11. CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

Continuing the Controversies Beyond Kashmir, 1200-1400

5.1 WHERE IS RASA? IS RASA ALWAYS PLEASURABLE?

Mirror of Drama of Ramachandra and Gunachandra (c. 1200)

Ramachandra and Gunachandra were students of the celebrated Jain scholar and cleric Hemachandra (d. 1172). The former was a prolific and strikingly inventive playwright, to judge from his six extant dramas and their dizzyingly complex plots of mistaken identity. Of the latter we know nothing. The important and innovative treatise on dramaturgy they jointly wrote (with Ramachandra's contribution making this the first such text composed by a working playwright) is extant, surprisingly, in only four manuscripts; even more surprisingly, not a single commentary on it has been identified, and the sometimes uncertain state and sense of the text present a challenge. The Mirror must have been more widely disseminated, however, than the current paucity of manuscripts would suggest; it exerted palpable influence on Rudra Bhatta, an almost-contemporaneous writer on aesthetics far to the south (in today's Karnataka).1 As for the influences on them, the impact of Hemachandra (his Manual of Poetry) is naturally apparent, though our authors do not hesitate to disagree with him on occasion; so too that of Abhinavagupta (especially and surprisingly the New Dramatic Art), whom they critique both by name and anonymously.2 They know the writings of Bhoja,3 something unusual for northern scholars (explained no doubt by the fact that Bhoja's library had been looted and removed to Gujarat by Jayasimha Siddharaja, Hemachandra's patron), and had closely studied Mammata's Light on Poetry.4 Equally important, they had access to a wide range of literature no longer extant. They refer to dramas by Shri Shankuka, for example, and quote from several celebrated lost plays.5 One of the main questions addressed in the portion selected here is prompted by Abhinavagupta's strong claim (advanced also, though less forcefully, by Dhanika) that rasa must be essentially pleasurable, "insofar as the pure homogeneous illumination that takes the form of the relishing of one's own consciousness is in essence blissful."6 But are all the experiences we have over the course of an aesthetic event pleasurable, or only some of them, and if some, which ones? And in order to resolve that question, do we need to more carefully define "pleasurable," or to specify whether the "course of an aesthetic event" includes its end? These refinements are what Ramachandra and Gunachandra offer when they draw a new differentiation between two phenomena that Abhinava had identified, the rasa experience itself and the "rapture" that, they argue, only follows the experience and registers its wondrous character. The pain we experience from stories we still somehow find pleasurable is surely real pain, and felt by readers far beyond medieval India. Think of Dr. Johnson's remarks on King Lear: "I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor."7 But it is an especially sensitive problem for scholars belonging to the Jain tradition, where supreme value attaches to nonviolence. It is entirely understandable for them to argue that depictions on the stage of violence, anger, and associated feelings would be a priori

morally distressful no less than affectively painful. Of additional interest is the writers' view on the endlessly engaging problem of the location of rasa. They seek a compromise between the old and new paradigms-natural in thinkers familiar with the conflicting viewpoints of Bhoja and Abhinava-though the one they achieve appears, and perhaps must inevitably be, somewhat confusing at times. Their synthesis prompts them to offer a subtle analysis of all the aesthetic elements as they pertain, on the one hand, to the characters in themselves ("the men and women of the [story]world"), and, on the other, to the reader or viewer ("when the characters are narrated in a poem or acted out on the stage"). Thus, in the case of a character, a reaction functions as a consequence of rasa; in the case of the viewer/reader, as a cause of rasa;8 at the same time, the viewer/reader also has his own reactions and transitory emotions. The authors conclude by covering all their bases: rasa is everywhere, in the principal character, the spectator, the auditor or reader of a poem, and even, on occasion, the actor (though no longer in the author). Noteworthy, finally, is the rejoinder given to the critique of imitation that Abhinava received from his teacher, Bhatta Tota, and made integral to his own theory of the aesthetic. Ramachandra and Gunachandra allow that there can indeed be no imitation of a thing if the original has not been perceived, as in the case of a playwright writing about Rama or an actor portraying him. But while actual perception can err, perception transmitted by tradition can be inerrant: the sages who crafted dramaturgy knew everything about Rama and passed this down through the generations, and this is what the skilled actor reproduces-in his imitation.

FROM MIRROR OF DRAMA OF RAMACHANDRA AND GUNACHANDRA

(109) (p. 158) Rasa is a stable emotion intensified by the factors and the transitory emotions, and made evident by clear and distinct reactions. Its nature may be either pleasurable or painful. A "stable emotion" is so called because, whereas all the many transitory emotions have the characteristic of constantly coming into and going out of being, the stable emotion necessarily retains a continuous existence. Or it may be so called because its existence is essential to the transitory emotions, for the latter exist only when a stable emotion exists and are absent9 when the latter is absent. When strengthened, the stable emotion comes to exist in the form of a rasa. Such is the basic idea. To explain further. The stable emotion is "intensified," first, by being brought to manifestation -given that it must already be in existence-thanks to the "factors" that are the external causes (foundational factors such as a beautiful woman, stimulant factors such as a garden), [159] and, second, by being enhanced by the transitory emotions that exist in the mind and body of the rasika, the person experiencing the rasa.10 Here "intensified" means reaching a state able to be experienced as providing a direct awareness of itself.11 The stable emotion is then "tasted," or savored, and so becomes rasa. Rasa is by nature either pleasurable or painful, depending on the case. Five of the rasas, the full development of whose nature comes about through desirable foundational factors and the rest, are pleasurable (the erotic, comic, heroic, fantastic, and peaceful); the remaining four (the tragic, violent, macabre, and fearful), however, which come into existence by way of undesirable foundational factors and so on, are painful. The argument that all rasas are pleasurable12 is falsified by what we actually find to be the case.13 Even when they are strengthened by foundational factors presented in a poem or acted out on the stage-to say nothing of when this occurs in the foundational factors in the form of the main characters14 themselves-the fearful, macabre, tragic, and violent bring those savoring the rasa

