Indian Poetics :-
Literary criticism in India has its genesis in the encyclopaedic Nātyaśāstra of Bharata around 2nd c. AD and later alamkāra school of thought after late 6th c. AD. It is common knowledge that Sanskrit literary criticism has its conceptual moorings in
grammar and Indian darśanas.1 Poetics in ancient India involved philosophical speculation and theoretical formulation which are crucial for a robust system building. Consequently, there are some questions that Indian poetics addresses.
a) What constitutes kavya?
b) What is the most important element for the literariness of kavya?
c) How is literary meaning produced/ arrived at?
d) What is the end of literary representation?
e) What is the nature of literary meaning?
f) What is the nature of aesthetic experience?
g) Where is the locus of aesthetic experience art, artist, or beholder?
h) What are the criteria for classification of literary and non-literary texts?
As a result of obtaining concerns such as above, theoretical departures developed into various thought systems. This proclivity to theorization often led modern scholars to consider, and at times doubt, relevance and applicability of Indian literary theories. Amidst the clouds of misgivings in modern criticism, it should be duly clarified that Indian literary theories inhere in enough scope for practical criticism. However, it should be noted that the investigative exegetical models derived from Indian literary theories tend to be constitutive in nature without being polemical.
Critical analysis of literature is an interpretive activity that makes sense out of what is otherwise abstruse so is usually understood. In Sanskrit intellectual tradition, on the other hand, this point of view has been carefully developed in relation especially to knowledge literature. For in vangamaya that is comprised of both sastra and kavya, there is a well-established system of interpretation or sastra-paddhati that has evolved in the light of Vedic, sastraic and philosophical literature.
Knowledge propounded in sastras is established by its own validity of empirical scientific truth or theological wisdom which exists independent of individual authority. In order to get at comprehensive logical understanding of the concerned matter, sastra-paddhati involves a thorough system analysis such as it considers (a) what has already been said on the issue or antecedent opposing viewpoint, (b) the original and changed context, (c) linguistic paraphrase and explanation, (d) four pramanas that may be specific to any school of thought ., pratyaksa (perception); anumana (inference); upamana (analogy); abhyasa (experience); and sastra vacana or sabda (verbal testimony). Further, sastra paddhati involves :-
This strong set of investigative modalities is applied for analysing meaning in knowledge literature.Kavya has its distinction from sastra in vangamaya and validity of its proposition, unlike sastra, is contingent on individual. That is, kavya does not have knowledge as its first and only motive, hence no interpretation. Statements in kavya are primarily analysed for their ‘charm’, literary conception and expression. In this light one may see why Indian literary theories are constitutive theories that provide frameworks to explain how the texts are formed, how the meaning is developed and through what kinds of linguistic and literary devices. This constitutive analysis consequently explains the sources of delight, their literary contrivance and literary relish on neuro-psychological grounds. This notwithstanding, the powerful sastrapaddhati may be used in interpreting literature.
Literary analysis in Sanskrit criticism abounds in principles such as rasa, alamkara, riti, guna-dosa, dhvani, vakrokti, and aucitya and each of these provide exhaustive literary exegesis within its own concerns as well as relate to each other in the course of matter. However, critical pursuit carried out under these principles would naturally be specific in nature according to their questions. What Rajasekhara affords is a sort of analytical framework that responds to a number of literary and non-literary aspects pertaining to construction of a text and its meaning. Indeed,Rajasekhara’s ken of model analysis being so large, a particular literary instance for critical observation may not do justice to its richness. Interestingly enough, Kavyamimamsa is not the work of poetics proper. Rather, it is a samgraha text, i.e. a text for pedagogical purpose and more so, it is a kavisiksa text. A kavisiksa text, unlike other theoreticalworks, does not expound any literary principle. It is constructed for practical reasons such as instructing the poet about conceiving, composing, drafting, receiving and analysing poetry. Rajasekhara’s exegetical model, which is distinctly mapped out, inheres in the following concerns:
These critical concerns are a set of generalised constitutive categories that can be put to exegetical purport irrespective of difference in culture,language and literature. Here, a model analysis on William Butler Yeats’s ‚Sailing to Byzantium‛ is attempted to show Rajasekhara’s relevance in analysing contemporary texts, even in alien linguistic system and culture.
