Throughout its history of almost a millennium and a half, Sanskrit kāvyaśāstra was resolutely obsessed with the task of unravelling the ontology kāvya (literary prose and poetry). Literary theoreticians in Sanskrit, irrespective of their spatio-temporal locations, unanimously agreed upon the fact that kāvya was a special mode of expression (distinctly different from the ordinary form of speech) characterized by the presence of certain unique linguistic elements. Nonetheless, this did not imply that kāvyaśāstra was an intellectual tradition unmarked by disagreements. The real point of contention among the practitioners of Sanskrit literary theory was the prioritization of certain formal elements as the ‘soul’ of literature. This strong sense of intellectual disagreement on the question of what constituted the soul of kāvya eventually paved the way for the emergence of new frameworks of criticism and extensive scrutiny of the existing categories, thus playing a vital role in keeping this tradition alive and new.

But towards the turn of the 20th century, Sanskrit kāvyaśāstra tradition underwent an epistemic rupture primarily because of a change in the way the idea of literariness was understood. During this phase, the traditional Formalistic notions about literature (to which Sanskrit kāvyaśāstra conformed) underwent a radical transformation, and the style and language of literature eventually became similar to everyday speech. This trend played an important role in severing Sanskrit kāvyaśāstra’s natural tie with literature. Eventually, the vigour in which new treatises in Sanskrit literary poetics were produced also dwindled. This did not mean that the scholarship (pāṇḍitya) in Sanskrit poetics vanished. Scholars in Sanskrit poetics continued to flourish in India, but in a different form and shape. In other words, the focus of scholars in Sanskrit poetics slowly got shifted from the production of new treatises in Sanskrit poetics to the creation of the intellectual history of this field and the application of these theories to evaluate the literary merit of modern literary texts. Though these two approaches played a vital role in disseminating the knowledge about Sanskrit poetics in modern times, they were caught up in an ontological certitude. In other words, neither of these two directions attempted to study these theoretical positions from a standpoint other than that of literary theory. To borrow a Barthian terminology, these two approaches treated Sanskrit poetics as a ‘work,’ instead of a ‘Text.’ This paper aims to intervene in this lacuna of scholarship by proposing the Derridian idea of ‘play’ as a methodological framework to unearth the potentialities lying dormant in these theories and to move beyond the ontological certitude traditionally imposed on these theoretical positions. The new methodological praxis that I put forward in this paper is further exemplified through a non-canonical reading of Ānandavardhana’s avivakṣita-vācya-dhvani (dhvani where the literal meaning is not intended).

在将近一千年半的历史中，梵语kavyaśāstra坚定地致力于解开本体kavya（文学散文和诗歌）。梵文的文学理论家，不论其时空位置如何，都一致同意以下事实：卡维亚语是一种特殊的表达方式（与普通的演讲形式截然不同），其特征在于存在某些独特的语言元素。但是，这并不意味着kāvyaśāstra是一个没有分歧的思想传统。梵语文学理论从业者真正的争论点是，把某些形式上的要素作为文学的“灵魂”进行优先排序。对于什么构成了卡维亚灵魂的问题，这种强烈的智力上的分歧最终为新的批评框架和对现有类别的广泛审查铺平了道路，从而在保持这一传统的活力和新颖性方面发挥了至关重要的作用。

但是到了20世纪初，梵文的传统遭到了认知上的破裂，这主要是因为人们对文学观念的理解发生了变化。在此阶段，传统的形式主义文学观念（梵文kāvyaśāstra所遵循的观念）经历了根本性的转变，文学的风格和语言最终变得类似于日常演讲。这种趋势在切断梵文kāvyaśāstra与文学的天然联系方面发挥了重要作用。最终，产生了梵文文学诗论新论的活力也减弱了。这并不意味着该奖学金（pāṇḍitya）在梵文诗学中消失了。梵语诗学的学者在印度继续蓬勃发展，但形式和形态却有所不同。换句话说，梵语诗学的学者的焦点逐渐从梵语诗学的新论着的产生转移到这一领域知识史的创造以及这些理论在评估现代文学文本文学价值方面的应用。尽管这两种方法在现代传播有关梵语诗学的知识方面都起着至关重要的作用，但它们却陷入了本体论的高度。换句话说，这两个方向都没有尝试从文学理论之外的角度来研究这些理论立场。借用Barthian的术语，这两种方法将梵语诗学视为“作品”，而不是“文本”。本文旨在通过提出“游戏”的德累斯顿思想作为一种方法论框架来干预这一学术空白，以发掘潜伏在这些理论中的潜能，并超越传统上强加于这些理论立场的本体论信念。我在本文中提出的新方法论实践通过对Ānandavardhana's的非规范阅读得到了进一步的例证。avivakṣita - vācya - dhvani（dhvani，其字面意思不打算使用）。