An alchemy of emotion: Rasa and aesthetic breakthroughs

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 65, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 43-54

  Higgins, Kathleen Marie ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61049447256     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-594X.2007.00236.x     Document Type: Review

References (67)

1. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (with The Case of Wagner), trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1966), § 8, pp. 61-67
2. See Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, in 2 vols., trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover, (vol. I) 1969 and (vol. II) 1958), vol. I, § 68, pp. 378-398, especially pp. 388-389. Nietzsche was later critical of Schopenhauer, but his thought remained profoundly influenced by the latter
3. Abhinavagupta, who lived from the middle of the tenth century into the eleventh century CE, was prolific. He wrote numerous philosophical works, including commentaries and surveys on Tantra and the pratyabhijnãā (recognition) school of Śaivism, literary critical works, and religious poetry. Abhinava's contributions to aesthetics are multiple. He is noteworthy for elaborating a theory of the philosophical foundations of aesthetics in two important commentaries, the Locana (on Ānandavardhana's Dhvanyāloka) and the Abhinavabhāratī (on the Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra). These commentaries present a number of innovations, such as the strict distinction between the emotion of the character on stage and rasa, and an analysis linking rasa with religion. (These innovations will be discussed below.) Despite his relative lack of interest in history as such, Abhinava is also the primary source through which we know the aesthetic views of other important aesthetic theorists, such as Bhatcombining dot belowtcombining dot belowa Lollatcombining dot belowa, who contended that rasa was just an intensified form of a durable bhāva, and Bhatcombining dot belowtcombining dot belowanāyaka, who sought to undermine the concept of dhvani, or poetic suggestion. See Daniel H. H. Ingalls, "Introduction," in The Dhvanyāloka of Ānandavardhana with the Locana of Abhinavagupta, ed. Daniel H.H. Ingalls; trans. Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, and M. V. Patwardhan (Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 17n and pp. 30-32
4. Abhinavagupta is not the only Indian aesthetician to analyze aesthetic breakthroughs. A school of Bengali Vaiscombining dot belowncombining dot belowavitescombining dot below (devotees of Vishnu) in the sixteenth century, among them Rūpagisvāmin, offer an alternative account. For them, the supreme rasa was śrṅgāra (the erotic), which they considered to reach its pinnacle in devotion to the god (bhakti). They interpreted śrṅgāra as encompassing not only many other kinds of love beyond the erotic, but indeed all emotion. I will not, however, consider this school here, given the restrictions of space. For a more extended summation of their views, see Edwin Gerow, "Indian Aesthetics: A Philosophical Survey," in A Companion to World Philosophies, ed. Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 319-321
5. This point is made by Edwin Gerow. See Edwin Gerow, "Abhinavagupta's Aesthetics as a Speculative Paradigm," Journal of the American Oriental Society 114(2) (1994): 191
6. The exclusion of rasa from the emotion that was presented on stage was an innovation of Abhinava. See Ingalls, "Introduction," p. 35
7. I follow the customary practice of referring to the positions taken in the Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra as Bharata's, despite the fact that modern scholars do not believe that this work was written by a single author. See Edwin Gerow, A Glossary of Indian Figures of Speech (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), p. 75
8. See also Gerow, "Indian Aesthetics: A Philosophical Survey," p. 315. There, Gerow points out that "the properly aesthetic portions of the treatise are thought to be among the latest matters added to the collection, perhaps in or by the sixth century CE."
