227. 252 CHAPTER IV

252 CHAPTER IV

mental state or a transient emotion etc. as its central meaning. It has both the verbal and the ideational1 embellishments and qualities as subservient to it. But when the central meaning is other than the basic mental state etc. and the latter simply lends some charm to the former, that is an instance of the embellishment, called Rasavat. In a Dhvani Kavya simile and other ideational embellishments (Arthalankaras), though apparently they embellish a conven- tional meaning, yet ultimately they also embellish only the suggested, inasmuch as their embellishing the suggestive consists in imparting to it the capacity of2 suggesting the suggestible. An earlier authority maintained that a poetic composi- tion, which is exclusively given to the description of the insentient, is the sphere of the ideational embellishment, because in that the introduction of the element of the basic mental state is not possible. It may be stated here that this authority did not believe in the suggested meaning. Natu- rally enough, therefore, it held that the description of the sentient is the sphere of the embellishment Rasavat, of which the Rasa is only an element. This view, according to the Dhvani School, is not sound, because there can be no description of the insentient, which ultimately does not have any reference to the sentient as a stimulant or an indicator of a basic mental state (Vibhava or Anubhāva) and, therefore, there will be left no sphere for ideational em- bellishment like the simile and so on. But if the opponent were to maintain that even when there is relation of the described insentient to the sentient, the poetic composition remains an exclusive sphere of simile etc., he will be landed in the difficult position of having to accept the most æsthe- tic linguistic presentation as totally unæsthetic, because,8

1. Dh. L., 71. 2. Dh.L,5. 7 3. Dh. L., 76.