Rajasekhara distinguishes three units of composition: (i) pada (fully inflected word, a morphological construction), (ii) vakya (sentence), (iii) vacana (statement). Occurrence of these formal categories in a poem can be analysed and quantified.
Rajasekhara informs that poets have a knack for using one or the other vrttis more amongst all and even sub-generic varieties may be identified in terms of predominance of one or the other vrtti. For instance, narrative poem which has dramatic element in it would have greater number of verbs or verbal phrases in comparison to other type like lyric.
Literary discourse and general communication of the people pertain to Manusa vacana. It has figures of speech and other qualities of riti. Meaning here is not as crucial as it is in Brahma or saiva vacanas, for a mode of expression draws much attention to itself. And in literary instance meaning has to be reconstructed out of oblique expression. In this poem, for instance, (the) meaning is of attaining salvation. The world-weary poet finds his liberation in the world of art where he would attain to a blissful stasis in the form of an artifice singing forever ‚of what is past, or passing, or to come.‛ As the theme of reposing in permanent bliss constructs an idea of a heavenly abode, meaning of the poem also lends itself to the other category of Divya-manusa vacana wherein a mortal being seeks after a heightened consciousness.
four sources of meaning, which are more like modes of rendition:
utpadyasamyoga (showing likeness),
These categories facilitate in evaluating appropriateness of the sources of an idea and their significance for the whole meaning of the composition. All the four pertain to structural framework of the poem and are cognizable in the process of signification. One may attempt to see the ‚Sailing‛ in this light. The poem opens with a plain statement: ‚That is no country for old men.‛ Use of determinative ‘That’ makes opening of the poem noticeable and leaves an impression of continuity of argument in whose sequence the whole poem is a part. This apart, the poem does not impart within embellishing tropes, alliteration or other such literary devices. The imagery of ‚crowded seas‛ with salmon-falls and mackerel, emaciated aged man, sages purging in ‚God’s holy fire‛, gold-laden city, for instance, is synchronised with linguistic and literary austerity. This pertinence observed at structural level makes it favourable for uccitasamyoga, where all linguistic and literary devices exist in harmony and cast a uniform impact on the thematic aspect. These samyogas here must not be literally understood as sources of meaning, though they are discussed under this category by Rajasekhara. These samyogas have their teleological significance which, however, like other sources, lies in their efficacy to affect the process of apprehension of meaning, which is an added edge in communication.Thus, uccitasamyoga realised in the ‚Sailing‛ stands as a poetic merit in the process of signification.
All these ideas have such sources as their backdrop. Number of sources, their valid understanding, and their appropriate relation to the theme speaks of the poet’s erudition and experience of life. Even if a poet uses private symbols, a reader unbeknown to them would still partially cognise them, for the sources from which symbols are drawn act as shared knowledge. A refuge to the world of art is poet’s own wish and for which Byzantium becomes a symbol of liberation from human limitations. Here, the poet’s state is that of a seeker of truth. The search for internal peace is the major source of meaning.
In this poem arises the issue of poetic reality and scientific truth. Yeats finds his escape in an inanimate piece of object. If life is marked by constant flux, art is perceived with permanent stasis. It is this binary opposition that has inspired many western poets to privilege art over life. This becomes a starting point for any reading, particularly deconstructive. One may reconcile this rough patch by resorting to Rajasekhara’s argument that problem arises only when what is apparent but not real is taken for its surface value. Here, the poet has an apparent wish for his transformation into an artifice, which has an attribute of changelessness. This Yeatsian thesis can well nigh be understood in the Joycean term ‘stasis’ bliss. To Joyce, art is stasis when brought about by the formal rhythm of beauty. Art is that beauty which is divorced from good and evil and so akin to truth. Truth is best approached through intellection and beauty through the three stages of apprehension, . integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony), and claritas (radiance). The definition of beautiful starts with the sensory recognition, ‘that is beautiful the apprehension of which pleases’. The epistemological conflict of aesthetics sets in from here when the idea of beauty gains abstraction while predicating on the ephemeral and gross sense perception. [For the full account, see Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)]. This entire proposition is informed of Greek theory of art and European Scholasticism which retains the dyadic structure of art and nature; mind and matter; transient and eternal. And this dyadic structure reverts to itself ad infinitum.
Thank you,
Dilip Barad sir
Words :- 1823
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