Some Aspects of Rasa Theory

Author(s): V M Kulkarni
Publisher: B L Institute of Indology

Page 36

SOME ASPECTS OF THE RASA THEORY
Objection 5. When the spectator perceives the actor and says 'he is Rāma', it should be taken as veridical perception if it is not disproved at a later stage; if it is so confuted it should be regarded as false perception. And even in the absence of such a confutation what the spectator gets is false perception.
Reply :- The objector appears to be using only the concepts of veridical and false perception. For reasons which he has not stated, he has, towards the end, placed the perception involved in seeing a play in the category of false perception (vastavena ca vrttena badhakānudayepi mithyājñānameva syāt). The arguments really fail to sustain the objection. It is wrong to operate with only two concepts, those of veridical and false perception, if one wants to do justice to the concept of 'seeing a play'.
Objection 6. Even when one actor is replaced by another actor, the experience is that 'he is Rāma'. In that case it will have to be admitted that Rāma' stands not for an individual but for a class.
Reply :- This will happen only if we take the dramatic perception to be veridical (Rama evayam ayameva Rama iti).
All this time the objector has been considering the problem from the spectator's angle. Now he will discuss it from the Actor's angle. The objections raised here are reminiscent of or complementary to those raised earlier.
Objection 7. The actor's experience also is not that he is imitating Rāma or Rāma's mental state. Let us assume that 'to imitate' is taken to mean to do something which is like something else (viz. the original). If the original is not available to the actor he is incapable of performing the act of imitationfor what can he 'imitate ?' If 'to imitate is interpreted as following after, doing something after something else, this is a common enough phenomenon in the world. Not being an exclusive feature of drama, it cannot be regarded as the distinguishing characteristic of drama.
If it is said that the actor imitates not the emotion of grief of an individual but that of the people of a type (uttama-prakrteḥ śokam), then it is necessary to ask by what means he does it. Not by his own parallel grief, because he is not himself experiencing any grief. Not also by shedding tears, because, as shown earlier, what is accessible to the mind alone cannot be imitated by that which is available only for sense-perception. The only objects that the actor can possibly imitate are the effects the sthāyī produces in the people of a type. But in order that this should happen it is necessary to give particularity to the object of imitation. If the actor tries to achieve particularization by saying 'I imitate the weeping of anybody who weeps in this way', it will not do,