• L. P. Meera

The paper is presented with a view to understand the figure of speech, simile or upamā. The simile is the most widespread embellishment that has been used across all ages of poetry. As Dr. V. Raghavan specifies in his book, "Studies on some concepts of the Alaṁkāra Śāstra", for an alaṁkāra to be effective its sole purpose must be to contribute to the enhancement of the rasa. To achieve this, the poetry must be soaked in the rasa and the poet must possess infinite creative genius, or, pratibhā, which cannot be engineered . Śṛṅgāra, being the King of rasa-s, provides maximum spectrum for depiction for various emotions and their exposition through different figures of speech. The work of Jayadeva, Gīta Govinda, is a universally acclaimed masterpiece where the lyrical beauty adds to the rasa itself. For this reason, this work has been chosen for the analysis of the simile. Only the variants of the simile from the Nāṭyaśastra have been chosen for this paper as the simile is one figure of speech where the count has multiplied with every small variation in representation. Due to the word limit criteria and the vast number of texts which talk of several variants of upamā, the Nāṭyaśastra was chosen as only five variants have been specified in the same. The presence of various classifications of the upamā alaṁkāra are aimed to be analysed through the work, Gīta Govinda. This would aid in understanding the importance of the role played by the similes in the enhancement of the rasa. The paper opens avenues to study this work for more figures of speech although it is seen to abound in similes.

Alaṁkāra, upamā, rūpaka, Gīta Govinda, simile, simile of praise, simile of censure, simile of conceit, simile of uniqueness, simile of partial likeness, Nāṭyaśastra, lakṣaṇa, śabdā.laṁkāra, arthālaṁkāra

"Analysis of Upama Alamkara as seen in the Natyasastra with respect to Gita Govinda", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.9, Issue 8, page no.c348-c354, August-2022, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2208237.pdf

"Analysis of Upama Alamkara as seen in the Natyasastra with respect to Gita Govinda", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.9, Issue 8, page no. ppc348-c354, August-2022, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2208237.pdf