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What did Bbarata mean by Rasa ?
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that the complexity of the human mind was not properly conceived by any of the commentators of Nāțyaśāstra. A man can not only experience some experience, but can also experience that someone else experiences some experience. He can imagine such or more complex situations and try to objectify them. A man who does it is a dramatist. He alone conceives the drama. It is he who conceives that his hero should behave in a particular way in a particular situation. It is not really material whether the real hero has ever existed or if he has existed whether he bebaved in a similar way in that situation. It is this creativeness of the dramatist which is accepted and carried out by the stage director and the actor. Their work is not original, but is rather that of expressing the ideas of the dramatisi. In this sense, then, both the stage director and the actor are only factors in Ds2'. Eve if they improve on the original ideas of the dramatist, it would mean that they have shown better understanding of the situation and that their mental states were just the improved editions of the original. The 'Sl' or Sthāyibhāva must, therefore, be referred to the mind of the dramatist alone.
i believe, Bhattanāyaka and Abhinavagupta (as also Bhatta Lollata and Sankuka ) missed this point that all Bharata wanted to describe was the language and technique of expressing the ideas in the mind of the artist - in this context, the dramatist. They, therefore, centred their attack against Bhatta Lollața and Sarikuka, who discussed theories about Śthāyıbhāva as to whether it was in the mind of the actor or of the real hero. Since 'Rasa' is supposed to succeed Sthāyībhāva, the real notion of Rasa was misconceived as soon as Sthāyrbhāva was located at a wrong place. They, therefore, missed the point that Bharata was interested mainly in the production or Nispatti of Rasa, in the production ‘Ds2'. Since they identified Rasa with the aesthetic consciousness of the appreciator, they thought that there could not be any process like the production of Rasa (Rasanis patti). They, thus, further missed the point that Bharata distinguished between the process of the produc
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