into a state of perturbation that is almost indescribable. The audience, we must conclude, is distressed by those rasas, and it is hardly reasonable to maintain that such distress can derive from a pleasurable aesthetic experience. That the four rasas produce rapture is something that happens only after the savoring of rasa has itself ceased, and is the result of acknowledging the genius of the poet or the skill of the actor in showing things as they really are. For those who have an appreciation of courage are filled with amazement at the martial skill of a hero, even when he has decapitated someone. And in the same way sophisticated people, beguiled by the rapturous response that the power of a poet or actor can elicit, whereby the whole body is suffused with a kind of ecstasy, are led to believe that a state of pure bliss is found even in the tragic and other painful rasas. It is because of their thirst for savoring this experience that viewers repeatedly subject themselves even to such spectacles. As for the poets and playwrights, they compose their Lives of Rama and works of that sort in conformity with the nature of worldly existence, which is indeed both pleasurable and painful, and thereby of necessity produce texts that are shot through with both pleasurable and painful rasas. They also know full well that a painful experience makes pleasure all the more pleasurable, as the sweetness of a drink is enhanced by a touch of bitters. Moreover, in what sense can it really be said to be a pleasurable experience for sensitive viewers to see Sita's abduction being acted out, Draupadi dragged by the hair and disrobed, Harischandra reduced to servitude to an untouchable and his son Rohitashva dying, Lakshmana wounded by a lance, or Malati being prepared for slaughter? It is clear enough that the tragic and other such rasas in the characters are painful, inasmuch as they result from lamentation and the like.15 If it were argued that it is in the performance that these rasas are pleasurable, the performance would be flawed, since it would be presenting just the opposite of what is actually the fact of the matter.16 Moreover, the savoring of pleasure we appear to get from the tragic rasa of people pained by the loss of a loved one, when it is narrated in poetry or acted out on the stage, is in reality a savoring of pain. It is only a man who has been pained himself who takes pleasure at the news of another man's pain and finds the news of another man's joy distressful. Thus the tragic and the other three rasas are, in actual fact, painful. In the case of the erotic thwarted, however, while it is indeed painful since it results from such things as an inner fire, it is actually pleasurable in that its very core lies in fantasizing the erotic enjoyed. As for the rasa itself, it is located in the main characters, in the spectator in the case of drama, and in the listener and reader17 both in the case of a work of poetry. When we describe the reactions as "clear and distinct," we mean that they must be properly ascertained, because for a sign to prompt a correct inference, it must be indubitable. They are called "reactions" because they enable reaction to a rasa, [160] that is, they make it known, even though located in another person.18 These reactions include paralysis, perspiration, horripilation, weeping, the play of the eyebrows, and so on. By means of these a rasa is determined to be present. Now, with respect to these reactions, it is familiar to everyone that understanding19 rasa means in the first instance understanding something existing in someone else. And that kind of understanding cannot be a direct sense perception, given that mental events of other minds are not perceptible to us. It must thus be nonsensory, but nonsensory understanding can only derive from one thing invariably concomitant with another.20 With respect to rasa, it has to be the effects of rasa that are concomitant with it, since nothing else is possible.21 One cannot challenge this argument-that the reactions are invariably connected with rasa-on

the grounds that when an actor, in order to entertain the audience,22 engages in the imitation of the factors and the rest that pertain to the character, he shows the reactions of paralysis, perspiration, and the like when he himself does not have rasa. For the actor's reactions are not effects of rasa at all; they are merely meant to generate rasa in the audience. That is to say, the paralysis and so on that appear to be present in the actor function as the cause of rasas in the viewers, whereas the paralysis and the rest in the audience are effects of their rasas.23 If one aims to know some nonsensory thing, one must be attentive to the nature of the inferential sign that is invariably concomitant with that thing. That said, those reactions may also be making known a rasa that exists in the actor himself, should it be his own rasa that brings them about, since there is no hard and fast rule that an actor cannot feel rasa. Courtesans, in their desire for monetary gain, make a display of sexual pleasure and the like in order to please someone else, but they can sometimes experience the highest degree of pleasure themselves. Singers too are sometimes themselves delighted while they are seeking to delight someone else. In the same way an actor, imitating the rasa of the erotic thwarted in Rama, for example, may well on occasion come to identify with him completely. The horripilation and so on in the actor, therefore, can indeed make known a rasa in himself. That is why the memorial verse speaks of "clear and distinct reactions." Now, the horripilation and so on that are reactions present in the female and male characters, in the actors,24 or when narrated in poetry should actually be classified as foundational factors for their capacity to produce rasa in the audience. Insofar as they come to exist also in the spectator, however, and in the listener and reader and so on, they become again diagnostic of rasa, being its effects. With respect to the "foundational factors" mentioned in the memorial verse: when these really exist,25 what they cause to transform into rasa is a stable emotion in relation to some specific object, and in that case, the apprehension of the savoring of rasa makes reference to that specific object. A young man savors as the erotic rasa the stable emotion of desire that he feels for a specific young woman who feels passion for him as well. But where the desire arises with respect to a woman in love with someone else, and thus has a generalized object26 as it comes to be strengthened into rasa, there will be no savoring of the erotic rasa toward a specific object, since what the foundational factors are manifesting is in fact a stable emotion with respect to a general object. Likewise, when one observes a woman weeping in grief for some beloved one, one will be savoring the tragic rasa of a generalized object.27 This distinction between general and specific object is applicable to the other rasas too. In the case of the foundational factors narrated in a poem or acted out on the stage, which are presented as if they really do exist when they do not,28 it can only be the viewer/reader's stable emotion toward a general object that is being transformed into rasa by these factors: in this case, the apprehension of savoring rasa is independent of any differentiation of the object.29 After all, when Rama's erotic rasa with reference to Sita is being imitated, what presents itself to the audience is not erotic rasa for Sita per se, but rather for woman in general. (However, should our stable emotion come to be directed toward a particular object by virtue of our remembering [161] such an object,30 then our savoring of rasa could indeed be said to have a particular object.) Accordingly, the foundational factors, which really exist in the case of the character and are only brought to life for the viewer/reader when narrated in poetry or acted out in drama, are common

to many. Hence, one person's savoring of rasa does not confute it31 for others,32 and the relationship is accordingly one of broad inclusiveness, not of narrow exclusiveness.33 Thus, the savoring of rasa, in the storyworld (for the characters) and in the artwork (for the viewer/reader), is the same for all rasikas, but not, for all that, totally without reference to some specific ground.34 No mental state arises without reference to some ground, and rasa is after all a mental state. As for the transitory emotions mentioned in the memorial verse,35 these enhance a stable emotion once it is manifested by the foundational factors and are to be understood as belonging to anyone experiencing rasa. For when a stable emotion is revealed to be on the point of becoming rasa thanks to some foundational factor-the female character, say, in herself36 and when she is presented in a literary text or acted out on the stage37-the transitory emotions, in a way appropriate to a given rasa, also become manifest. For no rasa can become manifest without its accompanying transient emotion: anxiety about the woman, say, in the case of the erotic, or satisfaction in the comic, depression in the tragic, vindictiveness in the violent, joy in the heroic, fright in the fearful, disquiet in the macabre, longing in the fantastic, despair in the peaceful. Just as38 rasa cannot come into existence, even if you grasp the meaning of the literary text or see the woman on the stage, if you are not paying attention or have given up all worldly attachments, so it cannot come into existence in the absence of the appropriate accompanying transitory emotion, anxiety or whatever the case may be. The fact that we sometimes do not perceive these transitory emotions because they are so subtle or fleeting is no counterargument to the above statement. Being manifested and enhancing the stable emotion that is on the point of becoming rasa, the transitory emotions turn it into rasa. It is for this reason we say that the transitory emotions accompany stable emotions when they are on the point of becoming rasa, whereas the foundational factors precede them. As for the transitory emotions in the female and male characters when narrated in a poem or acted out on the stage, as these reveal a stable emotion on the point of becoming rasa, they, like the reactions39 previously mentioned, become foundational factors in the case of the audience,40 insofar as these transitory emotions can produce rasa. The term "transitory emotions" and "reactions" refer both to what pertains to the characters themselves and, when narrated in a poem or imitated on the stage, to the reader and viewer.41 Similarly, in Bharata's Sutra, "Rasa arises ... ," the reactions and transitory emotions are to be understood as referring both to the characters in themselves and to when these reactions and emotions are narrated in a poem or imitated in a drama. To conclude, then, rasa belongs to the character,42 the actor, the listener or reader of poetry, and the viewer of drama; it is pleasurable or painful in nature; and it is directly cognizable43 when it is a personal experience, and indirectly when it is the experience of another. Only in the case of the principal male and female characters does the rasa have a clear and distinct form, since the foundational factors actually exist for them; for the same reason, the transitory emotions and reactions existing in them, which are produced by rasa, also have a clear and distinct form. Elsewhere, that is, in the viewers and so on, rasa exists only in an "impure" form, since the foundational factors do not actually exist at all but are only made to appear via the poem or drama. For the same reason, the transitory emotions and reactions in the audience that arise in conformity with the rasa are also indistinct. It is for this reason that the rasa in the audience, listener, and reader is said to be supernormal.44 The literary artwork can be said to "have rasa" or be "rasa-laden"45 only insofar as it possesses

