Some Aspects of Rasa Theory

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

Page 55

Worldly Nature of Rasa
T. S. NANDI
Aesthetes over centuries have discussed the nature of rasa and they seem to have agreed to differ. Abhinavagupta, with his master Anandavardhana, and his followers, the great älamkārikas such as Mammața, Hemacandra, Viśvanātha and Jagannātha and a host of others belonging to the formidable Kashmiri tradition, have all unequivocally declared the 'a-laukikatva' of rasa : asmanmate tu saṁvedanameva anandaghanam āsvådyate; tatra kā duhkhasanka. But there were others who held the opposite view. Abhinava could see the strength of their case and in order to reduce it he was almost forced to amend the text of Bharata and read-'harşāṁcădhigacchanti' in place of harsadiñścădhigacchanti,' but even while doing so he had to recognise a weighty opinion on the nature of rasa that went dead against him. We will try to examine this problem in its historical perspective.
To say that the nature of rasa is worldly is to say that the emotional response to a work of art does not basically differ from its counterpart in the work-a-day world. This means that feelings and emotions and events presented through the medium of art do not differ in nature from their counterparts in the real world and that they cause identical response by way of generating a feeling of happiness or unhappiness in the minds of discerning spectators in the case of a dramatic performance or readers in the case of poetry. The crux of the problem is whether life presented through the medium of poetry or art retains its original character, that is whether it continues to be a mixture of good and evil resulting into happiness and unhappiness. Abhinava and his school are of the opinion that life presented through artistic media undergoes a sea-change, and is transformed into an experience totally unworldly, a-laukika, consisting of only bliss unbounded. The joys and sorrows of life, the favourable and the unfavourable, the acceptable and the unacceptable are all transformed creating a unique aesthetic experience not to be found in normal life. He says:
Rasa or aesthetic pleasure is never met with in ordinary life, but is peculiar to art. The bhāvas or emotions and feelings, when suggestedabhivyakta-cease to have their original character.
But this was not acceptable to a number of aesthetes, perhaps beginning with Bharata himself. Life for them, continues to be the same mixture of pleasure and pain even when presented through the art-media. For Abhinava and his followers, therefore, rasa is sthāyivilaksana, i. e. different in nature from the laukika sthāyī while for the others the laukika sthāyi, is itself rasa:
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m 2 7 6 4 Gia sĩ: Națya-śāstra VOL. I, p 291 (GOS edn, Baroda, 1956)