9. "Aesthetic relish" is V. K. Chari's characterization of rasa. See V. K. Chari, Sanskrit Criticism (University of Hawaii Press, 1990), p. 9
10. See Bharata-muni (ascribed), The Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra, vol. I, chs. I-XXVII, rev. 2nd ed., ed. and trans. Manomohan Ghosh (Calcutta: Granthalaya, 1967) [hereafter N.S.], XXI.104, p. 396
11. See Gerow, A Glossary of Indian Figures of Speech, p. 76
12. Again, this distinction is sharp in Abhinavagupta's interpretation, which I follow here. The meanings of these terms are not consistently distinct in the Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra itself. Nevertheless, the terms are differentiated. Gerow notes that even in the Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra, rasa has "elements of the contemplative, the platonic, and the vicarious," and he emphasizes the universal character of rasa
13. Richard A. Shweder and Jonathan Haidt, "The Cultural Psychology of the Emotions: Ancient and New," in Handbook of the Emotions, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Lewis and Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones (New York: The Guilford Press, 2000), p. 399
14. A. K. Ramanujan and Edwin Gerow, "Indian Poetics," in The Literatures of India: an Introduction, ed. Edward C. Dimock, Jr. (University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 117
15. N.S., I.2, p. 100 and VI.15, p. 102
16. Arthur Berriedale Keith, The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory, and Practice (Oxford University Press, 1924), p. 319
17. Bharata-Muni, Aesthetic Rapture: The Rasādhyāya of the Nādyaśāstra, ed. and trans. J. L. Masson and M.V. Patwardhan (Poona: Deccan College, 1970), p. 43
18. N.S., XXIV.8, p. 443
19. Arindam Chakrabarti, "Disgust and the Ugly in Indian Aesthetics," in La Pluralità Estetica: Lasciti e irradiazioni oltre il Novecento, Associazione Italiana Studi di Estetica, Annali 2000-2001 (Torino: Trauben, 2002), p. 352
20. Ramanujan and Gerow, "Indian Poetics," p. 117
21. This follows Abhinavagupta's account, which emphasizes that rasa is a type of perception. See J. Moussaieff Masson and M. V. Patwardhan, Śāntarasa and Abhinavagupta's Philosophy of Aesthetics (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1969), pp. 73 and 73n [hereafter Śāntarasa]
22. The translations given are those in the translation of the Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra by Manomohan Ghosh. See N.S., VI.15, p. 102
23. See also B. N. Goswamy, "Rasa: Delight of the Reason," in Essence of Indian Art (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1986), pp. 17-30
24. Gerow, "Abhinavagupta's Aesthetics as a Speculative Paradigm," p. 193n. Gerow points out that it is appropriate that the names of the rasas are formulated as "descriptive adjectives ... or their appropriate abstractions." Interestingly, Bharata divides the rasas into four that are more basic and four that are outgrowths of them. He describes the Erotic, the Furious, the Heroic, and the Odious as the "four [original] Sentiments," and goes on to say, "the Comic [Sentiment] arises from the Erotic, the Pathetic from the Furious, the Marvellous from the Heroic, and the Terrible from the Odious." More specifically, he says that "a mimicry of the Erotic [Sentiment] is called the Comic," while in the other cases, the second rasa results from the first (N.S., VI.38-41, p. 107)
25. Later Indian thought debated whether Bharata's list should be considered as exhaustive. Some later thinkers accepted a ninth rasa, śāntarasa (tranquility), as we shall see. Śāntarasa was also added to the list in a probably spurious edition of the Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra
26. See also Manomohan Ghosh, "Introduction," in The Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra, rev. 2nd ed., p. xxxvii
27. So characterized, the list of sthāyibhāvas bears some resemblance to proposed lists of "basic emotions" that are the topic of cont emporary debate in psychology and philosophy. See, for example, Paul Ekman, "An Argument for Basic Emotions," Cognition and Emotion 6 (1992): 169-200
28. Robert C. Solomon, "Back to Basics: On the Very Idea of 'Basic Emotions'" (1993, rev. 2001), in Not Passion's Slave: Emotions and Choice (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 115-142
29. However, Richard Shweder and Jonathan Haidt have pointed out many divergences between the list of rasas and Ekman's list of basic emotions. See Shweder and Haidt, "The Cultural Psychology of the Emotions: Ancient and New," pp. 397-414
30. N.S., VI.31, p. 105
31. See Ghosh, "Introduction," in The Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra, p. xxxviiin
32. N.S., VI.18, p. 102. The first term on this list is nirveda, which is often translated as "world-weariness." An argument was sometimes made that because this was the first term on the list of vyabicāribhāvas, it might also be read as the last in the list of durable emotions (sthāyibhāvas). See Masson and Patwardhan, Śāntarasa, p. 123n; Gerow, "Abhinavagupta's Aesthetics as a Speculative Paradigm," p. 195n. Alexander Catlin points out that while the argument was in circulation by the time Abhinava wrote his commentary on Bharata, Abhinava rejected it. It was not demolished by Abhinava's argumentation, however, for the later figure Mammatcombining dot belowa (active mid-late eleventh century) repeated this argument