the factors that bring rasa to light; the work is not itself rasa, of course, but neither does rasa exist in the work [162] as in a vessel. For rasa is a stable emotion in the form of a mental state that is "intensified." How then could it be the "self" of an insensate thing like a literary work,46 or be contained within it? Accordingly, we say that it is upon understanding the subject matter of the literary work that rasa is manifested to the understanding subject. The subject savors rasa in himself as a kind of pleasure, and does not apprehend it as something external to him, like a piece of candy. The savoring of candy is one thing, the apprehension of rasa another altogether. The notion of our merely apprehending rasa as something existing outside ourselves cannot be reconciled with our savoring rasa as a kind of relishing. For it is the fear and grief that exist as events in the mind of the understanding subject that get transformed into the fearful and tragic rasas through the corresponding foundational factors and other elements of the literary text. If it were not precisely the stable emotion of the subject that comes into being as rasa, then rasa would be something external, and it would make no sense to speak of its being apprehended, since rasa does not exist as such in the literary work, or in the actor, or in any other such thing. And only on the absurd assumption that we could apprehend something nonexistent could we apprehend a rasa not present in our own heart. Therefore, what becomes rasa is the understanding subject's own stable emotion upon understanding the literary work that communicates the foundational factors, and it is only because the work is itself the source of those factors that it is said to "have rasa," or be "rasa-laden."

On the Nature of Dramatic Acting

(p. 188.8) Acting (abhinaya) is that whereby the subject matter of the drama is brought (nīyate) visibly before the eyes (abhi-mukhyena) of the audience .... Writers compose their works out of particular actions that reveal the emotions of the characters. A case in point is verbal acting, to take that register, for this does not consist of one person (the actor) merely repeating imprecisely what another person (the character) has said. Now, the imitation that makes up the various kinds of acting comes from a conviction,47 not from the presence of some really existing thing, since neither the actor nor the viewers have themselves ever actually seen the character, Rama, say, who is the object of imitation. And any subject doing the imitating who has never seen the original is certainly not capable of imitating it. Nor is a viewer who has not seen the original capable of accepting that the imitator is producing an imitation. Accordingly, the actor studies the story of Rama presented by the poet and, accepting the poet's vision gained through extraordinary application,48 consciously decides to present an imitation. In actual fact, however, he is simply following real-world behavior. Even though he himself may be happy, he weeps when Rama is supposed to weep, and does not laugh; though he himself may be sad, he laughs when Rama is supposed to laugh, and does not weep, and so forth. The viewers too, once they hear the word "Rama" and grasp its conventional meaning, at the same time becoming enthralled by the beautiful music, become convinced49 that the actors are Rama and the other characters,50 who, distinguished though they are from those characters by a host of differences of time, space, and nature, approximate them by concealing that distinction through the fourfold process of acting. As a consequence, such viewers come to be fully absorbed in Rama's different states, whether happy or

sad or whatever. Other thinkers, however, hold that, whereas the registers of acting, the conventional meaning of "Rama," the music, and all the rest may convince us that the actors are the characters, the didactic element is foremost, and they focus their minds completely on the dimension of instruction, on affirming what is right and rejecting what is bad. An alternative way to understand the question of imitation is as follows: the sages with their wisdom and insight into past, present, and future determined every single one of Rama's traits without exception-his precise features, the way he walked and talked, his moments of anger, his graceful movements, and so on-and poets present them in their dramas. And the actor, because of his confidence in the sages' knowledge in these matters, is able to display this right before our eyes. Moreover, [189] whereas those who see with physical eyes can sometimes err with respect to the true nature of a thing, those who see with the eye of wisdom cannot. And since the actor is truly imitating what the sages' wisdom has revealed, which we understand to be even more valid than the sight of the thing itself, on what grounds should the poor fellow be reproached by the half-educated? The spectators, whether or not they have their own views in this matter, most decidedly come to believe that the actor is Rama; otherwise, they would realize that it was pure artifice and could never come to be fully absorbed in Rama's happiness and sadness. And indeed, the erotic and other rasas can certainly arise from a pure illusion: how otherwise could a man behold in a dream his beloved, an enemy, a thief, or the like and exhibit the various reactions, paralysis and so on, that are the first shoots of the rasa plant?

THE SINGLE STRAND OF VIDYADHARA (C. 1300) WITH THE CENTRAL GEM OF MALLINATHA (C. 1400)

That the Single Strand is the work of a poet is evident in almost every line, but the author also tells us at the start that he has conceived his treatise as a new poetic genre: the handbook on rhetoric that at the same time, through the poetry examples it provides, functions as an encomium on a king, in this case, Narasimha of Utkala/Kalinga (today's Odisha), for whom Vidyadhara worked as court poet:

From among the three types of discourses of instruction51 I, Vidyadhara, will provide an account of the discourse that has been likened to a beloved, while offering as examples poems of praise in honor of King Narasimha.

No one but King Narasimha is worthy of my literary craft. Who but the moon-crested Shiva can bear the waters of the Ganges?52

The genre of praise poem as poetics manual that Vidyadhara created in his treatise was to be imitated repeatedly over the coming centuries in both Sanskrit and vernacular works. The one place the poet does not use his own compositions as examples is in his analysis of rasa in the third chapter. "In discussing the rasas," he writes, "I adduce only poems written by others in order to demonstrate the type of implicature where rasa is dominant, for if I were to adduce my own praise poems to the king, the poet's feelings-that is, my own feelings of desire- would be dominant, not the rasa."53 As we have seen, the idea was first hinted at by Udbhata in the early ninth century and more fully developed by Mammata in the second half of the eleventh that poetry where the stable emotion of desire is directed toward a "deity or comparable figure," that is, a sage, a guru, or indeed, one's king, cannot develop into a rasa. The desire is obviously of a different order from the sexual, and the object of affect does not fulfill the requirements laid down in the Treatise on Drama for the

