191. ABHINAVAGUPTA'S THEORY OF MEANING 213

ABHINAVAGUPTA'S THEORY OF MEANING 213

2. In the utterance this basic mental state is not directly expressed but is simply suggested. The afore- said utterance of Valmīki, for instance, though an expression of grief, does not contain any direct expression of it in the conventional language. There is only a suggestion of it.

He speaks, not as Vālmīki, but as female Kraunca universalised. He views the situation as the latter. He, therefore, experiences the loss of what was the dearest and the most precious. This has meant to him the irrecover- able loss of the peace of mind. He looks upon the hunter as the author of his perpetual grief. He feels his helplessness against the enemy. And, therefore, in the characteristic manner of a widowed woman, whose husband has been killed, in the course of amorous sport with her, by a cannibal simply because of his cannibalistic tenden- cies, he curses the hunter with a lot very much worse than his own.

Thus we find in the aforesaid lines of Valmīki an expression of grief without the use of the word "grief" or any one of its synonyms. Such an intensity of grief cannot be conveyed directly by means of conventional language. This kind of expression is technically called Dhvanikavya, because of the presence of the suggested or spiritual meaning therein. This meaning, in different contexts, is conveyed by a full sentence, a phrase, a word or even a particular affix to it, as we will show later.

The exponents of the theory of the suggested meaning, therefore, maintain that the basic mental state has been the most important factor in poetry from the earliest times and that it has always been conveyed through suggestion.

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THE PROBABLE TIME OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE SPIRITUAL MEANING. Every theory presupposes the facts, on which it is based and which it tries to explain. And the exponents of the theory of the spiritual meaning of the poetic language maintain (i) that the fact, which they account for by their theory, is the soul of the poetic language (ii) that a poem without this element is like a body without soul; and (iii) that this fact constituted the essential element of the first utterance of the first poet, Valmiki, and has always characterised the poetic works of all the subsequent poets of repute. Who was the first person to discover this distinctive element of the poetic experience, we have no evidence to say anything. But it would not be unreasonable to suppose that this distinctive element of the poetic experience was vaguely marked by some one, possessed of the power of poetic visualisation (Pratibha), some time in the first half of the 8th Century A.D. He must have talked of it to his contemporaries, some of whom must have agreed with him and others must have differed from him. Thus the controversy must have started. This is the probable explanation of its representation as identical with the secondary meaning by Udbhata and Vamana in the later half of the 8th century. THE CHIEF EXPONENT OF THE SPIRITUAL MEANING OF LANGUAGE OR DHVANI. As in the case of the æsthetic experience or Rasāsvāda so in that of the spiritual meaning or Dhvani, Abhinava has spoken the last word and has been followed by all the subsequent writers in the field of Sanskrit poetics. No doubt Mahima Bhatta, who was probably a younger