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What did Bharata mean by Rasa ?
ܬ: ܐ
printed here produce only one dynamic image before you, and if you could further imagine that all the images in the picture are living images and that you are able to listen to them, it would be the nearest approch to Rasa. This will clearly suggest that it is futile to locate Rasa either in poetry or in pictures - one cannot translate a sentence from one lang. uage into another and retain at the same time the name of the old language. Rasa is the language of staging and it is there alone that it can be manifested at all,
I then conclude that by Rasa, Bharata did not mean what Abhinavagupta took him to mean. A term conveying the sense wbich Bharata gave to Rasa is anyway necessary for any understanding of true dramatic art. It is, therefore wrong to hold as Gnoli does, that before Bhattanäyaka and Abhina. vagupta Rasa was a crude and primitive notion, that it was Abhinavagupta who made it profound and understandable. I conclude that Rasa as used by Abhinavagupta is an entirely different concept from that designated as Rasa by Bharata, and though what Abhinavagupta conveys by his concept of Rasu may be useful and valuable for the theory of poetics, Abhinavagupta was completely wrong in foisting his notion of Rasa onto Bharata's; thougb Abhinavagupta's theory may be useful, his commentary as a commentary is wrong. For Bharata, Rasa is only 'previous to the act of consciousness' a thing in itself, not the act of consciousness', as Abhinavagupta, according to Gnoli, defines it.
Notes
1 Indroduction XXII: Aesthetic Experience According to Abhinava Gupta
Raniero Gnoli, published by Instituto (toliano Per It Medio Ed Estrenio, Oriente, 1956. Mr. Kavi the Editor of Natyaśāstra has translated it by the word *Theatronics'. I think this would help to bring about the distinction
between Nātaka and Natya. 3, 4 The words, however, are not always used in this precise sense. They
could be used in their wider and narrower sense. Thus, in one sense,
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