erotic rasa (a man and a woman, both young, both of high status). The sentiment cannot be "enhanced," and will thus remain "emotion." But in addition to these formal constraints, in a eulogy to a patron (no less than in a prayer to a god), the emotional attachment of the poet (or suppliant) is the poem's overriding concern-the "dominant" feeling-and in turn subordinates to itself any other emotion described in or generated by the poem.54 Vidyadhara could therefore never successfully illustrate rasa were he to have used, as he does throughout the rest of the work, poems written in honor of his king.55 Vidyadhara was a careful student of the Light on Implicature, the Ten Dramatic Forms, and the Light on Poetry, for whose views he provides a good précis. This is especially the case in his discussion of the incapacity in the face of rasa of the different means of valid knowledge or linguistic modalities (by this date, most thinkers simply accept the implicature of rasa and do not bother to argue it out). The Single Strand merits attention for such small amplifications and modifications, no less than for its style. Other innovations include the argument that when animals are the subject of a literary work, they are indeed "receptacles of rasa," and not, as earlier writers had asserted, of "semblance of rasa." The core question here is: What do we experience when we read a poem or see a play about an animal shown to feel desire or fear? Do we have an experience of rasa, or of the semblance of rasa? If we can only "actualize" the feeling that the original character experienced, our answer depends on whether an animal can be a "receptacle" of rasa. But what does it mean, cognitively, to be such a receptacle? For earlier writers such as Kuntaka, animals, unlike higher beings, do not possess the requisite emotional apparatus for rasa, but have only "impulses."56 Bhoja defines the very category of "semblance" in his Necklace as "the presence of rasa in characters of low status, animals, antagonists, or entities referenced in a merely metaphorical manner," and in the introduction to his Light on Passion denies that an animal can be the locus of rasa.57 Abhinavagupta, by contrast, places at the very start of his "reconstruction" a verse on the fearful rasa where the subject is the stable emotion of fear felt (he makes clear) by the deer chased by King Dushyanta in Shakuntala. So Vidyadhara's question was a live one, and in its own way, expressive of some large issues about rasa. For earlier writers, judgment about the nature of rasa in the literary representation of animals was tied up with the question of the analytical locus of rasa. If this was squarely the literary character, as held by Kuntaka and Bhoja, it would seem to make no sense to attribute rasa to an animal; for Abhinava, by contrast, for whom the analytic had shifted entirely to reception, the original character did not really experience rasa anyway, and hence it was entirely reasonable for the viewer to have a rasa experience in the presence of such a representation. Vidyadhara's account itself is too brief to give us a nuanced sense of his position. He only affirms that "animals can indeed have rasa" (though in the precis he took from the Light on Poetry he asserts that only the audience, not characters, can have rasa).58 This strong position would be ridiculed by Singabhupala later in the century. He would deny that animals have an emotional life, and accordingly insist that the viewer/reader's experience of such poetry must be a "semblance of rasa"-because such is precisely the experience of the animal itself. The high status of The Single Strand in the tradition of poetics in south India is indicated by the presence of a detailed exegesis provided by Mallinatha (c. 1400). This notable scholar wrote commentaries on all the major courtly epics, but on no other nonliterary treatise. By his act of homage he affirmed the judgment on the work that the later history of its influence would render.

FROM THE SINGLE STRAND OF VIDYADHARA (V) WITH THE CENTRAL GEM OF MALLINATHA (M)

(V) (p. 85) With respect to the type of implicature by which rasa is manifested, namely, where the succession from the expressed to the implied is not registered, there is no scholarly dispute. For after all, rasa is not simply the factors, the reactions, and the transitory emotions; [86] instead, it arises from them. And thus while a succession does indeed exist, it happens too quickly for us to register when we apprehend the factors and so on, any more than we register the succession when a hundred lotus petals are all pierced by a needle.59 And hence this type of manifestation receives the apposite name "where the succession is not registered."

There are eight types of this sort of implicature: rasa, emotion, semblance of rasa, semblance of emotion, cessation, emergence, conjuncture, and oscillation of emotion. Where one of these eight achieves predominance, it becomes the object toward which any figural elaboration is directed; where, however, no predominance is achieved, the eight types themselves become figures, the "rasa-laden" expression and the like. First we shall describe the essential nature of rasa. When a stable emotion like desire and so on starts to sprout thanks to the foundational factors such as a beautiful woman; branches out owing to the stimulant factors such as the moon, the cuckoo's call, the Malabar breeze, a pleasure garden; becomes apprehensible because of the reactions, such as the sidelong glances of the woman's eyes, her smiles, her enfolding her lover in the vines of her arms; [87] begins to blossom with the transitory emotions such as anxiety and the like; in a way not to be experienced through direct denotation, nor conveyed to the ear through sentence purport, nor made the object of secondary meaning, nor brought into the sphere of sensory perception, nor led into one's cognitive precincts by inference, nor carried along its path by memory, nor affected by being an effect,60 nor known as some thing to be made known, nor schooled in limitation, since all other objects of cognition vanish in its presence; existing in the tight embrace61 of a unique function called implicature, as a predisposition in the audience, having nothing to do with character or actor: when the stable emotion achieves this state, it is termed the erotic or other rasa. [88] It is something that exists only so long as the aesthetic elements exist; that is savored on the analogy of the mixed drink of many ingredients, the savoring itself being its sole mode of existence; that flashes forth as a veritable soulmate of the savoring of supreme being, and effects a transcendent amazement.62

(M) (p. 88.18) Just as the bliss of supreme being, though ever existent, illuminates itself for spiritual adepts only so long as the current of their meditation flows in a stream, but neither before nor after meditation, so in the case of rasa too. It is an exudation of the bliss of the self-which is also an ever-existent entity-and reveals itself, all other objects of cognition vanishing in its presence, as the removal of the heart's obscurations63 assisted by the implicature function, for those whose minds are skilled at comprehending literature.

(V) [89] Not even in one's wildest dreams would it be possible to argue that rasa can be directly expressed. To explain: rasa in that case would have to be expressed either by the word "rasa" or by such words as "the erotic" and so on, but neither is possible. Even if the word "rasa" is not employed, rasa can become a traveler on the path of our apprehension only if the aesthetic elements are communicated; and rasa does not enter onto the path of apprehension even if the word "rasa" is employed so long as the aesthetic elements themselves are not employed. From this positive and negative concomitance we conclude that it is the aesthetic elements that are directly expressed, and only thereby does rasa become available to our apprehension-and that therefore, rasa itself must be something that is implied.64 Now, if you should imagine that rasa falls instead into the domain of sentence purport, this can hardly withstand scrutiny. Rasa is not a locus of direct expression, whereas sentence purport exercises its power in what is directly expressed. When predicate and subject are enunciated together, the subject is taken up for the sake of the predicate; the predicate is what is not otherwise given. Consider the sentence [90], "The priests move about wearing red turbans." The movement of the priests is already given from some other source of knowledge (in this case, the

context); what is being predicated is the fact of their wearing red turbans.65 Thus elsewhere, we can conclude, the verbal function we call the purport of a sentence exercises its power with regard to the signification so far as it has been directly expressed and is otherwise not given, but not with regard to any and every implication. Were sentence purport to have power to express what is implicit as well, then in a sentence like "The former man is running," the purport would issue in other meanings such as "The latter man is running." But sentence purport does not in fact function to tell us whether the other man is running or not.66 Nor can the argument be sustained that rasa is conveyed by secondary meaning. That arises only when the primary meaning is blocked, but the primary meaning of the aesthetic elements is never in fact blocked when they manifest rasa. As for the possibility of rasa's being grasped by perception, it would have to be grasped through either nonconceptual or conceptual sense experience. It cannot be the former, since only a distinct comprehension of the aesthetic elements enables rasa to be invested with existence, [91] whereas nonconceptual sense experience isolates merely the thing itself, the percept, devoid of all qualification. But neither can rasa be the object of conceptual sense experience, since that always follows directly upon nonconceptual sense experience, and if an effect could arise in the absence of a cause one would never go to the trouble of providing one. One might ask why rasa cannot be understood to be something we infer: an actor skilled in portraying a foundational factor like Rama, who responds with pleasure or pain when he is together with or separated from Sita, exhibits his feelings, and as the audience member observes these and reflects upon the various feelings arising in himself that he had previously experienced, he infers Rama's own condition and [92] thereby experiences pleasure or pain himself. But that view too is false. The aesthetic elements are not real causes of these feelings, such that they are rendered capable of establishing a relationship of invariable concomitance known to all; they have merely the capacity for suggesting it, and hence cannot be actual inferential signs. Since the aesthetic elements do not have any real function as causes and so on with respect to rasa, the inferential capacity concomitant with that causal status must also be abandoned. In the real world we do not have factors, reactions, and transitory emotions, but rather things called causes, effects, and ancillary causes.

