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V. M. Kulkarni
It should be noted that Bharata does not speak here about the nature of rasu - whether it is pleasurable or painful or whether it is both-but of the essential quality of sympathy that a spectator or reader must have. Unless gifted with sympathy he cannot respond to the scenes and situations presented on the stage or in the poem and cannot establish what lias aptly been called by Abhinavagupta the hşda ya-samvada. It is then followed, in Abhinavagupta's language, by the two successive stages of tanmayibhava or 'lanmayibhavana (identifying oneself with the scene or situation retaining a certain distance) and rasasvada' or rasa-carraña. (aesthetic enjoyment).
To explain rasāsvāda (aesthetic enjoyment or experience) Dhananjaya gives the following analogy :
"When children play with clay-elephants, etc., the source of their joy is their own utsaha (dynamic energy). The same is true of spectators watching the heroic deeds of) Arjuna and other (Mahabhārata) hetoes on the stage"..... This
... This acsthetic experience or enjoyment is a manifestation of that joy or bliss which is innate as the true nature of the self (atman) because of the identification of the spectators with Kavyārtha (the characters, scenes and situations presented in the drama). ”
Dhanika discusses this problem at some length : "It is quite proper to say that the sentiments of the erotic, the heroic, the comic, etc., which consist essentially in joy arise from ātmānanda (the joy which is innate as the true nature of the self). But in the sentiment of pathos (Karuna) and such other sentiments that of anger, of fear, and of disgust,) how can joy arise ? For when sahrdayas (sensitive readers or spectators) listen to a poem full of pathos, they experience sorrow, shed tears, etc. If this sentiment of pathos were essentially to consist in joy, this would surely not happen." This objection is answered as follows: "What you say is true. But the aesthetic joy in the sentiment of pathos and similar other sentiments is such that it is both pleasurable and painful. For example, in the act of Kuttamita (affected repulse of a lover's caresses, as for instance, when le holds or catches hier by her hair, presses her breasts or kisses her and inflicts passionately love-bites) at the time of sambhoga (sexual enjoyment) women experience both pleasure and pain, (In other
