JOURNAL OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. No. III. 1860. On a Passage in the tenth Book of the Sahitya Darpana.-By The Sahitya Darpana has been called "the standard of taste among the learned Hindús." It was compiled by Vis'wanátha Kavirája, who is said to have lived in the district of Dacca, and his date may be conjecturally placed in the 15th century. His book contains a complete system of Literary Criticism, from words and sentences to dramas and epic poems. Its prevalent fault is a proneness to minute subdivision,* and many parts of it relate to obscure trivialities; but much of it displays an ingenuity and insight, which only require to be understood to be appreciated. The tenth book is devoted to the especial embellishments of style,―alankára in its more technical sense; and many keen observations are scattered through its pages, which often touch on points left unnoticed by the more ambitious writers on Rhetoric in the West. As an example, I have chosen the section on Simile, which seems to me a very favourable specimen of the delicate analysis of the Hindú Rhetoric, while, at the same time, it will afford an opportunity for making an important correction to the text as it now stands in print. At once the strength and weakness of the self-developed Hindú mind! "Maximum et velut radicale discrimen ingeniorum, quoad philosophiam et scientias, illud est; quod alia ingenia sunt potiora et aptiora ad notandas rerum differentias; alia ad notandas rerum similitudines. Utrumque ingenium facile labitur in excessum, prensando aut gradus rerum aut umbras." Nov. Org. I, lv. No. CIV.-NEW SERIES, VOL. XXIX. 2 G Two editions of the original have appeared in Calcutta, in 1828 and 1851; but in consequence of the imperfect condition of the MSS. on which they were founded, an important sentence has, till now, remained perfectly unintelligible from an omission of three lines in the very centre of the argument. The Hindú analysis of Simile and Metaphor appears in the form of a series of four terms, composed (if I may say so) of two factors, of which the one decreases while the other increases in equal proportion. The principle on which the division is founded, is the position of the subject of the comparison relatively to the object, and the extent to which it is able to maintain its own individuality or is forced to yield it up to its rival. These four gradations are called Upamá, Utprekshá, Rúpaka and Atis'ayokti. In the first, we have a simple Simile; the object (upamána) is only introduced for the sake of illustration, and the subject (upameya) retains its own independent position. Thus in the sentence, "her face is fair as the lotus," the subject, the face, retains its individuality unimpaired, and the idea of the lotus is only an accessory, which is kept in its strictly subordinate position. In the second, Utprekshá, we may observe a change in their relative position; the individuality of the subject is beginning to waver, and retreat into the back ground; while that of the object is assuming a new prominence. In the sentence "her face is, as it were,* a lotus," the attributes of the lotus are threatening to encroach upon those of the face, we are beginning already to lose the one in the other. In the third, Rúpaka,t this change has come to pass. In the sentence "her face is a lotus" or "the lotus of her face," the attributes of the lotus have usurped the place of those of the face, the one seems to have passed into the other and its own personal identity is being absorbed. But it is still to be recognised,-the metamorphosis is not wholly complete. It is like Ovid's account of the Centaur's daughter, when the curse has begun to operate, The same result is produced by such phrases as Sútra 691. tr methought," &c. see I may notice in passing a subdivision of Rúpaka, called Parináma, where the usurping idea is not purely ornamental (as in Rúpaka) but helps on the original topic, as e. g. Her eyes were stars to guide the wanderer home." -nec verba quidem nec equæ sonus ille videtur, Sed simulantis equam. But when Ovid goes on to add parvoque in tempore certos Edidit hinnitus, we have a parallel to the fourth, Atis'ayokti, where the metamorphosis is finally accomplished, the subject being no longer visible, as it is wholly swallowed up in the object and identified with it. Thus when in Persian poetry we have "narcissus" used for "eye" and "cypress" for "a woman's figure," these ideas, which in the simile would have been only subordinate, have not only advanced into prominence, but have completely overgrown and concealed the original.