(M) Moreover, no matter how beautiful something may be, if it were in the possession of someone else and only inferred, it would in effect be entirely indiscernible. Hence the very idea that it could be present as savoring, that it could bring about supermundane rapture, as rasa actually does, would be utter nonsense.

(V) [93] How, lastly, could rasa be something in the realm of memory? When an external object arises in the self by means of contact with the senses in the course of our experience of it, the object deposits a subliminal impression, and through that a memory arises at some later time. It is thus a previous experience, by way of a deposit of a subliminal impression, that functions as the cause of a memory. But there is no actual previous experience with respect to rasa; there is only an experience of the aesthetic elements that is figuratively taken as an experience of rasa. Then again, if we were to admit that rasa had once been really experienced, it would contradict the tenet that rasa is "manifested." Since there is no relevant prior experience of rasa, there can be no memory of it, and hence rasa cannot be an object of memory, but instead must be "manifested."

Moreover, when I say here that rasa is not some thing that is effected, I mean that it is not some thing actually brought into being by the aesthetic elements located in the actor. [94] And when I assert that rasa is not some thing made known to us, my point is that, since Rama's real desire is long gone, it cannot possibly be made known to us in the standard ways, such as by contact of a sense organ with something temporally and spatially present, or by inference or testimony.

(M) Rama's desire is used here merely as an example of the fact that rasa is beyond sensory perception. For present desire could no more be made known in the rasa process than past desire. If we took our author's words literally and held that present desire can be made known, this would be in contradiction with the entire foregoing and succeeding section of the book, and it would at the same time negate the impossibility67 of knowing past desire through verbal testimony or inference.

(V) Hence, the aesthetic elements, since they neither bring about anything nor make anything known, can be considered a cause only insofar as they enable relishing; in other words, they are a supermundane cause, and thereby make manifest the fact that rasa itself must be supermundane. [95] To quote: "With what can rasa be compared? It is at once of this world and beyond; proved to exist thanks to causal factors yet not an effect; a conceptual sense experience and yet nonconceptual."68 Some have argued that "rasa is the savoring of supermundane pleasure in the hearts of viewers of literature that is seen, and of those capable of fully imagining literature that is heard."69 And one might then wonder on what grounds one can justify the claim that the tragic and the like, given that they are painful, can be rasas. But such an objection would be wrong. The state of bliss referred to is that which arises when all other objects of cognition have vanished. And if that bliss should flash forth when listening to poetry, by virtue of a proper presentation of factors, reactions, and transitory emotions, how could one claim there is any feeling of pain even in the case of the tragic rasa? [96] "When there is a fusion of the mind with the meaning of the literary work, there arises the bliss that is the self, which constitutes the savoring of rasa. This fusion is of four sorts: an expansion, enlargement, turbulence, or agitation of the mind":70 expansion as of a flower, enlargement as of a tree crown, turbulence as of the ocean, agitation as of the wind. The erotic is "conditioned by"71 expansion, the heroic by enlargement, the macabre by turbulence, and the violent by agitation. These "conditions" are the different mental planes.72 The comic, fantastic, tragic, and fearful have the same conditions, expansion and so on, respectively, and thus the erotic and so on stand to them in relation of affinity, not causality,73 since we see that each of the pairs (the erotic and the comic, and so on) is distinctive in its causes, the aesthetic elements and so on. Some say there is a ninth rasa, the peaceful ... [98] and we accept this and agree that there are nine and only nine rasas. The king, however, in his Light on Passion, has accepted only one rasa, namely, the erotic.74

(M) Insofar as Bhoja's work is fatally impaired by its contradictions with the foundational works of Bharata and so on, simply ignoring it, as Vidyadhara does, is the best critique.75

(p. 103) We call it "emotion" rather than rasa when [1] desire is directed toward a deity, a Brahman, a teacher, a son, a friend, and the like; or [2] when a transitory emotion is completely endowed with all the aesthetic elements.76 As for [1], all authorities agree on restricting the erotic rasa to desire directed toward a beloved. An example of "emotion" toward a deity:77

Even if he severs the head of Brahma, rejoices in friendship with the dead, gets drunk and plays with the Mothers, delights in cremation grounds, creates beings only to destroy them-still, in deep devotion I serve him, what else? He is the only lord; the rest of the universe is empty.78

[104] We could also cite an example where the object is a Brahman and so on;79 when the object is a son, however, some have identified this as a separate rasa called tenderness.

(M) "And so on" is meant to include also kings worthy of description, for which the author's own eulogistic poems may be adduced as examples.

(V) Now as for [2], although it is true that the literary work as a whole lives from rasa-which is in essence homogeneous rapture-it still sometimes happens that we derive even greater rapture from a given transitory emotion. When this occurs we call it "emotion" too, the emotion being manifested by the factors and the reactions. An example:

Foolish moon, do you really think the mind of Bhima's daughter would be absorbed in you now that she has no need of life? The great scholar, Love, rightly explained the relevant holy text to me by saying the moon intended is the moonlike face of Nala.80

[105] Here we apprehend Damayanti's deep resentment toward the moon.81 And although this is a poem of the erotic thwarted, a greater degree of savor comes from the rapture produced by the transitory emotion here known as resentment. "Semblance of rasa" is as in the following verse:

Brahma, now is no time for Veda recitation, stand outside in silence; cease your chattering, silly Brhaspati, this is not Indra's court; silence your vina, Narada, and you too, Tumbara, your eulogies: the lord of Lanka is unwell, his heart pierced by the arrow of longing for Sita.

There is no possible way [106] for anyone other than the goodly Rama ever to be a receptacle for the love of the princess of Mithila. Accordingly, Ravana's desire for her is something that operates entirely through impropriety, and hence here the rasa of the erotic thwarted has become "semblance of rasa." The gist of the matter is as follows. Rasa arises only where the stable emotion surges over a young couple to their mutual satisfaction; where only one of them feels passion, however, the stable emotion is operating through impropriety, and we have semblance of rasa. Some assert that in the case of animals there can only be semblance of rasa, but that position

cannot withstand scrutiny, since the aesthetic elements can function in the case of animals too. It is wrong to argue that since animals are devoid of awareness of the foundational factor and other aesthetic elements they are not an appropriate receptacle of rasa. For some human beings can be equally unaware, and we would then be forced to deny that they too can be loci82 of rasa. Here again, it is the sheer presence of the aesthetic elements that actuates the rasa, not awareness of them as aesthetic elements. So animals can indeed have rasa.

