3.5. Kuntaka’s concept of sahṛdaya

[Full title: A brief sketch of the contents of Vakroktijīvita, (5): Kuntaka’s concept of sahṛdaya]

In the end of the second chapter, Kuntaka has very beautifully depicted the importance of sahṛdaya. It is doubtless that everyone cannot enjoy the charm of poetry, only those who have some aesthetic sense in them can enjoy it and they are known as sahṛdayas. It is also familiar that the main aim of poetics is sahṛdayahṛdayāhlāda.

The verse of Kuntaka is as follows:-

vāgvalyāḥ padapallavāspadadayā yā vakrodbhāsinī vicchittiḥ sarasatvasambaducitā kāpyujvalā jṛmbhate/
tāmālocya vidagdaṣaṭpadagaṇair vākyaprasūnāśrayam sphārāmodamanoharam madhu navotkaṇṭhākulam pīyatām//^[1]

“Poetic speech is a veritable creeper, with words as leaves, forming the bases for (symmetrical) beauty striking with artistic turn adding to the wealth of feelings and sentiments in a most striking manner. May the bee-like connoisseurs appreciate it and collect the profusely fragrant and sweet honey, from the sentence-blossoms, and enjoy it with ever-increasing zest.”^[2]

Here Kuntaka compares the poetic speech with a creeper and he says that by only seeing the tender leaves of that creeper, the bees become happy at the thought of the future flowering of this creeper and the sweet honey it would produce. Similarly the connoisseur should have the tendency to find out the artistic turn of speech or vakratā in the whole sentence by only knowing the artistic beauty of a word.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

ibid,p.123.

[2]:

ibid,p.409.