Text 10.14

धर्मोपमानयोर् लोपे वृत्तौ वाक्ये च दृश्यते ॥ १०.९०ab ॥

dharmopamānayor lope vṛttau vākye ca dṛśyate ||10.90ab||

The elliptical simile characterized by the ellipsis of the common attribute and of the upamāna occur in a compound and in a sentence.

vṛttiḥ samāsaḥ.

The word vṛtti means samāsa (compound).

Commentary:

Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa’s illustration is in text 10.16. Mammaṭa gives this example:

ḍhuṇḍhulāyamāno mariṣyasi kaṇṭaka-kalitāni ketakī-vanāni |
mālatī-kusuma-sadṛśaṃ bhramara bhramann api na prāpsyasi || (Sanskrit rendering)

“Inspecting the thorny ketakī flowers, you will perish, O bee. Wander as you like, you will not find anything to which a jasmine flower can compare” (Kāvya-prakāśa, verse 407).

Here the elliptical simile is an aspect of the sādṛśya variety of the aprastuta-praśaṃsā ornament (indirect expression) (10.80): It is understood that some woman is talking to her lover on the pretext of talking to a bee. Therefore the verse illustrates a threefold upamā-dhvani (implied simile): The speaker is like a jasmine, her lover is like a bee, and ketakī flowers are like rival women. This implied sense is only second-rate because it is not more charming than the literal meaning.

In this verse, the example of the ellipsis of the common attribute and of the upamāna in a compound is in mālatī-kusuma-sadṛśam (to which a jasmine flower can compare). The compound is confusing because the implied case ending of mālatī-kusuma (jasmine flower) in “mālatī-kusuma-sadṛśam” is unknown, so that the jasmine can be taken either as the upamāna or as the upameya. Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa’s example seems confusing in the same way (10.16). However, Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa points out that by convention, the subject of description is an upameya (jasmine).^[1] Moreover, Mammaṭa says that if the compound were replaced with mālatī-kusumena samam, that would illustrate the above in a sentence.^[2] Here Mammaṭa breaks his rule that an upameya is expressed with a word in the sixth case ending. Kavikarṇapūra, however, does not deviate from Mammaṭa’s rule, and neither does Jagannātha. Śrīvatsa-lāñchana Bhaṭṭācārya corrects Mammaṭa’s reading.^[3] Kavikarṇapūra’s example is: yasya samo nāsti rasaḥ sa iha nagare gṛhe gṛhe bhavati, “In this town, the nectar in every house is beyond compare” (Alaṅkāra-kaustubha 8.35).

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

atra prakṛtatvān mālatī upameyā (Uddyota). On the face of it, the jasmine is the subject of description, but the real subject of description is the woman represented by the jasmine. In aprastuta-praśaṃsā, the implied context is more contextual than the literal context.

[2]:

kusumeṇa samam iti pāṭhe vākya-gā (Kāvya-prakāśa, verse 407 vṛtti).

[3]:

prakṛta-mālatī-kusumasya sadṛśaṃ puṣpāntaraṃ nāstīti vivakṣāyām upamānānupādāne (Sāra-bodhinī).