(M) The objector's doubt is whether animals can be the substratum of rasa since, even though the aesthetic elements are present, animals are incapable of registering them .... The awareness that actualizes rasa, the author argues, must pertain to the aesthetic elements either as aesthetic elements or merely as things in themselves. He excludes the first option .... Being "loci" of rasa means being the substratum .... "Presence" means presence of an awareness of the things in themselves, and not awareness of the aesthetic elements, that is, the distinctive awareness that they are aesthetic elements. For otherwise, if you deny the role of awareness as such, it would turn out that actions and the like, even were they to go completely unperceived, could still be stimulant factors.

(V) For example:

The cow elephant gave the bull a trunkful of water fragrant with lily pollen; the cakravāka bird honored his mate by means of a half-eaten lotus filament.83

[107] Here the bull elephant is the foundational factor that engenders the stable emotion desire; the springtime and so on are the stimulant factors that stimulate it; the giving of the fragrant water from the cow elephant's trunk is the reaction that manifests it; the joy and so on are the transitory emotions that enhance it. Thereby the desire achieves the state of the erotic rasa enjoyed.

ORNAMENT OF THE FAME OF KING PRATAPARUDRA OF VIDYANATHA (C. 1320) WITH THE JEWEL STORE OF KUMARASVAMIN (C. 1430)

Like Vidyadhara, Vidyanatha produced a treatise on poetics that at the same time functioned-as loudly proclaimed in the title itself-as an encomium to his patron, Prataparudra, king of Warangal (in today's Andhra Pradesh) in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Like Vidyadhara too, Vidyanatha was lucky in attracting a brilliant commentator: Kumarasvamin, the son of Mallinatha, Vidyadhara's exegete. Vidyanatha himself does not add much to the history of rasa theory.84 All his key ideas are taken from Dhanika: the "commonization" of the foundational factor, for example, and even the notion that rasa and the aesthetic elements can be homologized to sentence meaning and its constitutive words. And there is a kind of imprecision to his restatements that renders Vidyanatha's Dhanika considerably less perspicuous than Dhanika himself. For example, Dhanika's (and Bhatta Nayaka's) analogy between stable emotions and aesthetic elements on the one hand and sentence meanings and word meaning on the other is completely recast so as to conform with the idea of "manifestation." The notion of "actualization," bhāvanā, moreover, is no longer the commonization of the foundational factor like Sita or Malati into woman as such, leading to a reexperiencing in distilled form of the experience of the fictional character; it now refers, in a way more explicitly stated than when the idea was first presented in the Mirror of Drama (and subsequently in Rudra Bhatta's Bud of Rasa) to an imagining of one's own beloved (here Kumarasvamin seems to say both that it is one's own beloved being imagined and that the factor is being imagined as one's own

beloved).85 Such imprecision, or perhaps more charitably redefinition, is especially evident in the case of Vidyanatha's understanding of the locus of rasa. In intellectual-historical terms, the fact that the topic is raised yet again, and contested-how little Abhinavagupta seems to have settled the matter for these southern writers-is significant in itself. But Vidyanatha's conclusion remains somewhat ambiguous. "The substratum of rasa is the character and the character alone," he insists at the start of his exposition; what the viewer/reader experiences, by contrast, is "bliss." Yet at the end of his account he states that rasa "exists, with respect to the real world"-the world inside the narrative-"in the character alone, and with respect to the drama, in the audience." Vidyanatha's basic idea seems to be that rasa actually and truly is something that occurs only in the character; it is by hermeneutical actualization that the viewer/reader experiences it, and in that case the rasa cannot be called real but rather transcendent of reality, or "supermundane," for which "bliss"-ananda, with its Upanishadic resonances-is the signifier of choice.86 Kumarasvamin sharpens the distinction between rasa and bliss by repeatedly stressing that the former is mundane, the latter supermundane, a distinction that would be further modified by the theorists of devotional rasa (see chapter 6.3). He nicely captures the difference between the character's rasa and our experience of it by the analogy of the happiness a father feels upon seeing his son's happiness. Kumarasvamin's own views, however, are far more radical. We have seen the homology repeatedly drawn between the experience of rasa and the experience of supreme being since the idea was introduced by Bhatta Nayaka in the early tenth century: rasa experience "shares something of the character of," "is something similar to," or "closely approximates" the experience of brahma.87 For Kumarasvamin, for whom "the final doctrine is that rasa has no location at all," rasa is held to be "identical to the bliss of supreme being." The only difference is that in the rasa experience, the cognizing subject preserves an awareness of objects, i.e., the aesthetic elements, whereas the spiritual adept does not.88 For this view Kumarasvamin draws on innovative thinkers who have almost completely vanished from intellectual history, including one Naraharisuri (from whom nothing is extant) and Amaranandayogin, whose Lamp for Spiritual Discipline of the Inner Self was nearly lost.89 His formulation represents another step in the Vedanticization of rasa discourse, which was first intimated by Dhanika and further developed by Vishvanatha (in the next selection, the Mirror of Literary Art), and which would come into full flower in the early seventeenth century.

FROM ORNAMENT OF THE FAME OF KING PRATAPARUDRA OF VIDYANATHA (V) WITH THE JEWEL STORE OF KUMARASVAMIN (K)

(V) (p. 205) Here we would note that the substratum of rasa is the character and the character alone. There is nothing contradictory, however, about the fact that rasa should be visibly "actualized" for the audience by the actions of a talented actor or from listening to a great work of poetry; and that accordingly rasa, albeit located in one person (the character), might generate pure bliss in another (the viewer/reader) through proper "actualization." Another way to put this is as follows: there is nothing contradictory about the fact that, although on hearing the name "Malati" the audience members have an apprehension of woman in general, the character enables them to call to mind some particular woman so that the audience can also become the substratum of rasa.90 As for the actor, being concerned exclusively with the process of imitation, he is not fit to be regarded as a substratum of rasa. And if one were to argue that he too experiences rasa,91 it would only be because he was for the moment being regarded as an audience member.92 The fact that he manifests reactions and so on is to be explained as a result of his training, practice, and talent, and not because he is experiencing rasa.