* The following may serve as English illustrations of the series. The most singular specimen of Atisʼayokti I have met with is the following anonymous stanza on a woman who stands weeping at her husband's door. zargà atât efcuqfcetài fexac: Oh what a noble mind was here o'erthrown! The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword; The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mould of form! (Rúpaka.) Atis'ayokti, I fear, is but seldom used by our severer western taste, but we have it exemplified in the following line of W. S. Landor. That rose through which you breathe-come bring that rose. In Persian poetry, it is common enough, as in the following line of Háfiz: "I am the slave of the drunken narcissus of that tall cypress." The following is a brief outline of the Sáhitya Darpana's account of these figures. Upamá is defined as "the expressed resemblance [and not implied, as in Rúpaka] of two things in one sentence, without the mention of any dissimilar attribute." Utprekshá is "the hypothetical conceiving of the original subject under the form of something else." Its hypothetical character must always be shown by the employment of such phrases as "methinks," "as it were," &c., as otherwise it would merge into Rúpaka; except when we are describing only a cause or result, as in the lines of the Raghuvans'a, "the arrow shot by Ráma, having pierced Rávana's heart, flew on and entered the ground as if to bear the news to the lower world." This would still be an instance of Utprekshá, even if as if" were omitted. 66 Rúpaka is "the superimposition of a conceived form over the original subject." For Atis'ayokti, I subjoin a literal translation of the chapter where this figure is described; its reach, however, as will be seen, extends much wider than the single case, for which I have used it above. Additions to the text, by way of explanation, are given in brackets. "Sútra 693. Atis'ayokti [or hyperbole] is applied when the introsusceptive energy is actually completed [and not merely threatened as impending.] Adhyavasaya [the introsusceptive energy,] is found where the idea is produced of the identity of the object and the subject, from the latter's being swallowed up in the former. In Utprekshá this was only regarded as a future liability, since the object was not stated as being definitely placed for the subject, [but qualified by " as it were"]; but here the actual result produced is this very impression. (Still in Utprekshá to a certain degree the subject was swallowed up in the object in consequence of its being placed in the background, and in Atis'ayokti too we can have the same in such phrases as "her face is a second moon," "* since they say, "The wise hold that the subject is swallowed up in the object when the former is not named in the sentence, and even also when it is named, if it be thrown as subordinate in the background.") Sútra 694. Atis'ayokti may have a five-fold division,-identity where there is difference,-disconnection where there is connection,-the opposites of these-and a violation of priority and posteriority in cause and effect. By the opposites of these" I mean- -difference where there is identity, and connection where there is disconnection. For an example of identity where there is difference, take these lines of mine. "How can it be ! a peacock's feathers above, and under it shines a fragment of the moon eight days old, and next a pair of lotuses dancing, and then a tila flower, and under that a new shoot!" Here we have the introsusceptive energy manifested by the identity [in spite of the real difference,] of the fair one's hair, &c., with the peacock's feathers, &c. [the half-moon being her forehead, the lotuses her eyes, the tila her nose and the new shoot her lips]: or again in the verses quoted from Ráma's speech, in a former part of the treatise : "This is the spot where seeking thee I came to the anklet thou hadst dropped on the ground; but I saw it not, as it lay fixed in silence, as though from sorrow at its separation from thy lotus-foot." Here the attribute of silence in a sentient being is one thing, and that in a non-sentient is another; but the poet produces the idea of their identity in spite of their real difference. Or again, in the line, *When you boldly say "her face is another moon," as there is only one moon (scil. in Hindú science,) you really make as much exaggeration as if you dropped the face altogether and spoke only of "her moon.' "Her face is fair as the moon" is Upamá; "her face shines as if it were a moon" Utprekshá; "her face is a moon," Rúpaka; "her face is a second moon," or "her moon" Atis'ayokti. Many authorities, however, deny that the former of these is properly Atis'ayokti at all. |