THE DHVANI THEORY
ANANDAVARDHANACHARYA
The theory of
dhvani or suggestion was first introduced by Anandavardhana in his treatise
Dhvanyaloka in the ninth century. Though the germs of this doctrine manifest
themselves in the speculations of earlier theoreticians, Anandavardhana is the
first literary critic to give a full bodied form to the concept and to
enunciate a new principle of literary evaluation absorbing the concepts
propounded by the earlier theoreticians. The doctrine has since then been
accepted as an important principle of criticism in Indian poetics and has been
strongly recommended by Anandavardhana both for poets and critics.
Bharata, Anandavardhana's predecessor
and another renowned Sanskrit scholar, propounds the principle of rasa in
drama and literature with the basic implication that the poetic context is
creatively organised for the communication of feeling. Feeling cannot be
communicated through pro-positional statement. The feeling ultimately
experienced by the reader is his own; it is the movement of his sensibility.
Since the feeling cannot be aroused by naming it, the poet builds up a system
of objective correlatives, essentially identical with the context of stimuli in
life which can elicit the emotional reaction. Bharata uses the
word nishpatti, that is, emergence or outcome, for the appearance
of rasa when the prime and the ancillary stimuli, etc., are
creatively organised . Anandavardhana claims that this nishpatti really
means abhivyakti, that is, manifestation as the emotional reaction
is ever abiding, as a latent reactivity, in the reader. Since the manifestation
of rasa in the poetic context is not the communication of a
pro-positional meaning but the presentation of a !! sensitively organised
complex of stimuli, he affirms that stimuli and reaction , vibhavas and rasa stand
in the relation of the suggester and the suggested. Poetry gets operated
basically through the power of suggestion .
The doctrine of suggestion is founded
on three-fold division of meaning emanating from three-fold powers of words,
viz.,
§ abhidha or the power giving primary
denotative meaning;
§ laksana or the power giving secondary
derivative or indicated meaning;
§ and vyanjana from which the meaning obtained is vyangyartha,
the tertiary or the suggested meaning. This vyangyartha is
also known as dhvanyartha.
Every poem, feels Anandavardhana, has
two levels of meaning: the explicit and the implicit. The explicit, as the word
itself suggests, is the literal or derivative meaning set forth in many ways
through figures of speech, images, etc., whereas the implicit is like the charm
in ladies that "shines supreme and towers above the beauty of the striking
external constituents ... " 1 The relationship between the explicit and
the implicit differs from poem to poem, depending upon the purpose and
intention. One or the other meaning is given prominence and it is only when
after the appearance of the expressed sense, the explicit meaning completely
subordinating itself gives rise to another sense, that we name it as the suggested
meaning.
Defining dhvani Anandavardhana
writes :
That kind of poetry, wherein the
(conventional) meaning renders itself secondary or the (conventional) word
renders its meaning secondary and suggests the intended implied meaning, is
designated by the learned as DHVANI or 'Suggestive Poetry'.
Thus after the appearance of the
explicit meaning the denoted and the indicated meanings completely
subordinating themselves assign the primary position to the tertiary or the
suggested meaning and such poetry is ranked as the suggestive poetry. Semantic
meaning in this process does not contradict or hinder the poetic meaning.
Rather, the semantic meaning is a doorway to the suggested one.
Anandavardhana says : Just as the
purport of a sentence is grasped through the meaning of individual words, the
knowledge of that sense is got at only through the medium of the explicit
sense. "That sense" here is the suggested meaning and in a dhvanikavya it
is of the highest importance. "Suggestion", writes Anandavardhana,
"itself is both the quintessence of the works of all first rate poets and
the most beautiful principle of poetry". In a general poetic parlance a
poetry is classified inferior where the suggested meaning is less relevant than
the poetic intention. Anandavardhana further declares dhvani or the symbolic
content as the poetic creation and the other types of poetic endeavours are
categorised in the light of the principle of supremacy of suggestion. The best
specimen of poetic art does not keep itself confined within the narrow limits
imposed by the expression and the expressed. It transcends the limits and hints
towards the symbolic content, which proves itself as one of the inexplicable
charms, and this rise is likened to resonance or echo.
§ Thus the best poetry is that in which the suggested sense predominates
and supersedes the expressed sense. This is called the Dhvanikavya or
the poetry of Resonance.
§ The second class is that in which the suggested sense is not predominant
and this is called the Gunibhuta Vyangya or the poetry of
Subordinated Suggestion.
§ The third class of poetry which is of lower kind is the one without any
suggested meaning. This is called Portrait-like poetry or the Citrakavya.
The epithet
of dhvani, however, is assigned not only to dhvanikavya,
but even to words, their meanings or the activity of suggestive poetry. In
short, in Anandavardhana's treatise it is taken in five senses, viz.:
1. The suggestive
word/sound which resonates meaning, that is, vyanjaka sabda.
2. The suggestive
meaning which resembles another sense, that is, vyanjaka artha.
3. The suggestive
poetry, that is, vyanjaka kavya.
4. The suggested
meaning , that is, vyangyartha and
5. The activity of
meaning, that is, vyanjana vyapara. -
Anandavardhana
elaborates his theory from the angle of what is suggested and the suggesters or
what suggests. Regarding the nature of what is suggested, Anandavardhana
divides it into three categories, viz.:
(a) Vastudhvani or
where there is the suggestion of a matter/fact or an idea,
(b) Alahkaradhvani or
where there is the suggestion of a trope, and
(c) Rasadhvani or
where there is the suggestion of a mood or feeling.
The last category
which has been taken as the cardinal principle by the Indian critics, has been
assigned prime significance by Anandavardhana also. Elsewhere, he has
categorically expressed that his subject is not merely to establish the
doctrine of suggestion but also to harmonise it with the theory of aesthetic
emotion. The theory of dhvani, as such, is a comprehensive
principle which can cover any genre that fulfils the definition of poetry and
in fact when the Indian poetics adopts the term, It includes any literary work.
The activity of suggestion in literature, whether in the East or in the West ,
has been an age-old phenomenon. Only that its conscious usage in West both as a
term and as a technique, was a later development and as Krishna Rayan suggests,
it was during the nineteenth century that "in Poe's critical writings that
'suggestiveness' is first used as a technical term".
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