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Creation as Transformation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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(A notion of imagination as Creative Transformation envisaged by certain ancient Indian literary critics and its application in the field of music.)
The idea of creative imagination naturally suggests artistic activity. Activity such as that of the writer, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the dancer, the architect and the like. This, we generally think, is the homeground of creative imagination, though, as has been justly pointed out, every human endeavour, whether thought or action, presupposes it, or, at least, needs it in order to be significant. The writer comes first on my list because we who deal in words tend to think of literature before any other art, as is amply borne out by our proceedings here. But I have another, a more important reason for listing him first. Reflections over the writer's art, that is, literature, has a longer history and a greater depth of critical self-awareness in India than with respect to any other art, a fact which is perhaps true of most cultures.
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- Copyright © 1984 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
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1 Before Ānandavardhana, Indian semantics, or what may be called its main strand, postulated a śakti, "a power" in words termed abhidhā through which they directly denoted their objects. Abhidhā, it was believed, was aided by another "power" termed Laksanā which came into play when abhidhā landed into obvious logical absurdities. As in common usages like, "I drank five glasses". "He passed through hell", "John is a rat". The function of laksarā in such cases was to restore the denotative abhidhā sense through simple "logical'' connections or associations. Thus "glasses" = "what they contain", "hell" = "suffering" and "rat" = "unpleasant habits or properties of a rat". Here the function of laksan
ā ended. It merely came to the rescue of abhidhā when usage showed such waywardness. It did no more. One can see, however, that "hell" and "rat" in these sentences cannot be reduced to any simple denotative meaning. They have a suggestive aura which cannot be tied down to abhidhā and this is one reason which led Anandavardhana to argue for dhvani, an evocative "power" in words, beyond abhidhā and laksanā.
2 Abhinava on Dhvanyāloka, udyota 1, kārikā, 13: see p. 241, vol. 1 of Dr. Ramasagera Tripathi's edition of Dhvanyāloka (Moti Lal Banaridas, 1973).
3 Significantly, this verse, unlike the earlier one, uses purely verbal, "poetic" devices to great effect. It has two instances of the figure called contradiction or paradox: (1) the girl is described as nirduddhacumbanarasā, "deprived of the bliss of kissing" and yet ābhogalolam sthitā, "vibrating with joy" rasa and abhoga acting as synonyms here. (2) The other instance, occurring in the last line, is obvious enough. Its effect is heightened by a subtle double entendre on the phrase sākānkspratipatti which means literally "unfulfilled desire" but also, as a technical term in grammar, "an incompletely formulated sentence", which "wants" something before it can make sense: a sentence left hanging in the middle of sense and nonsense as it were. An utterance such as, "Fortunately I…", for example, which demands additional phrases such as, "was there" or "had money", or "could hang on to the cliff" or the like, to make sense.
4 Dhvanyāloka, udyota 4, vrtti on kārikā 10.
5 Rājaśekhara quotes Ānandavardhana at the beginning of the 5th chapter of the Kāvyamīmāmasā. In a stray verse attributed to him, he praises Anandavardhana's concept of dhvani: See op. cit., G.O.S. ed., edited by Dalal and Shastri, Baroda, 1934, p. 156.
It is not unlikely that Rājaśekhara was not directly inspired by Anandavardhana in this matter, but that both were drawing from a common tradition current among critics and poets.
6 Rājaśekhara does speak of three very broad "kinds" of ayoni, poems, making a distinction on the basis of subject-matter: laukika, "this-worldly" concerned with things of this world; alaukika "trans-worldly" concerned with the gods and miśra, "mixed", concerned with a combination of the two: Kā vyamim āmasā, chapter 12. But this classification is radically different from the others in principle; its basis is not how the new transforms the old. Any corpus whatsoever of poems can, in fact, be classified as laukika, alaukika and miśra.
7 Kā vyamīmāmasā, Chapter 12.
8 Ibid, Chapter 12.
9 Ibid. Chapter 12.
10 Rājaśekhara, op. cit., Chapter 12.
11 Rājaśekhara, op. cit., Chapter 12.
12 Śārńgadeva, the author of the famous 13th-century epitome on music, Sań gī taratn ākara, categorizes vāggeyakā ras. (composers), into three classes. The best are those who compose both the music and the words in a song. The lesser ones are those who borrow another's music, merely composing a new song for it.
13 For sub-species of the ālekhyaprakhya, see chapter 13 of the Kā vyamīnmā masa.
14 Ibid, loc. cit.
15 In music, as in many other arts, a degree of what may be termed "interpreta tion" is involved in even faithfully copying a work. A copy in music can never be a mechanical copy in the sense that two copies of the same poem are. Such copies can only be produced on a gramophone or a similar device. A musician reproducing an original cannot do so mechanically. For reproduction itself is an art, a process which is bound to leave some imprint of the artist on the work he copies. He cannot but interpret, in other words, as he copies. But interpretation, in a significant sense, comes in only when the original is uncertain, not given in its entirety, and thus having parts or aspects capable of alternate renderings.
16 A composition "fixed" in its melodic contours, set to a certain rhythmic cycle (tā la) and often forming the nexus around which improvisation takes place.
17 When I say "sung", I also imply "played", for the musical styles I am speaking of apply to the manner of rendering a rāga irrespective of whether this is done in singing or playing.
18 Thumr ī Sańgraha compiled and notated by Gangadhar Rao Telang, Luc know, 1977. Lallan Piyā Kī Thumriyām, compiled and notated by Bharatendu Bajpai, Lucknow 1977. We gather from the introduction of the latter work that a direct disciple of Lallan Piyā died in 1950. It is not unlikely, therefore, that Lallan Piyā himself was alive at the beginning of the twentieth century.
19 Dr. Prem Lata Sharma, Head of the Dept. of Musicology, at Bihar University, recently told me that she heard a musician from Bihar sing a most intricate tapp ā in Puriyā, properly maintaining the raga form. Apparently a tradition of tappā singing, which has disappeared from the rest of North India, survives in a remote comer of Bihar.
20 Nāt yasāstra (G.O.S. ed.) Vol. 1. 4,262. Nrtta is here spoken of as: "nagīta kārthasambaddhamna capyarthasya bhavakam".
21 Ibid 4,31 and 4,59-60. There is a suggestion in the second passage that the nrtta-m ātrkā is a unit even smaller than the karan a, but for my purpose the question of their equivalence is irrelevant. I take them to be equivalent for the point I am making here.
22 Abhinava on Nātyaśā stra 4,28-33: "A (graceful) movement distinct from those made in connection with avoiding the undesirable (heya) and achieving the desired (upadeya) is karaňa… a single movement from one point to another appropriate point is karaňna".
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