________________
SOME ASPECTS OF THE RASA THEORY
endowed with grace, liveliness, chastity, winsomeness, etc.", are indeed very much present in the denotation of the word in question. A character-stimulant such as Sītā calls forth to our mind only a particular woman endowed with such unobstructive epithets, and not the genus of all women.
III Now let us turn to Abhinavagupta. He could take over Bhatta Näyaka's findings, lock, stock and barrel, because both were Kashmir Saivas.35 But he does not accept the kāvya-vyāpāra of bhāvakatva or sidhāranīkarana, since in his poetics vyañjanā-vyāpāra is a better substitute for both bhāvakatva and bhojakatva. Abhinavagupta's sādharanikarana is only an implication contained in poetic suggestion or manifestation, and not its whole nature. All his accounts of saksātkāra (intuitive actualization), camatkāra (esoteric flash), bhogāveśa, (afflatus of enjoyment), eka-ghana-samvit, (consciousness absolute), etc. are couched in terms common to Kashmir Saivism and aesthetics, used repeatedly for the first time by Abhinava. The corrupt reading of the available Abhinavabhārati on sådhāranikarana cannot permit any ready translation unless the whole background is grasped. The passage in question is -Hence it is that commonness is not limited at all, but quite unlimited. This is even like the relation of invariable concomitance between the syllogistic probans, viz., smoke and the probandum, viz, fire. Or it may be compared with the invariable relation between a stimulus like fear and its response like a shiver. Towards this apparently "intuitive actualization", the whole paraphernalia of actors etc. on the stage is contributory. When, in a dramatic performance, all limiting factors like place, time and cogniser, both real and poetically conceived, become completely annihilated because of their mutual opposition, the aforesaid state of "commonness' alone will stand out. Hence it is that the common experience of all connoisseurs adds up to a perfect state of rasa.36,
The context is of fear becoming a rasa in the connoisseur while witnessing the scene of the hunted deer in Śäkuntala etc., as described by,Kālidāsa.
It should be very clearly noted that the word used here is sādharanya and sådhārani-bhava but not sādharanikarana It is a state of unlimited extension even like the relation of invariable concomitance between the probans and the probandum. The actors on the stage etc. only contribute to the spectacle taking the form of a self-actualization. It is not any outside
35. Bhatta Nayaka's faith in sakti theology is clear in a citation from him in Abhinava's commentary on the Pară-trimśikā, p. 17:
napumsakamidam nāma parabrahma phalet kiyat!
tat-pauruşa-niyoktā, cenna syāt tacchakti-suņdari// 36. Cf. tata eva na parimītameva sādhāraṇyam; api tu vitatam. Vyaptigraha iva dhūmāgnyoh,
bhaya-kampayorvä; tadatra sākşātkārāyamāṇatve pariposikä naţädi-samagri. Yasyām vastu-satām kāvyārpitānām ca deśakāla-pramātrādinām niyamahetūnām anyonya-pratibandha-balād atyantam apasarane sa eva sādhāranibhāvah sutarām puşyati. Ata eva saryasāmājikānām ekaghanatayaiva pratipattiḥ sutarām rasa-pariposaya.
Abhinavabhārati, Vol. I (GOS), p. 279.
