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Ānandavardhana’s Theory of Suggestion or Dhvani: Indian Theories of “Art” and Their Relation to Cinema

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Abstract

In the classical Indian theories, a general definition of “art” is “whatever exceeds the literal form of an expression is ‘art’”. In this chapter, the following Indian theories of art are discussed: theory of embellishment which deals externally with human experiences and a much deeper theory of suggestion which restores ‘full word’ to human subjectivity truncated due to social repression, trauma and the loss of archetypal experiences. In Indian theories, the final frontier of art is human beings’ experience of harmony with nature.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Edwin Gerow, “Notes”, 92; kāvya is an expression which literally means “literature” but which ultimately comes to represent all forms of “art” during the ascendency of the literary theorists in India from 6th CE onwards. The dominance of literature is even now palpable in India when persons going to cinema still say “Going to see a book”! Similarly, while going to a folk theatre, they say “Going to hear a jatra”, an expression which has similar though reverse connotations!

  2. 2.

    Ibid., “Notes”, 91, modified.

  3. 3.

    Gerow, “Notes”, 91.

  4. 4.

    Bain, Rhetoric and Composition, I, quoted in Krishna Chaitanya, Sanskrit Poetics, 79.

  5. 5.

    Chaitanya, Sanskrit Poetics, 105.

  6. 6.

    Sergei Eisenstein, Film Sense, Trans. Jay Leyda (London: Faber and Faber), 18, quoted in Chaitanya, Sanskrit Poetics, 75.

  7. 7.

    Ingalls in Dhvanyāloka, 3.6A, FN 1, 401–2.

  8. 8.

    Chaitanya, Sanskrit Poetics, 107.

  9. 9.

    For a detailed analysis, see Gupt, Dramatic Concepts, 236–47.

  10. 10.

    Bimal Krishna Matilal, “Vakrokti and Dhvani: Controversies About the Theory of Poetry in the Indian Tradition”, Evam, Vol. 4 No. 1 & 2 (2006): 372–81, 374.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., 373.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., 374–5.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 378.

  14. 14.

    See Gerow, A Glossary, 324–6 for an exhaustive analysis.

  15. 15.

    Hiriyanna, Art Experience, 38–9.

  16. 16.

    Edwin Gerow, “Indian Poetics”, in A History of Indian Literature, Ed. Jan Gonda (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1977), V 5, 240.

  17. 17.

    Gerow, A Glossary, 37.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., 668.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., 336.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., 37.

  21. 21.

    Ānandavardhana’s Dhvanyāloka, 300.

  22. 22.

    Gerow, “Indian Poetics”, 240.

  23. 23.

    Edgar Cochran, “Review”, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989), accessed from the Internet, September 2018.

  24. 24.

    Miguel Ángel González Campos, “Crime, Revenge and Horror: Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover”, Review available on the Internet, accessed September 2018.

  25. 25.

    Campos, “Crime, Revenge and Horror”.

  26. 26.

    S. M. Eisenstein, “The Montage of Film Attractions (1924)”, in Eisenstein Writings Volume 1: 1922–1934. Trans. and Ed. Richard Taylor (London: BFI, 1988): 39–58, 41.

  27. 27.

    Ibid.

  28. 28.

    Abhinavagupta’s Abhinavabharatī, 13: 85, quoted by Gupt, Dramatic Concepts, 242.

  29. 29.

    Dehejia, The Advaita of Art, 113.

  30. 30.

    Gerow, “Notes”, 95.

  31. 31.

    While dhvani literally means “sound” or “voice”, it also means “echo”, “reverberation” or “resonance”, all of which signify a process of “that which comes back” to the receiver. In keeping with the Sanskrit tradition, Abhinava explains the triadic signification of dhvani as “the suggestion, the suggested, and the process of suggestion”, which, together, generate greater comprehensibility of a situation among the audiences. For “echo”, see Sheldon Pollock’s “The Social Aesthetic and Sanskrit Literary Theory”, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 29 No. 1–2 (2001): 197–229, Footnote 13, 224; for “reverberation”, refer to Daniel Ingalls, Dhanyāloka, 1.13 I L, 170.

  32. 32.

    Ānandavardhana, Dhvanyāloka, 3.33 l A, Ed. Daniel Ingalls, Footnote 2, 579.

  33. 33.

    Jacques Lacan, Chapter 3: “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis”, in Écrits: A Selection, Trans. Alan Sheridan, Reprint (London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1989): 30–113, 106–7, modified.

