggested" meaning is understood. The second chapter (which comprises more than half of the entire Vyaktiviveka) consists of an elaborate analysis of several varieties of poetic flaw. The matters discussed therein have, for the most part, no clear bearing on Mahimabhatta's critique of dhvani. It is almost as if a second, unrelated, work has been inserted into the middle of his attack on Anandavardhana. (2) Mahimabhatta himself acknowledges the digressive character of this section of his work; at the conclusion of the second chapter he says, apparently referring to the entire discussion of poetic flaws, "enough of this extensive treatment of matters unrelated to the topic at hand" ("alam aprastutavastuvistarena": Vyaktiviveka, 462).

Thus, the entire second chapter of the Vyaktiviveka would appear to be nothing but a detour from the putative objective of Mahimabhatta's work, namely the proof that what Anandavardhana calls suggestion is nothing other than inference. Later interpreters of the Vyaktiviveka have, not surprisingly, had a hard time trying to discern the purpose of this enormous digression. After completing his analysis of aesthetic flaws, Mahimabhatta briefly (pp. 456-61) examines the first verse of Anandavardhana's Dhvanyaloka and finds there several of the flaws he has just discussed; it has sometimes been suggested, though Mahimabhatta himself gives no indication to this effect, that this critique of Anandavardhana's verse is itself the sole raison d'etre of the second chapter. The commentator Ruyyaka says as much in his opening remarks on this section of the Vyaktiviveka (p. 179), and, apparently following his lead, several modern scholars of Alamkarasastra have taken it as fact that this is the real object of the second chapter (which they therefore rather cavalierly dismiss as of minimal significance). (3) The argument is not really tenable, however, as only a few of the many types of aesthetic flaw dealt with by Mahimabhatta are found in Anandavardhana's verse; the vast preponderance of what is discussed in the second chapter has no bearing at all on the critique of this verse.

However, while Mahimabhatta's motives in incorporating this extensive discussion of poetic flaws in a work avowedly devoted to the destruction of Anandavardhana's dhvani-theory are not entirely clear, his analysis of these flaws is, as I intend to show, connected in important ways with his general view of the nature and function of poetry as developed in the other portions of his work, and is worthy of far more serious consideration than it has generally received. I want to argue here that the two seemingly unrelated components of the Vyaktiviveka--its attack on Anandavardhana's dhvani-theory and its survey of poetic flaws--should be seen as parts of a single project: an effort to demonstrate that poetic language is not fundamentally different from other varieties of language--that, while it may pursue a distinctively aesthetic objective, it conveys its meanings through the very same semantic processes operative in everyday language, and must conform to the same strictures of clarity and coherence if it is to function effectively.

RASA AND THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF POETIC FLAWS

Mahimabhatta, despite his determined assault on Anandavardhana's theory of poetic semantics, adopts quite enthusiastically many other major elements of Anandavardhana's approach to literary analysis, particularly his focus on rasa (aestheticized emotion) as the overriding goal to which all other elements of a poem ought (at least ideally) to be subordinated. For Mahimabhatta, as for other roughly contemporary Kashmiri Alamkarikas such as Bhattanayaka (c. 950 A.D.) (4) and Abhinavagupta (c. 1000 A.D.), (5) rasa is not merely a highly desirable element to be introduced in poetry or one generally to be found in the best poems; it is the essential and constitutive goal of all poetry--poetry is poetry only insofar as it effectively conveys rasa. "That activity of a poet," he says, "which consists of the joining together of vibhavas, etc., (6) and which is necessarily associated with the manifestation of rasa, is called 'poetry' [kavya]" (kavivyaparo hi vibhavadisamyojanatma rasabhivyaktyavyabhicari kavyam ucyate: Vyaktiviveka, 101); and elsewhere, "The composition of vibhavas, etc., alone is the activity of the poet, nothing else" (vibhavadyupanibandha eva hi kavivyaparo naparah: Vyaktiviveka, 142).

Mahimabhatta's understanding of the general nature of poetic flaws is developed in accordance with this unambiguously rasa-centered account of the overall function of poetry. For Mahimabhatta, a flaw in a poetic composition is any element that either directly or indirectly impedes the clear development of rasa:

The common characteristic of this [the poetic flaw] is that it produces some obstacle to the understanding of the intended [vivaksita] rasa, etc. These [poetic flaws] are regarded as being either intrinsic [antaranga] or extrinsic [bahiranga] because they cause damage to the rasa either directly or indirectly. etasya ca vivaksitarasadipratitivighnavidhayitvam nama samanyalaksanam. antarangabahirangabhavas canayoh saksat paramparyena ca rasabhangahetutvad istah: Vyaktiviveka, 182. (7) Thus the unobstructed communication of rasa to an audience is for him the sole aesthetic value; the acceptability of any element of any poem can be measured only in terms of its capacity to further this ultimate goal. Since the object of all poetic language is to communicate rasa as effectively as possible, any element of a poem that limits or impairs in any way the poem's ability to convey rasa will be regarded as a flaw to be avoided by the poet.

As the above quote indicates, Mahimabhatta divides poetic flaws into two general classes: those which are intrinsic (antaranga) and those which are extrinsic (bahiranga). (8) The first are factors that directly impair the intended rasa, e.g., the mention of vibhavas or other aesthetic factors that undermine or conflict with this rasa (such as the mention of something that evokes disgust in a passage meant to convey an erotic mood). Mahimabhatta states that flaws of this type have been dealt with by previous authors, (9) and therefore declines to examine them in detail. To the second class belong those grammatical or semantic features that obscure the poet's intended meaning and thereby indirectly impede the communication of rasa, and it is these which Mahimabhatta analyzes in the second chapter. Thus, what the second chapter of Mahimabhatta's work offers is not a study of poetic flaws in general, but rather an examination of a...