Dhvani

The theory of dhvani or suggestion was first introduced by Anandavardhana in his treatise Dhvanyaloka in the ninth century. Though the germs of this doctrine manifest themselves in the speculations of earlier theoreticians, Anandavardhana is the first literary critic to give a full bodied form to the concept and to enunciate a new principle of literary evaluation absorbing the concepts propounded by the earlier theoreticians. The doctrine has since then been accepted as an important principle of criticism in Indian poetics and has been strongly recommended by Anandavardhana both for poets and critics. 

Bharata, Anandavardhana's predecessor and another renowned Sanskrit scholar, propounds the principle of rasa in drama and literature with the basic implication that the poetic context is creatively organised for the communication of feeling. Feeling cannot be communicated through pro-positional statement. The feeling ultimately experienced by the reader is his own; it is the movement of his sensibility. Since the feeling cannot be aroused by naming it, the poet builds up a system of objective correlatives, essentially identical with the context of stimuli in life which can elicit the emotional reaction. Bharata uses the word nishpatti, that is, emergence or outcome, for the appearance of rasa when the prime and the ancillary stimuli, etc., are creatively organised . Anandavardhana claims that this nishpatti really means abhivyakti, that is, manifestation as the emotional reaction is ever abiding, as a latent reactivity, in the reader. Since the manifestation of rasa in the poetic context is not the communication of a pro-positional meaning but the presentation of a !! sensitively organised complex of stimuli, he affirms that stimuli and reaction , vibhavas and rasa stand in the relation of the suggester and the suggested. Poetry gets operated basically through the power of suggestion . 

The doctrine of suggestion is founded on three-fold division of meaning emanating from three-fold powers of words, viz., 

• • abhidha or the power giving primary denotative meaning; 

  • laksana or the power giving secondary derivative or indicated meaning; 

  • and vyanjana from which the meaning obtained is vyangyartha, the tertiary or the suggested meaning. This vyangyartha is also known as dhvanyartha. 

Every poem, feels Anandavardhana, has two levels of meaning: the explicit and the implicit. The explicit, as the word itself suggests, is the literal or derivative meaning set forth in many ways through figures of speech, images, etc., whereas the implicit is like the charm in ladies that "shines supreme and towers above the beauty of the striking external constituents ... " 1 The relationship between the explicit and the implicit differs from poem to poem, depending upon the purpose and intention. One or the other meaning is given prominence and it is only when after the appearance of the expressed sense, the explicit meaning completely subordinating itself gives rise to another sense, that we name it as the suggested meaning. 

Defining dhvani Anandavardhana writes : 

That kind of poetry, wherein the (conventional) meaning renders itself secondary or the (conventional) word renders its meaning secondary and suggests the intended implied meaning, is designated by the learned as DHVANI or 'Suggestive Poetry'.

Thus after the appearance of the explicit meaning the denoted and the indicated meanings completely subordinating themselves assign the primary position to the tertiary or the suggested meaning and such poetry is ranked as the suggestive poetry. Semantic meaning in this process does not contradict or hinder the poetic meaning. Rather, the semantic meaning is a doorway to the suggested one. 

Anandavardhana says : Just as the purport of a sentence is grasped through the meaning of individual words, the knowledge of that sense is got at only through the medium of the explicit sense.  "That sense" here is the suggested meaning and in a dhvanikavya it is of the highest importance. "Suggestion", writes Anandavardhana, "itself is both the quintessence of the works of all first rate poets and the most beautiful principle of poetry". In a general poetic parlance a poetry is classified inferior where the suggested meaning is less relevant than the poetic intention.  Anandavardhana further declares dhvani or the symbolic content as the poetic creation and the other types of poetic endeavors are categorised in the light of the principle of supremacy of suggestion. The best specimen of  poetic art does not keep itself confined within the narrow limits imposed by the expression and the expressed. It transcends the limits and hints towards the symbolic content, which proves itself as one of the inexplicable charms, and this rise is likened to resonance or echo. 

• Thus the best poetry is that in which the suggested sense predominates and supersedes the expressed sense. This is called the Dhvanikavya or the poetry of Resonance. 

• The second class is that in which the suggested sense is not predominant and this is called the Gunibhuta Vyangya or the poetry of Subordinated Suggestion. 

• The third class of poetry which is of lower kind is the one without any suggested meaning. This is called Portrait-like poetry or the Citrakavya. 

The epithet of dhvani, however, is assigned not only to dhvanikavya, but even to words, their meanings or the activity of suggestive poetry. In short, in Anandavardhana's treatise it is taken in five senses, viz.:

1. The suggestive word/sound which resonates meaning, that is, vyanjaka sabda. 

2. The suggestive meaning which resembles another sense, that is, vyanjaka artha. 

3. The suggestive poetry, that is, vyanjaka kavya. 

4. The suggested meaning , that is, vyangyartha and 

5. The activity of meaning, that is, vyanjana vyapara. -

 Anandavardhana elaborates his theory from the angle of what is suggested and the suggesters or what suggests. Regarding the nature of what is suggested, Anandavardhana divides it into three categories, viz.: 

(a) Vastudhvani or where there is the suggestion of a matter/fact or an idea, 

(b) Alankaradhvani or where there is the suggestion of a trope, and 

(c) Rasadhvani or where there is the suggestion of a mood or feeling. 

The last category which has been taken as the cardinal principle by the Indian critics, has been assigned prime significance by Anandavardhana also. Elsewhere, he has categorically expressed that his subject is not merely to establish the doctrine of suggestion but also to harmonise it with the theory of aesthetic emotion. The theory of dhvani, as such, is a comprehensive principle which can cover any genre that fulfils the definition of poetry and in fact when the Indian poetics adopts the term, It includes any literary work. The activity of suggestion in literature, whether in the East or in the West , has been an age-old phenomenon. Only that its conscious usage in West both as a term and as a technique, was a later development and as Krishna Rayan suggests, it was during the nineteenth century that "in Poe's critical writings that 'suggestiveness' is first used as a technical term".