Sur le classement du śleṣālaṅkāra en śabdaśleṣa et arthaśleṣa par Udbhaṭa, Mammaṭa et Ruyyaka

Rājacūḍāmaṇi Dīkṣita, in his Kāvyadarpaṇa, works out three issues which had been called to mind by Mammaṭa in his Kāvyaprakāśa, about classifying the śleśālaṃkāra into śabdaśleṣa "śleṣa of word" and arthaśleṣa "śleṣa of meaning", its relation with another figure of speech (in the same poem) and its being categorized by a few critics as an arthālaṃkāra (figure of meaning). These important issues are well known (see, among others, S.K. De, History of Sanskrit Poetics, 2nd revised edition, Calcutta 1988, p. xxx), but an attempt to expound them the most simply, from the texts themselves, does not look useless (at least for the non-specialists). In this essay, we are going to deal with the first and the last of these issues only, from the primary sources, which are, chronologically displayed: the Kāvyālaṃkārasaṃgraha (KAS) of Udbhaṭa (end of 8th– beginning of 9th centuries AD), the Commentary on the latter, the Laghuvṛtti by Pratīhārendurāja (end of 9th – beginning of 10th centuries AD), the Kāvyaprakāśa (KP) of Mammaṭa (middle of 11th – 1st quarter of 12th centuries AD) and the Alaṃkārasarvasva (AS) of Ruyyaka (2nd – 3rd quarters of 12th century AD). After we have briefly reminded the background which is needed in order to understand these definitions, we will attempt to expound their main aspects, providing examples to support our argument, and thus to draw attention to the discrepancies between Mammaṭa's and Udbhaṭa or Ruyyaka's view, and the grounds they are based on.