33. See Alexander Havemeyer Catlin, "The Elucidation of Poetry: A Translation of Chapters One through Six of Mammatcombining dot belowa's Kāvyaprakāśa with Comments and Notes" (unpublished dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 2005), ch. 4
34. The Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra, VI.35, as translated in Masson and Patwardhan, in Aesthetic Rapture, pp. 46-47
35. The Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra, VI.37, as translated in Aesthetic Rapture, pp. 46-47. Ghosh translates the passage as follows. [A]s taste (rasa) results from a combination of various spices, vegetables and other articles, and as six tastes are produced by articles such as, raw sugar or spices or vegetables, so the Durable Psychological States, when they come together with various other Psychological States ..., attain the quality of a Sentiment [rasa] [that is, become Sentiment (rasa)] ... it is said that just as well disposed persons while eating food cooked with many kinds of spice, enjoy ... its tastes, and attain pleasure and satisfaction, so the cultured people taste the Durable Psychological States [bhāvas] while they see them represented by an expression of the various Psychological States with Words, Gestures and the Sattva [involuntary emotional responses], and derive pleasure and satisfaction ... For in this connnexion there are two traditional couplets: Just as a connoisseur of cooked food while eating food ... which has been prepared from various spices and other articles taste it, so the learned people taste in their heart (manas) the Durable Psychological States (such as love, sorrow etc.) when they are represented by an expression of the Psychological States with Gestures. Hence these Durable Psychological States in a drama are called Sentiments [rasas]. (N.S., VI.31-33, pp. 105-106) 'Dravya' is the basic term for "substance." 'Budha,' like the term 'Buddha,' comes from the root "budh," which Heinrich Zimmer translates as meaning "to wake, to rise from sleep, to come to one's senses or regain consciousness; to perceive, to notice, to recognize, to mark; to know understand, or comprehend; to deem, consider; to regard, esteem; to think, to reflect."
36. See Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India, ed. Joseph Campbell, Bollingen Series XXVI (Princeton University Press, 1951), p. 320. This also the root for "buddhi," the intellect or faculty of (intuitive) awareness, which is understood to be independent of the ego, the ego being dependent on it. It is the source of the insights of the conscious mind, but the conscious mind does not control it. Manas is the thinking faculty, or mind. Sometimes the term manas is used to refer to the buddhi, but sometimes (as, for example, in the Sāṅkhya system) it is used for the mental faculty as it is mediated by the ego (that is, the individuated sense of self)
37. N.S., XXVII.50-58, pp. 523-524. Bharata characterizes the way different types of people respond to drama in N.S., XXVII.60-62, p. 524. His various accounts of the different types of emotional display in persons of superior, middling, and inferior quality also illuminate his conception of these different social strata. See, for example, N.S., VII.14, p. 123
38. and N.S., VII.40-44, p. 130
39. N.S., XXIV.169-171, p. 465
40. N.S., XXIV.184-185, p. 468
41. Abhinava is our only source of knowledge of many other contemporaneous interpretations of rasa theory. See Navjivan Rastogi, "Re-Accessing Abhinavagupta," in The Variegated Plumage: Encounters with Indian Philosophy (A Commemoration Volume in Honour of Pandit Jankinath Kaul "Kamal"), ed. N. B. Patii and Mrinal Kaul "Martand" (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass and Sant Samagam Research Institute, Jammu, 2003), p. 144
42. "Metonomy" is Gerow's translation. See Gerow, "Indian Aesthetics," p. 313. Lakscombining dot belowaṅā sometimes is translated as "metaphor," but it has particular characteristics that make this translation too broad. Lakṅascombining dot belowā involves those alternate meanings that make sense of a locution when the obvious denotation is blocked for some reason. Without a blockage of the most obvious denotation, however, lakscombining dot belowaṅā does not occur. A classical example of lakscombining dot belowaṅā is: "The village is on the Ganges." The "on" in Sanskrit has a very strong locative force, meaning "placed on top of" Since the village is not literally built on top of the waters of the Ganges, the statement is construed to mean that it is alongside the Ganges
43. See K. Kunjunni Raja, Indian Theories of Meaning (Chennai: Adyar Library and Researc Centre, 1969), pp. 232-233. Raja does, however, translate laksanā as "metaphor."
