On Poetic Language

In Kavikarṇapūra’s poetics, rasa is seen as the ‘soul’ of poetry. Chapter 4 attempts to understand how the language of poetry can embody this soul. I start with Kavikarṇapūra’s eclectic philosophy of language, and then examine his poetics proper, as presented in the Alaṃkāra‐kaustubha: his views on suggestion (dhvani), literary excellences (guṇa), figures of speech (alaṃkāra), style (rīti), and literary defects (doṣa). I compare and contrast Kavikarṇapūra’s understanding of these with those of earlier authors, and demonstrate that Kavikarṇapūra particularly draws on Vāmana, a ninth‐century theorist, and gives prominence to the excellences and style—the core ideas of Vāmana’s poetics—to formulate a poetics that prizes phonetic ornamentation.