Abstract
The beginning of Jayaratha’s commentary on Ruyyaka’s Alaṃkārasarvasva contains a long digression on the nature of the goddess Parā Vāc, “Highest Speech,” referred to in Ruyyaka’s benedictory verse. This is an unusual choice in a text on poetics, and attention to Jayaratha’s religious context reveals that the digression is based closely on Abhinavagupta’s Parātrīśikāvivaraṇa, a tantric commentary. Jayaratha models his opening passage on this text in order to bolster an argument he wants to make about poetry, namely that poetry is the appearance of the goddess Highest Speech, who has split herself into both poet and reader in order to blissfully interact with herself. He does this, I suggest, in order to mark the discussion that will follow—an extremely detailed and polemical analysis of the nature and mechanisms of various rhetorical figures, with very little explicit theology—as a discussion that takes place squarely within a Śaiva universe, one which can only be fully understood in Śaiva terms even though, or perhaps precisely because, the language of theology is not necessary for analyzing any individual rhetorical figure.
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Notes
For the treatment of Ruyyaka in later texts on poetics see Bronner and Tubb (2008). For a hypothesis on why Ruyyaka might have been motivated to return to rhetorical figures, see Cuneo (2016). For evidence that Śobhākara’s full name may have been Śobhākareśvaramitra and not Śobhākaramitra as has previously been assumed, see Vasudeva (2016, p. 495 n. 1).
Jayaratha was probably active roughly around 1225 CE or thereafter, since his father seems to have been a minister under king Rājadeva, who ruled from 1213 to 1236. See Sanderson (2007, pp. 418–419). For evidence that Jayaratha may have been a devotee of the goddess Tripurasundarī, see Sanderson (2007, p. 383).
Alaṃkārasarvasva, p. 1: namaskṛtya parāṃ vācaṃ devīṃ trividhavigrahām / nijālaṅkārasūtrāṇāṃ vṛttyā tātparyam ucyate. There is a divergence in the texts here, with some reading guru in place of nija, but nija is the reading Jayaratha had in front of him.
There are many pieces of evidence for this, the most significant of which is that in his commentary on the Kāvyaprakāśa he has a long excursus full of quotes from obscure non-dual Śaiva tantras. See Kāvyaprakāśa vol. 5, pp. 2064–2066.
Alaṃkārasarvasva, p. 2: divu krīḍāvijigīṣādyutistutivyavahāramodamadakāntisvapnagatiṣu.
This phrase could also potentially mean “sense faculties and knowledge,” or possibly “emotional causes and knowledge [of those causes]”, i.e., the bhāvas. The translation I have chosen, which I find the most plausible, was helpfully suggested to me as a possibility by Elisa Ganser (personal communication).
Alaṃkārasarvasva, p. 2: śaktimatāṃ kavīnāṃ śrotṝṇāṃ ca svabhāvāt svecchayā samucchalantīṃ krīḍantīṃ. tathā devīm vijigīṣuṃ śabdaṃ tatsaṃkīrtitaṃ cārtham upasarjanīkṛtya vartamānām. tatha devīṃ dyotamānāṃ dyotanadhvananayoḥ paryāyatvād dhvanisaṃjñām. tatha devīṃ stutyāṃ sarvaiḥ kāvyātmatvād abhivandhyām. tathā devīṃ vyavaharantīṃ sarvatra pracaritāṃ na tu kvāpi skhalitām. tathā devīṃ modamānāṃ śrutimātreṇaiva paramānandadāyinīm. tatha devīṃ mādyantīṃ kaveḥ sahṛdayasya ca yathāyathaṃ karaṇāvabodhābhyāṃ kam apy ahaṃkāraṃ janayantīm. tatha devīṃ kamanīyāṃ sarvair abhilaṣaṇīyām. Puzzlingly, Jayaratha has left the last two meanings, sleep and motion, out of his explanation, though he has preserved them in the list.
Dhātupāṭha, p. 32 entry 1107 tells us: divu krīḍāvijigīṣāvyavahāradyutistutimodamadasvapnakāntigatiṣu. This is essentially the same list and must have functioned as the ultimate source of Jayaratha’s etymology, though why the order is different, I cannot say. Perhaps Jayaratha was simply using a slightly different version of the text than the modern published edition.
The text is also often referred to as the Parātriṃśikāvivaraṇa. For a discussion of these names and why Parātrīśikāvivaraṇa is more likely, see Baumer (2011, pp. 2–3).
Parātrīśikāvivaraṇa, p. 3: divu krīḍāvijigīśāvyavahāradyutistutigatiṣu Abhinavagupta’s list is slightly shorter than the Dhātupāṭha’s. Eivind Kahrs remarked on this in his book Indian Semantic Analysis (1999, pp. 70–71), and he notes that Abhinavagupta gives the same short set of meanings when analyzing the word deva in Tantrāloka 1.101–104, attributing this theological analysis to the author of the now lost Śivatanuśāstra. Eivind Kahrs could not explain this shorter list, and neither can I, but I can point out that the same short list is found in the lexicographer Kṣīrasvāṃin, though Kśīrasvāmin’s dates are too imprecise to determine his exact relationship with Abhinavagupta.
See, for example, Alaṃkārasarvasva, p. 2: yathā parāṃ vācam uttamakāvyarupatayā kāvyātmadhvanisaṃjñām… “Just as Highest Speech has the form of the best sort of poetry and thus is called dhvani, the soul of poetry…”.