44. Abhinavagupta, Locana, in The Dhvanyāloka of Ānandavardhana with the Locana of Abhinavagupta, 1.4aL, p. 81
45. Abhinavagupta, Locana, 1.5, p. 115
46. Whether poets or actors experience rasa is the subject of serious debate. See Masson and Patwardhan, Śāntarasa, p. 84
47. See also Goswamy, "Rasa: Delight of the Reason," p. 25. Goswamy points out that many commentators argue that the actor can experience rasa only if he or she imaginatively takes on the point of view of a spectator. The Bengali Vaiscombining dot belowncombining dot belowavites of the sixteenth century also held that the actor experiences rasa. Their analysis, which emphasizes the role-playing aspect of the human being within the cosmic drama, largely eliminated the distinction between the actor and the audience
48. See Rūpagisvāmin, "Bahktirasāmita," trans. José Pereira, in Hindu Theology: A Reader, José Pereira, ed. (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1976), p. 339
49. David L. Habermas, Acting as a Way of Salvation: A Study of Rāgānugā Bhakti Sādhana (Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 7-11 and 30-39
50. Abhinavagupta, Locana, 1.5L, p. 115
51. Abhinavagupta, Locana, 1.5L, pp. 115-116. Masson and Patwardhan contend that even if the poet ever does feel grief, he or she must take some distance on this immediate emotional response in order to be able to compose poetry
52. Abhinavagupta, Locana, 1.5L, p. 118n
53. Abhinavagupta, Locana, 1.5L, pp. 116-117. Although the translation refers here to inferring in another person the same thought-trend one has experienced oneself, we should not conclude that Abhinavagupta considers rasa to be a matter of inference. Indeed, he devotes a considerable portion of the Locana to refuting this idea
54. For Abhinava, saṁskāras, or latent memory traces, include karmic latencies from previous lives as well as from the present one
55. Abhinavagupta, Abhinavabhāratī, on the Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra, I.108-110, as translated in Masson and Patwardhan, Śāntarasa, p. 57
56. See also Śāntarasa, pp. 54-57
57. R. B. Patankar, "Does the Rasa Theory Have Any Modern Relevance?" Philosophy East and West 30 (1980): 301-302
58. Masson and Patwardhan point out that Abhinava considers four mental states, which correlate with the four basic goals of life, to be most important. Abhinava's correlations are as follows: erotic love (rati) corresponds to the goal of kama; anger (krodha) corresponds to artha; energy (utsaha) corresponds to kama, artha, and dharma; and a fourth, which Masson and Patwardhan identify as nirveda (world-weariness), corresponds to mokscombining dot belowa
59. Gerow's notes to his translation of the Abhinavabharātī (Abhinava's Commentary on the Nātcombining dot belowyaśāstra) characterizes nirveda as "that sense of futility following upon the recognition of the transiency of all attainments, and leading to the desire for liberation."
60. See pp. 196-197nn and p. 198n. I follow Gerow's reading here
61. Masson and Patwardhan propose as its translation "the imaginative experience of tranquility." See Aesthetic Rapture, vol. I, p. III. The origins of this proposed addition to Bharata's list of rasas are obscure; Masson and Patwardhan estimate that this idea may have been formulated sometime around the eighth century CE
62. Contemporary psychologist Nico Frijda analyzes all emotions as involving action-tendencies. See Nico Frijda, The Emotions (Cambridge University Press, and Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1986), pp. 69-90
63. Aesthetic emotions might seem to be counterexamples, but action-tendencies need not be geared to energetic activity. Aesthetic emotion has a tendency to seek the continuation of savoring, as Frijda argued in Nico Frijda, "Refined Emotions," presented at the general meeting of the International Society for Research on the Emotions, University of Bari, July 12, 2005
64. See Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, "Śaivism and Vaiscombining dot belowncombining dot belowavism," in The Variegated Plumage: Encounters with Indian Philosophy, pp. 124-125
65. Indeed, the rasas' dependence on conditions is what differentiates them. My thanks to Alexander Catlin for pointing out that this is how Abhinava avoids collapsing experience of rasa into a homogenous notion of aesthetic experience
66. See Catlin, The Elucidation of Poetry, ch. 4
67. My thanks to Stephen Phillips and his aesthetics seminar for their insights on this topic