The Teleology of Poetics in Medieval Kashmir

[...]there have been several projects on the Dhvanyaloka, some of them elucidating it via textual analysis in the frame of later commentaries (see K. Krishnamoorthy, as well as Ingalls, Masson, and Patwardhan),1others investigating the amalgamation of methods and ideas which is the foundation of its doctrine (see Amaladass, Chari).2 It is the second type of study we find in Lawrence J. McCrea's book, The Teleology of Poetics in Medieval Kashmir. Chapter 9 (pp. 363-98) is dedicated to the illustrious commentator and advocate of the Dhvanyaloka, Abhinavagupta.3 Compared to earlier studies on the main subject of Anandavardhana's oeuvre, McCrea's approach to the dhvani theory is a novel one, as he claims a constitutive influence of the techniques for textual interpretation of the Mimamsa exegetics on the analysis of poetry, an influence introduced and established, according to McCrea, in the field of poetics by Anandavardhana (p. 26). A closer look at this essential argument might lead to quite the opposite conclusion from McCrea's thesis: it is the genuine elusiveness of poetic innuendos, simultaneously inciting and preventive, and their deliberately puzzling character, which oppose rather than imply the Mimamsa model of one unified and indisputable sense. The famous comparison of rasa to the taste of a beverage with a harmonious bouquet of different components highlights exactly this complex should not detract from the meticulous analysis of individual ideas and the reconstruction and elucidation of essential doctrinal points in the ten chapters of the book. In particular, the essay on Mukulabhaá¹­á¹­a and Pratiharenduraja (pp...