Text 9.1 [Vakrokti]

Vakrokti

पूर्वत्र लक्षितान् अलङ्कारान् दर्शयन् शब्दस्य प्रथमं धी-विषयत्वात् तद्-गतांस् तावद् आह,

pūrvatra lakṣitān alaṅkārān darśayan śabdasya prathamaṃ dhī-viṣayatvāt tad-gatāṃs tāvad āha,

To illustrate the ornaments, defined earlier (8.2), at first he only describes the ornaments of sound, because out of sound and meaning, sound is the first to reach the mind:

Vakrokti

yad uktam anyathā vākyam anyathānyena yojyate |
śleṣeṇa kākvā vā jñeyā sā vakroktis tathā dvidhā ||9.78||

yat—which [sentence]; uktam—uttered; anyathā—in another way; vākyam—a sentence; anyathā—in other way; anyena—by another [person]; yojyate—is syntactically linked; śleṣeṇa—with a double meaning; kākvā—with a modulation of the voice; vā—or; jñeyā—is to be known; sā—that; vakra-uktiḥ—is the ornament called vakrokti (ambiguous expression) (“crooked utterance”); tathā—in that way; dvidhā—twofold.

A sentence said in one way by one person and construed in another way by another person, either by śleṣa or by kāku, is the ornament called vakrokti (ambiguous speech). Thus it has two varieties.

tatheti, śleṣa-vakroktiḥ kāku-vakroktiś ca.

There are two kinds: śleṣa-vakrokti (ambiguous speech due to a literal double meaning) and kāku-vakrokti (ambiguous speech due to a modulation of the tone of voice).

Commentary:

The difference between vakrokti (ambiguous speech) and the vyājokti ornament (artful concealment) (10.179) is this: vakroktau parokter anyathā-karaṇam, vyājoktau tu svokter iti bhedaḥ, “In vakrokti, the hearer construes the speaker’s statement differently, whereas in vyājokti the speaker construes his or her own statement in a tricky way afterward” (Kṛṣṇānandinī 9.1).