8/3/2019 Review of Jackmuth, Martina, Die Bildersprache Kalidasas Im Kumarasambhava - Edwin Gerow

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matics and sigillography. This enumeration at the same time demonstratesthe breadth of the material surveyed and presented.

Of course, one might always argue, why this titles is included, and

another one omitted. Thus, under 6.9.10 Thailand: epigraphy 3260 anarticle by H. Penth is duly refered to. However, his important edition ofNorthern Thai inscriptions published in the Corpus of Lan Na Inscrip-tions is omitted: H. Penth et alii: Inscriptions in the Chiang Sn Museum.Chiang Mai: Social Research Institute 1997. (Corpus of Lan Na Inscrip-tions Volume I), cf. ZDMG 150. 2000, p. 725. So far, five volumes of thisseries have appeared: vol. II Kawila Inscriptions (1998), vol. III: Inscrip-tions in the Lamphun Museum (1999), vol. IV: . . . in the Chiang MaiMuseum (2000), vol. V . . . in the Nan Museum (2001).

At times, the arrangement is a little puzzling: the Russian article 1530.K. R. Norman: How did the dispatch of the Asokan edicts happen? islisted under 2.0.10 South Asia: epigraphy, but, e.g., 2098. H. Falks The

preambule at Panguraria is found more correctly under 2.3.10 India:epigraphy. These are, however, very minor inconsistencies consideringthe enormous amount of useful information contained in this voluminousbook. It is hoped that the team of Kelaniya, which has taken over thecoordination of the ABIA, will soon produce the next volume for thebenefit of all interested in South and Southeast Asian art and archaeologyand beyond.

Orientalisches Seminar O. V. HINBERIndologie

Humboldtstr. 5

D-79085 Freiburg i. Brsg.Deutschland

Jackmuth, Martina, Die Bildersprache K alid asas im Kumarasam. bhava[Beitrge zur Indologie 35]. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2002,p. 252. ISBN 3-447-04603-1. C= 58,.

We have before us an ambitious effort to verify, by a quantitative stylo-metrics, the preeminence of Kalidasa among poets of the classical period a judgment which is shared by critics ancient and modern, Western andIndian, and is taken as a given by our present author. The axial term here,

borrowed from the work of the literary theorist Harald Weinrich (pp. 23ff.), is Khnheit which, presumably, characterizes Kalidasas poetrypar excellence, and, in particular, his display of metaphor, taken here, asgenerally, as the key element of his poetic genius. What Ms. Jackmuth

Indo-Iranian Journal 46: 375377, 2003. 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

8/3/2019 Review of Jackmuth, Martina, Die Bildersprache Kalidasas Im Kumarasambhava - Edwin Gerow

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attempts, then, is to measure Kalidasas Khnheit by establishing towhat extent and even why his metaphors are khn which, I suppose,in English can only be translated as bold, but which means a lot more

and a lot less in this context. What is really at issue is the livelinessand originality of metaphor, distinguished on the one hand from stockmetaphor (the light of reason), which has, in effect, been lexicalized,and on the other from trite metaphor (a funereal day), which fails tosurprise. The Indian critics of earlier times would have spoken ofpratibh aor vicchitti or vakrokti in this same vein. The bulk of the present work(pp. 29207) is devoted to a metaphor-by-metaphor analysis of morethan one hundred strophes taken from Kumarasam. bhava (KS) presum-ably a fairly complete census, though this is not asserted using a model(borrowed from Weinrich and other theoreticians of metaphor) that permitstheir Khnheit to be established.

Though the details are too complex to be reviewed here, what this

model seems to presume is a quasi-Vedantic hierarchy of being,involving seven or eight levels, from divine to inanimate (and allowingfor abstracts; pp. 2527). Metaphor, of course (the term is taken hereas inclusive of simile and all its varieties), involves a conjunction of twolevels of discourse in Sanskrit terminology, the upameya and upamana;in more modern, the Bildempfnger and the Bildspender. Ms. Jack-muths method, and this she sees herself as improving on the classicalIndian poetic, and on modern studies based thereon, consists in placing thetwo elements of a metaphor on their appropriate level, thus establishingtheir Bildspanne the span or gap, ontologically conceived, betweentheir references. My luvs like a red, red rose thus adjoins Level 2

(human) with Level 4 (nature images, inanimate) a metaphor with aBildspanne of 2.Lest this overly brief characterization appear to be aimed at trivializing

what is attempted here, let me hasten to add that the final few pages ofher study (pp. 208219, with tabular rsums) add a rather surprising andindeed welcome conclusion to the labor of rather pedestrian measure-ment. We had been told (p. 29), somewhat ex cathedra, that metaphorsare of two sorts: those whose ontological references are on the same leveland those that oscillate across levels (frequently more than two, as incomplex metaphors of the type malopama or samastar upaka). What wenow learn and here the question of value reemerges is not only thatthose of the former type are less frequent in KS but that the latter are better

suited to avoid the twin pitfalls that ever beset boldness frozen or tritemetaphors. Metaphorical Khnheit then, is preeminently a function oflevel switching, or oscillation, as revealed by the method described, andKalidasa is not the least of the poets who have discovered this.

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Quite interesting, enfin. Still, a number of questions have yet to beaddressed. What, in fact, has been proven? Is the method adopted hereanything more than statistical window-dressing? That is, are we assuming

Kalidasas stylistic supremacy in order better to display it (a petitioprincipii), or have we, in fact, discovered a genuine way of evaluatingKalidasas skill? Does the Khnheit revealed here indeed belong toKalidasa, or to the work itself or its genre? That is, is the Meghad uta,for example, any more khn than the KS? And would a similar analysisof, say, Bhavabhutis more dramatic metaphors reveal Khnheit in anysignificant way different from Kalidasas? That is, is Kalidasa merely aninstance of poetry in general which may generally be evaluated bycounting Bildspanne?

More interesting, for the cross-cultural dimensions of this kind of study,is the ambiguous terminology employed, Western in appearance, butas one delves further, more and more suggestive of traditional Indian

categories of reference even the hierarchy of being that Ms. Jackmuthsees lacking in traditional alam. k arika treatments. We seem to have comefull circle: when I began my studies of Indian poetics, it was fashionableto focus on Indian categories of reference and to belittle those of ourpredecessors, like S. K. De, who unabashedly criticized Indian poetics andIndian poets from a decidedly Western perspective. Now we are told(cf. pp. 9 ff.) that recent Western theory is essential to our understandingof even Indian achievements and yet, as this study shows, just howWestern is it? As I read on in Ms. Jackmuths work, its tenor beganto remind me more and more of an alam. k arika work of the old school the quantitative is too often confused with qualitative; a terminology that,

even to become clear, needs the Indian originals as reference points.A review should raise problems but I want to end this one on a positivenote. Ms. Jackmuths work (obviously!) makes one think deeply aboutthe fundamental issues involved in studying Indian poetics, and in quiteoriginal and probing terms. Whether one agrees or does not agree with thestance taken, her study is a refreshing departure from the stock studies ofIndian poetics that, indeed, owe too much to their Indian sources. Perhaps,as Ms. Jackmuth herself observes, what is needed is further work alongthese lines even to permit a just evaluation of this work (p. 219). Let ushope this will be the case.

Reed College EDWIN GEROW

Portland, OregonUSA