(K) (p. 203.15) Literary rasa is of two sorts, mundane and supermundane. The former is like the pleasure derived from savoring

a plantain or mango, and is something produced and hence transitory. The latter is the veritable soulmate of the bliss of supreme being, and is permanent.93 It is the former the author is discussing when he says, "The substratum .... " The hero who is being portrayed, Rama for example, is the substratum of rasa. The adverb "alone" is meant to exclude anyone or anything else. If, however, this were really the case, the audience's repeated eagerness to watch dramatic acting and listen to literature would resemble the behavior of a madman. The author accordingly says, "There is nothing contradictory .... " "Actualized' " means regarded as connected exclusively to oneself.94 In literature there comes about, accordingly, a blissful happiness like that of a father seeing his son's happiness. This is what is meant by the following verse in the Light on Emotion: "To feel contentment in the presence of contentment, grief in the presence of grief, anger in the presence of anger, fear in the presence of fear is to be the ideal spectator."95 But there is also a difference between what the character and the viewer feel, which the author refers to with "albeit located in one person." It makes perfectly good sense that there should be a difference in bliss as a result of a difference that comes from this process of actualization. The author turns to supermundane rasa with "Another way to put this .... "6 "On hearing the name Malati" one has a notion of woman in general, with no particular reference to the woman Malati herself .... "The character enables them to call to mind": since it is clear that calling to mind a particular on apprehending some general is rooted in the concomitance of the two. [204] There is no need to demand proof that a viewer eliminates all particularity in characters like Malati when they are mentioned in a play or poem, and thereby can call to mind his own beloved. Particularities are not what is intended in a poem. It is not the states of sheer individuality97 of characters like Rama that great poets like Valmiki perceive in their moments of inspiration and describe in their poems, but rather states common to everyone, which the poets grasp by the power of their creative genius while using Rama merely as a substratum. To quote the author of the Six Thousand, "Rasa arises from these elements in conjunction with the quality of generality."98 One might then ask why poets do not simply eliminate all particularity and make use only of generality. But savoring is possible for readers only if particularity is made use of. To quote: "When children play with clay elephants, it is their own particular will they thereby savor. This is just what readers do with Arjuna and the rest."99 (Note that when the author writes "some particular woman," we are meant to understand as well her reactions- her sidelong glances at the hero, and so on-and transitory emotions, despair and the rest, since rasa cannot arise from woman as such.) One might be willing to admit that a particular man or woman is indeed called to mind by the viewer, but still wonder how rasa can thereby arise, and how the viewer can become the substratum of rasa. In response we offer the following considerations. The hearts of the viewers are first prepared by certain inferences they make about the passion and so on of the real-world male and female protagonists; thereupon, by the power of literary language, they "actualize" Rama and so on as connected to themselves in a generalized form; thus actualized, Rama and the others appear as if fully present in the courtyard of the mind of the actualizing viewer/reader. As Bhartrhari says, "One grasps characters in literature such as Kamsa as causally active."100 There is nothing improper about "actualizing" characters like the lordly Rama and Sita as one's own husband or wife. For, as we have said, they lose all their particularities-as the son of Dasharatha or the daughter of Janaka-and correspond to man and woman as such. This man and woman are real-world beings who are consecrated in the position of aesthetic element by way of literary representation or dramatic acting, and as they are "actualized" by the sensitive viewers they are reflected in their hearts, on the analogy of a seal stamped by a signet ring, and come to be located in the audience. In the same way, Rama and Sita's desire and so on are real-world feelings, but they are consecrated into the emperorship of the supermundane stable emotions. The aesthetic elements too, more generally, are completely supermundane, since they are the object of a verbal apprehension that is itself supermundane, which we indicate by using terms like "relishing." This relishing is entirely different from other kinds of apprehension; whereby we do not ask, any more than in the case of a realistic painting of a horse, whether it is truly that, is not that, may be that, or is similar to that. Arising from this set of factors, the supermundane sort of rasa has its substratum in the audience as a result of its being101 a transformation of the stable emotion reflected onto the hearts of the audience. On this matter, as the author will remark at the end of the chapter, there is unanimity among the ancient authorities. And it is with this in mind that he says, [205] "The audience can thereby also become the substratum .... " Indeed, it is impossible for there to be any other substratum of supermundane rasa;

whoever maintains the contrary would have to answer whether this other substratum is the character or the actor. It cannot be the character since he is dead and gone. Nor can it be the actor, as the author proceeds to show .... (p. 206) The author summarizes the nature of rasa in three verses for ease of comprehension.102

(V) (4.136) Assisted by the beauty of language qualities and figures of speech, the power of a stable emotion-at whose sudden emergence thoughts of all other objects of cognition gradually vanish-transforms into the full weight of rasa in the heart of the receptive reader, so as to consist of pure bliss, whatever the pain or pleasure it may cause to congeal in the young lovers in the story.103

(K) (p. 206) First of all, as the viewer's attention is focused on the poetry or the dramatic acting and at the moment rasa begins to emerge,104 he develops a firm apprehension that the actor is Rama. Next, the viewer apprehends that his own heart and the character's are identical. Then, the viewer's heart is submerged in the various properties of the play, the dance, the song, and so on, and thereupon thoughts of all other objects of cognition vanish. At that point, supermundane rasa, which is comparable to the bliss of supreme being known to spiritual adepts, becomes itself the locus of relishing.105 To quote: "When rasa has reached plenitude .... "106 The author has all this in mind when he says, "All other objects of cognition gradually vanish." There is this difference, however: when one is experiencing the bliss of supreme being, no empirical object whatever appears, whereas in savoring rasa, all objects of cognition are eliminated except for the aesthetic elements .... 107 [209] The author now responds to the query how this kind of rasa is actually apprehended in a poem:

(V) (4.137) Rasa acts like sentence meaning; the aesthetic elements are like word meanings, finding in sentence meaning the point where apprehension properly comes to rest.108 It is, accordingly, the stable emotions, empowering each other as they gradually arise,109 that bear within themselves the coming-into-being of rasa, as threads bear the coming-into- being of cloth.110

(K) (pp. 207-9) "Rasa ... sentence meaning": This is so formulated because it is rasa that has primacy among the poet's ultimate aims. To quote: "Authorities regard as 'sentence meaning' whatever is conceived of as having primacy according to the poet's intention."111 This "sentence meaning" cannot be either primary or secondary meaning, depending on whichever doctrine one accepts, like the sentence meaning that emerges from the various linguistic processes (such as syntactic construal and so on),112 since there is no question of direct or indirect signification in this analysis. As for the specific notion of "sentence purport," it has already been set forth in the chapter on poetry113 that this is subsumed under "manifestation." Hence, what we must understand here by "sentence meaning" is precisely "manifested meaning."114 Those aesthetic elements, by contrast, that manifest rasa-the foundational factor and so on-are "word meanings." Although each element does indeed constitute a word meaning with respect to its own sentence (to quote the Light on Emotion: "A stable emotion, a psychophysical response, or a transient emotion can under different circumstances become a sentence meaning as a result of its predominance"),115 nonetheless they are referred to as "word meanings" because they perform a subordinate function with regard to rasa. The upshot of the matter is that rasa can be likened to sentence meaning since it flashes forth only after we apprehend the factors and so on,116 which can therefore be likened to word meanings .... When the author says, "bear within themselves the coming-into-being of rasa," he means the following: at first the stable emotions exist only as predispositions, but by virtue of the aesthetic elements they transform into rasa-indeed, become something we only then are able to refer to as "rasa."

(V) (4.138) As the power of desire or other stable emotion slowly swells like the ocean, additional emotions, wavelike, continuously arise and disappear.117 Rasa is a deep self- savoring brought about by the experience of these transitory emotions, despair and the rest, and, as we have said, exists, with respect to the real world,118 in the character alone, and with respect to the drama itself, in the audience.