It is also, occasionally, used to describe Śiva’s play. See, for example, Tantrāloka 1.101, quoted and translated in Ratié (2011, p. 440 n. 166).
ucchalanty api saṃvittiḥ… mātṛmeyādirūpinī…
Tantrāloka vol. 2, p. 133: mātṛmeyādirūpatvena bahir ullasanty api saṃvittiḥ.
Parātrīśikāvivaraṇa, p. 3: paśyantyādisṛṣṭikrameṇa bāhyanīlādiparyantena svavimarśānandātmanā krīḍanena…
This is the famous alphabetic cosmogony, described in this section of the Tantrāloka and also in the Parātrīśikāvivaraṇa, in which Abhinavagupta describes the creation of the universe as the gradual unfolding of the Sanskrit alphabet (more properly called a syllabary). In this cosmogony, vowels represent different elements of Śiva’s being, beginning with the first letter of the Sanskrit syllabary, short a. The self-division, re-combination, and subsequent intermixture of the primary vowels produces further vowels, as, for example, when a becomes two and the two short a’s combine to form long ā, or when a and i combine to form e, processes basic to Sanskrit grammar and familiar to any first year Sanskrit student. The divine unity thus divides and intermixes with itself, reaching ever greater complexity until eventually all its energies gather together in the nasal sound ṃ before being “emitted/ejaculated” into the consonants, which make up the universe. In all of this, an original unity develops in complexity by dividing itself up and then “banging together” with itself. For an extensive description of this process see Padoux (1990, pp. 223–329).
Tantrāloka 3.92 cd–3.93ab: itthaṃ prāguditaṃ yat tatpañcakaṃ tat parasparam // ucchalad vividhākāram anyonyavyatimiśraṇāt/ “Thus the five [vowels] that have already arisen.
spring up in various [new] forms due to their intermixture.” Jayaratha’s gloss reads: ucchalad vividhākāram: prādurbhavan nānārūpaṃ bhavet. na ca etat pāramparye ‘pi, kiṃ tu saṃghaṭṭe sati. For the sexual connotations of the term saṃghaṭṭa across Abhinavagupta’s corpus see Skora (2001, pp. 68–74).
See footnote 16.
Dhvanyālokalocana, p. 1: apūrvaṃ yad vastu prathayati vinā kāraṇakalāṃ jagad grāvaprakhyaṃ nijarasabharāt sārayati ca / kramāt prakhyopākhyāprasarasubhagaṃ bhāsayati tat sarasvatyās tattvaṃ kavisahṛdayākhyaṃ vijayate // My translation here is not quite word-for-word literal, but captures the sense accurately, I believe. I thank Ben Williams for sharing his own translation with me.
Ingalls, incidentally, under-interprets this verse when he says it expresses the insight that “the beauty of poetry, or of art in general, depends upon the audience as much as on the artist” (1990, p. 45 n 1). This is true, but it is not all the verse says. It is a translation of the clear theology of the verse into the terms of a practical, secular aesthetics.
Vasudeva (2016).
His benedictory verse, for example, is taken verbatim from the third benedictory verse of the popular Kashmirian Nyāya text Nyāyamañjari, by Jayantabhaṭṭa. Vasudeva (2016, p. 498).
In addition to the example of ullekha, discussed below, there are a few other places where Nyāya is discussed in Alaṃkāravimarśinī. Vasudeva (2016, p. 519) notes one, where Jayaratha’s definition of suppositional reasoning [tarka] echoes very closely the wording of Nyāyamañjari vol. 1, p. 18. Also, at the beginning of the text (p. 3) Jayaratha quotes Nyāyamañjari vol. 1, p. 13 (vs. 17) in the form of an objection to the wording of Ruyyaka’s opening verse, and he then goes on to show that Ruyyaka’s statement does, in fact, accord with what the Nyāyamañjari requires. At p. 182 he has an objector quote Nyāyamañjari vol. 1, p. 170 (vs. 219), a verse which the objector claims would have to count as poetry if what Ruyyaka says were true, a presumably absurd conclusion. Jayaratha here accepts the premises of the attack, but excuses Ruyyaka by pointing out that he is following early poetic tradition. There is also a long section devoted to the Mīmāṃsā concepts of niyama and parisaṃkhyā, which are discussed as well in Nyāyamañjari, but I have not been able to determine the extent to which Jayaratha may be influenced by Jayantabhaṭṭa’s discussion.
Alaṃkārasarvasva, pp. 58–59. Cuneo (2016, p. 152, n. 5) also notes the general dearth of Śaiva theology in the Alaṃkāravimarśinī and finds it striking.
Alaṃkārasarvasva, pp. 58–59. The quote is from Nyāyamañjari vol. 1, p. 257 (vs 113).
Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī vol. 1, p. 25: parasya pratipādanaṃ naiyāyikakramasyaiva māyāpade pāramārthikatvam iti granthakārābhiprāyaḥ. “On the plane of duality, the method of the Naiyāyikas is completely correct—this is the intention of the author [Utpaladeva].”.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Ben Williams and Elisa Ganser for their thoughtful and very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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Reich, J.D. Poetry and the Play of the Goddess: Theology in Jayaratha’s Alaṃkāravimarśinī. J Indian Philos 48, 665–674 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-020-09434-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-020-09434-1