194. ABHINAVAGUPTA'S THEORY OF MEANING 217

ABHINAVAGUPTA'S THEORY OF MEANING 217

wrote his works, as is apparent from a quotation attributed to a poet, Manoratha, who, according to Abhinava, was Ananda Vardhana's contemporary.1 But it appears from Abhinava's wording that only stray verses were written by one writer here and another there, and there was no book presenting the opponents' views systematically. For, he seems to have purposely used the word "Śloka". It was only after Ananda Vardhana's learned exposition of Dhvani in his Dhvanyaloka, that there appeared two books of the opponents' school, one from the pen of Bhatta Nayaka, whom Abhinava so much criticises, and the other from that of Mahima Bhatta, who was probably Abhinava's successor or younger contemporary.

THE THEORY OF MEANING BEFORE THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE THEORY OF DHVANI. Before the theory of Dhvani was finally established by Abhinava, only three powers of language were admitted.

1. Abhidhasakti or the power of word to arouse a conventional image of an object in the mind of the hearer, because of the age-long association of that parti- cular set of sounds with that image.

2. Tatparyasakti. The individual words of a sentence arouse individual images completely cut off from one another. In the speaker's mind these images, of which the words are symbols, are connected with one another in a certain way. This relation is partly indicated by various case terminations and other affixes. For instance when a man says :- "Potter makes a jar." ol Jalmad

"Kulalah ghatam karoti"

1. Dh. L., 8. 28