Some Aspects of Rasa Theory

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

Page 71

RASA THEORY AND THE DARŠANAS
does not have a very significant role to play in the corpus of formal grammar. It was Ananda who realized that this concept could contribute substantially to the criticism of poetry and therefore elaborated it in a systematic manner. It changed the whole outlook of Sanskrit criticism in the years that followed.
JAYANTA AND MAHIMAN :
The concept which Nayaka calls bhojakatva (only in the context of rasa) and the Ananda-Abhinaya school calls vyañjana (in a context wider than that of rasa), is challenged by Jayanta Bhatta briefly and Mahima-Bhatta in detail. The latter claimed that vyañjanā or dhvani could always be reduced to inference (anumāna) and that it was not necessary to invent a new power of a word like vyañjanč. For them the apparatus of rasa (vibhāva etc.) is as much a cognitive tool (jñāpaka hetu) of the sthāyin/rasa as is smoke, of fire. They see no reason why there should be a discrimination between the two. Of course, of the two critics of vyañjanā, Jayanta is candid enough to concede that, after all is said and done, this is the field of the critics of poetry and too profound for the logicians to pass a judgment on. But Mahiman argues the case of inference against vyañjana in his Vyaktiviveka. We cannot accept Mahiman's stand that all vyañjana is but kāvyānumăna without dismissing, as the Vaišeşikas do, the claim of śabda (alongwith its other vyāpäras, i. e. abhidhā and laksanā) as a separate pramāna.
BHOJA :
As stated earlier, a suggestion in Abhinaya's exposition of rasa that rasa is one, was later taken up and elaborated by Bhoja. Bhoja does not subscribe to the traditional view that there are eight or nine rasas in drama or poetry. It is a myth, handed down from generation to generation and followed blindly like a belief that a certain tree is inhabited by a ghost! What are popularly, called rasas are no more than bhāvas generated from the rasa, and they need not be limited to the sacred number eight or nine; they are as many as fortynine ! Why should only a few of them be promoted to the status of rasa ? We find one logical end of the rasa spectrum in Rudrata's answer to this question : that there can be as many rasas as there are
bhāvas, i. e. 49. The other end is found in Bhoja's position that none of the . 49 bhāvas, which play alternately the principal and the subordinate roles in relation to one another, deserves to be called rasa, which is above them all. Bhoja names this one rasa variously as abhimana, ahamkāra and śrngara (which must not be confused with its namesake in Bharata's exposition). Rasa is what is relished, is the object of isvāda. And what is it that we really relish ? Our own ego', says he; and explains it as self-love. Whatever is liked, disliked, loved, hated, welcomed, avoided, is the object of anger, sorrow or
6.
# THAT THARA: 1 śrngäraprakaśa, intro. rasferisért: Ja çfa za Sarasvatī-kanthäbharana, 5.1