  34. 34.

    See Matilal’s The Word and the World, 77–105 for a detailed discussion.

  35. 35.

    Ānandavardhana’s Dhvanyāloka, 171–2.

  36. 36.

    Hiriyanna, Art Experience, 71.

  37. 37.

    Lalita Pandit, “Dhvani and the ‘Full Word’: Suggestion and Signification from Abhinavagupta to Jacques Lacan”, College Literature, Comparative Poetics: Non-Western Traditions of Literary Theory, Vol. 23 No. 1 (1996): 142–63, 148, emphasis added.

  38. 38.

    Ānandavardhana, Dhvanyāloka, 3.33j A, 570.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 3.33L, 574, emphasis added.

  40. 40.

    Pandit, “Dhvani and the ‘Full Word’”, 155; also Ānandavardhana, Dhvanyāloka, 2.27c A, 337.

  41. 41.

    Ānandavardhana, Dhvanyāloka, 1.4b A, 83.

  42. 42.

    Jacques Lacan, Chapter 3, “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis”, in Écrits: A Selection, Trans. Alan Sheridan, Reprint (London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1989): 30–113, 82.

  43. 43.

    Ānandavardhana, Dhvanyāloka, 1.4b A, 98.

  44. 44.

    Ibid.

  45. 45.

    Ingalls in Ānandavardhana’s Dhvanyāloka, 2.5A and FN 1, 238.

  46. 46.

    Herman et al., “Trauma Theory”, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, 615–9, 615.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., 616.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., 618, modified, original emphasis.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., 618.

  50. 50.

    Kuhn and Westwell, “Movement-Image/Time-Image”, in Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies, 271.

  51. 51.

    Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta (London: Continuum, 2005): 125–6, emphasis added.

  52. 52.

    Skakov, The Cinema of Tarkovsky: Labyrinths of Space and Time (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2012): 125–6.

  53. 53.

    Ibid., 115–6.

  54. 54.

    Skakov, The Cinema of Tarkovsky, 115.

  55. 55.

    Ibid.

  56. 56.

    Megan Carrigy, http://archive.senseofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/ghatak.html, accessed July, 2018, p. 7.

  57. 57.

    Hogan, “Towards a cognitive Science of Poetics”, 169.

  58. 58.

    Ingalls in Ānandavardhana’s Dhvanyāloka, 2.12 A, Footnote 2, 264, modified.

  59. 59.

    Ritwik Ghatak, “Human Society, Our Tradition, Filmmaking, and My Efforts”, Trans. Moinak Biswas, Cinema Journal, Vol. 54 No. 3 (Spring 2015): 13–7, 14, emphasis added.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., 15.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., 15, modified.

  62. 62.

    Ibid., 15.

  63. 63.

    Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis, Trans. Alan Sheridan, Ed. Jacques Alain Miller (New York: Norton, 1973): 24, original emphasis.

  64. 64.

    Lacan, Chapter 5, “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud”, in Écrits: A Selection (London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1989): 146–78, 166.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., 147.

  66. 66.

    Ibid., 155, original emphasis.

  67. 67.

    Ibid., 158.

  68. 68.

    Lacan, Chapter 3, “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis”, in Écrits, 30–113, 82, emphasis added.

  69. 69.

    Lacan, Chapter 5, 171.

  70. 70.

    Lacan, Chapter 3, Footnote 74, 110.

  71. 71.

    Ibid., 82.

  72. 72.

    Hiriyanna, Art Experience, 2–3.

  73. 73.

    Hiriyanna, Art Experience, 4, emphasis added, modified.

  74. 74.

    Ibid., Footnote 1, 36.

  75. 75.

    Ibid., Footnote 4, 36.

  76. 76.

    Ibid.

  77. 77.

    Hiriyanna, Art Experience, 36–7.

  78. 78.

    Ibid., Footnote 2, 36.

  79. 79.

    Ibid., 7–8.

  80. 80.

    Ibid., 8, modified.

  81. 81.

    Ibid., 9.

  82. 82.

    Roger Ebert, Review of La Dolce Vita, accessed Online, May 2017.

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  1. Department of Mass Communication, St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Gopalan Mullik

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Mullik, G. (2020). Ānandavardhana’s Theory of Suggestion or Dhvani: Indian Theories of “Art” and Their Relation to Cinema. In: Explorations in Cinema through Classical Indian Theories. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45611-5_6

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