Eleven Scripts, One Verse: Adjudicating a Disputed Dhvani Reading
At a district moderation meeting for the Varishth Upadhyay Sahitya Shastra paper, eleven scripts from a 40-candidate centre differ by exactly five marks between two examiners. The question carries 20 marks: 6 for naming the dominant rasa, 6 for classifying the suggested sense, 8 for justifying it with an alamkara. The unseen verse describes a woman watching the first monsoon clouds; the literal sense says only that she is waiting, and the key says the suggested sense is a fact - that her lover will not return - so it labels the verse vastu-dhvani. Examiner A refuses credit wherever a candidate writes alankara-dhvani or rasa-dhvani instead. Examiner B awards full marks to a script arguing that the suggested sense is the figure of false hope personified, and to another that reads the cloud as the lover himself. The board rubric states that keys are illustrative, not exhaustive. The coordinator must fix one mark per script and record the principle before the tabulation deadline.
1. Decide the defensible mark for each of the two disputed scripts and give the reasoning that settles the difference between the examiners.
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The deciding question is not which label the key printed but whether the candidate's label can be carried back to the words of the verse.
Script arguing 'false hope personified' (alankara-dhvani). Read the verse for the trigger: is there a word that, taken literally, means one thing but suggests a personified abstraction? If yes, the figure is genuinely suggested and the label is defensible. Award 4–5 of 6 for classification, and award justification marks for every textual pointer the candidate supplies. If the candidate merely asserts personification without pointing to a trigger word, give 2 and explain the gap in the remark column.
Script reading the cloud as the lover. Here the label fails: if the verse addresses the cloud as a messenger, then identifying it with the lover is the reader's own superimposition, not a sense suggested by the poem. That is over-reading, and classification earns 0–1. Justification marks may still be given if the candidate quotes lines accurately, because the skill of citation is being tested separately.
Record the principle in one line: any classification is credited when it is shown to arise from the expressed sense and is not contradicted by it; the key's label is a model, not a filter.
2. State the operational test that separates vastu-dhvani, alankara-dhvani and rasa-dhvani, and apply it to this verse.
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Apply a three-step test in order, because the order is what makes the classification arguable rather than arbitrary.
- Remove the literal. Ask what remains once the expressed sense has done its work. If nothing remains but an inference the reader built by logic, there is no dhvani at all - the candidate has produced anumana, not vyanjana.
- Test for charm. The residual sense must produce the delight that poetic language gives; a flat paraphrase of a moral, or a biographical guess about the poet, fails here.
- Classify the residue by kind. If it is an event or fact not stated (the lover will not return), it is vastu-dhvani. If the residue is itself a figure - a personification, a comparison - it is alankara-dhvani. If it is an emotional state that fuses with the situation, it is rasa-dhvani, and then the candidate must name the rasa and the sthayibhava behind it.
On this verse, the key's typical reading - the unstated fact of the lover's absence - is vastu-dhvani, and the candidate who states it plainly, with the word that suggests it, deserves full classification marks. The personification reading is admissible only if a specific word supports it.
3. Redesign the 20-mark scheme so that this dispute does not recur, keeping the same total and the same three skills.
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A key that rewards only one label converts a test of reading into a test of guessing, so redistribute the weight toward evidence while preserving the three skills.
Proposed split: 4 for identifying the rasa and naming its sthayibhava; 4 for classifying the suggested sense; 8 for justification from the text, awarded in units of 2 for each accurate textual pointer; 4 for stating one alternative reading and explaining why it is weaker. Add a rubric line: any classification is accepted if supported by at least two textual markers and not contradicted by the expressed sense; labels copied without markers get no classification credit.
Then define over-reading explicitly, because that is the real dispute. Over-reading is any suggested sense that (a) requires information outside the verse, such as the poet's biography, (b) contradicts what the words state, or (c) produces no charm and is only a moral paraphrase. Give examiners a worked example of each so that scripts can be marked consistently across centres.
Finally, require the moderation sheet to record the label awarded and the textual marker cited, so that the next meeting can audit a decision rather than re-argue it.