Ānandavardhana and the Metaphysics of Literature

This chapter looks at the origin of the famous theory of “poetic manifestation [dhvani]” in the Dhvanyāloka of Ānandavardhana. After a brief overview of the theory, the chapter explores some of the problems and ambiguities in Ānandavardhana’s text, and then explores Ānandavardhana’s use of Bhartṛhari as the basis for his theory. The chapter shows that the later popularity of the theory cannot be chalked up simply to the superiority of Ānandavardhana’s philosophical arguments, but can instead be attributed to some of the basic metaphysical issues opened up by Ānandavardhana’s use of Bhartṛhari, in which many different thinkers and traditions in Kashmir were invested.

Mahimabhaṭṭa on Literary Knowing

This chapter begins Part II of the book, which is a three-chapter exploration of the work of Mahimabhaṭṭa, who lived and wrote around the end of Abhinavagupta’s life and attempted to refute the theory of poetic manifestation. Instead of poetic manifestation, Mahimabhaṭṭa argues that literature and the emotions it depicts are always understood through a process of inference, and Mahimabhaṭṭa grounds his theory of inference in the work of the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti, despite himself being a Śaiva. This chapter provides an overview of Dharmakīrti’s philosophy, and explores Mahimabhaṭṭa’s use of Dharmakīrti to explain inference, as well as the influence of Dharmakīrti on Mahimabhaṭṭa’s understanding of language. It also begins collecting evidence to argue that Mahimabhaṭṭa has Abhinavagupta in mind as a target of critique, alongside Ānandavardhana.

Abhinavagupta’s Theology

This chapter looks at the religious, theological, and philosophical ideas of Abhinavagupta, the next major intellectual to take up and defend Ānandavardhana’s theory of poetry. The chapter gives a broad summary of Abhinavagupta’s religious worldview. Since Abhinavagupta is both a monist and an idealist, the nature and structure of Śiva’s mind, the fundamental origin of all existence, provides a template on which all other phenomena in the universe are modeled. This chapter pays special attention to the reflexivity and independence of awareness, the nature and origin of bliss, cosmogony, and the nature of language. The chapter also explores Abhinavagupta’s interest in and use of Bhartṛhari, not just as a grammarian, but as a theologian with broader ideas about the nature of mind and the universe.

Conclusion

The Conclusion recapitulates the book’s main arguments, as well as the main ideas of each thinker treated. It takes a step back to explore the relationship between these thinkers’ ideas and the broader inter-religious climate of Kashmir in these centuries, and then draws out some of the major implications that these ideas may hold for how we understand these thinkers and the intellectual culture of Kashmir in this period. The Conclusion also returns to the theoretical issues raised in the Introduction, discussing the role that the theory of “religion-as-vortex” might play in future research on South Asian religion—and literature more broadly—and suggesting some possible avenues for future work.

Mahimabhaṭṭa on Literary Being

This chapter returns to Mahimabhaṭṭa’s reliance on Dharmakīrti and shows that, for Mahimabhaṭṭa, unlike for Abhinavagupta, understanding poetry involves illusion. Poetry, he argues, relies for its effects on a cognitive mistake on the part of the reader, who attributes emotions to imaginary characters who cannot actually have them. This means that poetry cannot be valuable in itself, and this is, again, an inversion of Abhinavagupta. Poetry does, however, have instrumental value, and to explain this, Mahimabhaṭṭa again relies on Dharmakīrti, who also thought that inference delivered quasi-mistaken information, but could still be relied on because of its practical usefulness. For Mahimabhaṭṭa, the use in question is moral training, which is the fundamental goal of poetry. This chapter rounds out the evidence for the argument that Mahimabhaṭṭa’s theory is directed, in part, at Abhinavagupta’s theory, and inverts it in many important ways.

The Will of Objects

This chapter explores a long digression at the beginning of Mahimabhaṭṭa’s text that gives a strange theory of word-meanings. Mahimabhaṭṭa argues here that all nouns actually express verbal activity—that the only reason we call something a “pot” is because it is enacting the activity of being a pot. Mahimabhaṭṭa explains that the reason this is the possible is because all things, even seemingly insentient objects, are an expression of God and are therefore possessed of agency and willpower. This chapter argues that this assertion is actually an intervention in some of the important changes that had recently taken place in non-dual Śaiva philosophy in Kashmir, including the changes that Abhinavagupta had relied on for his literary theory. The chapter explores what this can tell us about Mahimabhaṭṭa’s Śaivism and the deeper motivation for his attack on the theory of poetic manifestation.

Introduction

This chapter explains the theory of religion employed in the book, as well as the basic issues at play in the overlap of religion and literary theory that will be explored. Starting from the assumption that religion is a heuristic category rather than a real object in the world, the Introduction argues that, for the purposes of this project, religion is best understood as a network of influential relationships centered around something understood to be ultimate or unsurpassable. Theology, according to this definition, is the attempt to articulate, normatively or descriptively, the shape of this network from a position that accepts the ultimacy of its center. The Introduction then explains the fundamental set of philosophical issues driving the overlap of literary theory and religious philosophy in Kashmir in these centuries: namely, the relationship between appearances and essences, or between how things appear and what they really are.

Abhinavagupta’s Literary Theory

Building on the background laid out in Chapter 2, this chapter gives an analysis of Abhinavagupta’s literary theory, which is framed as a defense of Ānandavardhana’s theory of poetic manifestation, but which changes that theory in important ways. The chapter explores Abhinavagupta’s relationship to the earlier theorist Bhaṭṭanāyaka and shows that Abhinavagupta’s literary theory is laid out along a broad structural parallel between, on the one hand, Śiva, the world, and the yogin who attains enlightenment, and on the other, poet, poem, and connoisseur. The chapter shows that many key elements of Abhinavagupta’s theory, such as the specifically pleasurable nature of literary experience, his account of poetic creativity, and his insistence that literary emotions cannot be encountered as objects, are only fully intelligible when seen against the background of his broader ideas about the nature of God and the universe.