वासवदत्ता (महाकवि सुबन्धु - श्लेष-प्रधान शास्त्रीय गद्यकाव्य सान्वय सटीक)

18 VĀSAVADATTĀ ‹beautiful throat (sugrīva) and with armlets (aṅgada)› as the army of monkeys was adorned by ‹Sugrīva and Aṅgada›' (ed. Hall, pp. 63–64).¹ The figure next in frequence to the śleṣa in the Vāsavadattā is the virōdha, or ‘antithesis,’ where the superficial meaning is self- contradictory, while the paronomasiac reading renders the phrase consistent, and even intensifies it. This rhetorical embellishment is defined as follows in the Kāvyādarśa (2. 333; cf. Sāhityadar- paṇa, No. 718; Kāvyaprakāśa, tr. Jhā, pp. 233–235, Benares, 1898; Kuvalayānandakārikā, 1. 74) : viruddhānāṁ padārthānāṁ yatra saṁsargadarśanam viśēṣadarśanāyāi ”va sa virōdhaḥ smṛtō yathā, ‘when there is an apparent union of antithetical objects simply to show the distinction (between them), it is called virōdha.’ The conventional sign of the virōdha in the Vāsavadattā is api, as iva is indicative of the śleṣa. As an example of the countless in- stances of the virōdha in Subandhu’s romance, mention may be made of agrahēṇā ’pi kāvyajīvajñēna, ‘which ‹has no planets (a-graha)› yet knows «Venus (kāvya = Śukra = the planet Venus) and Jupiter (jīva = Bṛhaspati = the planet Jupiter)», for it is ‹free from theft (a-graha)› and knows «the essence (jīva) of poetry (kāvya)»’ (ed. Hall, pp. 113–114). Besides these two rhetorical devices, Śivarāma, in his com- mentary on the Vāsavadattā, enumerates a long series of alaṁ- kāras, or ‘adornments,’ which will now briefly be considered. The parisaṅkhyā, or ‘special mention,’ usually combined with the śleṣa in the Vāsavadattā, is an affirmative statement with the implied negation of the paronomasiac meaning of the phrase, and is thus defined by the Sāhityadarpaṇa (No. 735; cf. Kāvyapra- kāśa, tr. Jhā, pp. 245–246, Benares, 1898 ; Kuvalayānandakārikā,

1. 112) : ¹ On Subandhu’s fondness for paronomasia see, further, Krishnamachariar, Introd., pp. 18–20, who also calls attention to repetitions of paronomasia on the same word (p. 27) as well as to the frequent repetition of the same phrase in the romance (pp. 25–26).