Once again on Speaker's intention (vivakṣā). Bhartṛhari's speculation on the compounds of the śastrīśyāma-type (VP 3.14.360-389)

This article aims to contribute to the analysis of how the Sanskrit grammatical tradition, and in particular Bhartṛhari's speculation, interacted with the development of ancient Indian poetics. It focuses on a well-known type of ‘comparative compounds’ such as śastrīśyāma- ‘knife-dark’ as an ideal vantage point from which to understand the grammatical interpretation of the linguistic and cognitive dimension of comparison. Bhartṛhari's main section devoted to these compounds is translated and analysed in detail in comparison with Patañjali's commentary on Pāṇini sūtra 2.1.55. This allows us to highlight some specific features of Bhartṛhari's contribution to the subject, in particular (a) the importance he attaches to the balance between, on one side, the speaker's individual intention (vivakṣā) in choosing which traits of the comparated items are to be highlighted and, on the other side, the linguistic conventions governing what is suitable to become a standard of comparison, (b) the awareness that there is nothing inert in language and that something that is signified can be used as signifier, (c) the relevance he attaches to the cognitive richness of individual substance (on the side of the signified) that is exploited in metaphorical signification to convey something other than itself in a meaningful way.