240. ABHINAVAGUPTA'S THEORY OF MEANING 265

ABHINAVAGUPTA'S THEORY OF MEANING 265

THE SITUATION

Parvatī practised hard austerities to win Siva's favour. One day, when she was sitting with her father1, sage Angiras came with a message from Siva for marriage. As he was delivering the message, she was overpowered with the feeling of shyness, natural to a young girl, and so to conceal it from her father began counting the petals of the play-lotus that she was holding in her hand. The above lines, said in the situation, as just described, after conveying the conventional meaning suggest the feeling of shyness, with which Pärvatī was overpowered, by first reviving the memory of austerities, practised by her for securing Siva's love. Here the stages of transition from the conventional to the suggested are clearly noticeable. And the rise of the suggested meaning is due to the force of the2 conventional meaning. Hence it is an illustration of Krama- dyotya artha-śaktyudbhava dhvani.

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SUGGESTED MEANING, ACCORDING TO THE MEANS OF SUGGESTION.

Another basis of classification of the suggested meaning is the means of suggestion. From a letter3 to the entire work serve as means of suggestion, according to the need. The illustrations of all these types of suggested meaning are given in the third chapter of the Dhvanyaloka. Kuntaka in his Vakrokti jīvita, while talking of Vakrokti as the soul of poetry, is simply repeating what Ananda Vardhana has said in the third chapter. The former is presenting from the objective point of view what the latter has done from

1. K. Sam, VI. 65. 2. Dh. L., 102-3. 3. Dh. L., 123. 34