185. CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER IV.

ABHINAVAGUPTA'S THEORY OF MEANING.

LANGUAGE AND ÆSTHETIC CONFIGURATION.

Æsthetic configuration has been described in the preceding pages as a configuration of the emotive situation, the mimetic changes, the transient emotions and the basic mental state, not as they are ordinarily met with in every day life, but as they figure in a poetic vision. The consti- tuents of the configuration in the poetic vision differ from those of daily experience because of their ideality. Language, by common consent, is admitted to be more expressive than paint, lime or marble. Hence Indian æstheticians from as early a time as that of Bharata have acknowledged it to be the only medium of externalisation of a poetic vision. The stage, with its scenic arrangement and presentation of different actors in proper form and with necessary accompanying mental states, simply serves to clarify the meaning of what they speak with proper accent, intonation1 and emphasis. The question that will naturally arise here in the reader's mind is "what is that in the poetic vision, which no other expressive material can externalise and why is it that language alone can do so ?" And the reply is, that it is the ideal element in the poetic vision, which no other expressive material can express, at least so well as can the language. And the language is capable of doing so because of its sugges- tive power, the power that conveys the suggested or spiritual meaning, the meaning which represents the very soul of the poetic vision and without which the presentation would be

1. N. S. 169.