(K) (p. 209) "Self-savoring": This is formulated thus because, although rasa is not some thing that can be separated from itself, it can make itself its own object of cognition119-as when the poet speaks of "beholding the self in the self."120 ... Regarding rasa "with respect to the drama," it has been argued in The Eye for Light on Implicature, "This apprehension of rasa requires no other basis than the actor. But the actor must be thought to be the character portrayed in order for the audience to savor the experience .... Therefore, rasa exists only in the drama and not in the characters to be portrayed or anyone else."121 To quote Sharadatanaya:

By the literary process or dramatic acting a stable emotion is turned into rasa and made available for savoring. The audience alone is the substratum of this rasa. Because rasa is something happening in one's presence, it cannot belong to the character, because a character, Rama for instance, is known to belong to times past. And a poet does not compose a poem in order to reveal the rasa of a character belonging to the past. For that reason the substratum of rasa must be the audience.122

Some scholars hold that the audience is the substratum of rasa only in a metaphorical and not a literal sense. To quote the arguments of the learned Naraharisuri:123

Rasa can be described as supermundane if one accepts that it inheres in the audience. [210] But in actual fact, why bother conceiving of a locus of rasa, which is a bliss that is full, whole, uniform124 indeed, synonymous with God? One surely would not identify a single place for the true, infinite, blissful supreme being. In the same way, the poets from the beginning of time who have achieved insight into the matter have considered rasa to be without any location; it is merely something relished by the members of the audience, merely manifested by the aesthetic elements. We tolerate as a figure of speech the notion that it is located in the audience only for the same reason that we concur that the Lord dwells in the minds of spiritual adepts by the mere fact that He is apprehended by them.

Thus the final doctrine is that rasa has no particular location at all. And for this reason it is held to be identical to the bliss of supreme being, but with one distinction: the latter is apprehended through spiritual practice, and the former through complete engagement with the factors and other aesthetic elements. The same scholar has also said the following:

The manifestation of bliss that remains the same in all circumstances is referred to as worldly happiness; it is called supermundane rasa when manifested by the supermundane aesthetic elements in simple conformity with literary convention; it is termed "supreme being" or "the highest self" or "the Lord" when manifested in the nonconceptual sense experience of spiritual adepts, when their hearts are purified by virtuous actions, when they have attained impassivity, self-restraint, and so on, and are focused on learning, reflection, and concentration.

To quote the Lamp for Spiritual Discipline of the Inner Self:125

The stable emotion of desire that, depending on causal conditions, turns into one or another of the nine dramatic rasas, the erotic and the rest, and brings bliss to the audience of sensitive viewers, the actor, and the character as well-identical with that desire am I myself, with my innate plenitude of rasa.126

5.2 A PHILOSOPHICAL PRÉCIS OF THE RASA PROBLEMATIC

Mirror of Literary Art of Vishvanatha (c. 1350) with The Eye of Anantadasa (c. 1400)

As we can deduce from stray remarks in his extant works, Vishvanatha hailed from a family of poet-intellectuals who had long served the royal house of Kalinga, and can be confidently dated to the mid-fourteenth century. It is therefore curious, given his time and place, that Vishvanatha appears unfamiliar with the treatise of his compatriot Vidyadhara, and that his own work circulated north, in Bengal, rather than south, like the Single Strand. Most of Vishvanatha's creative writing-he was a poet and playwright in both Sanskrit and Prakrit-including a large-scale multilingual encomium and a courtly epic on his patron, King Narasimha, has disappeared except for a romantic comedy (nāțikā) called The Girl Named Digit-of-the-Moon (Candrakalā), a short poem on an epic theme ("The Quest for the Golden Flowers," Saugandhikāharana), and a couple dozen quotations he drew from his works in the two scholarly texts of his that have been preserved, the Mirror of Literary Art and a commentary on Mammata's Light on Poetry (a later work). Vishvanatha shows familiarity with many of the authors already encountered. He knows Dhanamjaya's Ten Dramatic Forms and Dhanika's commentary on it; The Eye for Light on Implicature of Abhinavagupta; Bhoja's Necklace for the Goddess of Language; and of course Mammata's Light on Poetry, but he also intriguingly cites authors no longer available to us. These include one Dharmadatta, and his own grandfather, Narayana (who he says defeated Dharmadatta in a debate at the court of the king of Kalinga), as well as other material whose authors' names we do not even know (see the quotations adduced in his remarks on 3.28). The Mirror is essentially a compendium of earlier views about literary art in general, both "heard" and "seen," or poetry and drama. In fact, though not the first work to treat the two great divisions together (Vidyanatha had done so a generation earlier), Vishvanatha's is the most complete up to his time; this comprehensiveness, presumably, led him to use the seemingly more capacious term "literary art," sähitya, and this is the first extant treatise in which it appears.127 Despite the conventional nature unavoidable in such an exposition, Vishvanatha's treatise displays considerable independent thinking and a mind given to strong opinions. He is, for example, the first to declare in so many words that rasa is "the soul" of poetry (1.1); he refines the conception of commonization, calling it an "imagined sense of commonality";128 and most notable, he is far more concerned with the philosophical problems of rasa than most other Indian aestheticians. Consider his argument on why rasa cannot be some thing that is made: if that were the case, "the factors and so on would have to be considered its cause. But then the factors could not be apprehensible at the moment we apprehend rasa (as they indeed are), since we never have perceptual knowledge simultaneously of both a cause and its effect."129 He also, subtly and without fanfare, redescribes the "manifestation" of rasa: it is not the revealing of something already existent, like a pot by a lamp (so Anandavardhana and Ruyyaka), but a transformation, like yogurt from milk. Vishvanatha's philosophical bent makes the development of his argument somewhat convoluted, so that a brief outline is called for. After offering a general and a specific definition of rasa (chapter 3, vv. 1, 2-3), Vishvanatha turns to the problem of rasa and pleasure (4-5) and the peculiar nature of aesthetic sadness (6-8). (His analysis of the nature of commonization [9-12], the supermundane character of the aesthetic elements [13], their unity [14-16ab], and how we are able to fill in the blanks, so to speak, when any of those elements is lacking [16cd-17ab], as well as the location of rasa, which cannot be either the original character imitated or the actor doing the imitating [17cd-20ab], is already familiar to us, and omitted here.) The more complicated part of the exposition concerns the peculiar ontology of rasa: it is not an object of consciousness, not some thing that is effected; it is not

eternal, not future, and in an important sense not even present; it is a form of neither conceptual nor nonconceptual awareness. In short, rasa is something without parallel in our everyday reality (20ab-26ab). The only proof of rasa's existence is our experience of it, and this experience is "self-revealing" like one's self-awareness, and a unity that subsumes the parts of which it is made. The similarity to the ontology of the self and supreme being as presented by Vedanta is something to which Vishvanatha himself calls our attention, though without elaboration; the deeper implications of that analogy would not be drawn for another three centuries, by Vishvanathadeva.130 In addition to Vishvanatha's general account of rasa given here (chapter 3), he reverts to the topic in his discussion of manifestation (chapter 5). In that section, which could not be included, Vishvanatha is the first to admit the logical problems of applying the linguistic notions of Anandavardhana for a reception theory of rasa. As we have seen, once the concern with rasa had shifted from formal questions about the text to phenomenological questions about the reader, "manifestation" had to be recoded as a psychological rather than linguistic term of reference. Although Vishvanatha accepts that rasa can be said to be manifested, he does so hesitantly, employing the language of "manifestation" despite its obvious inapplicability in order to underscore the unique process by which aesthetic experience arises: "This linguistic function is called 'manifestation' by scholars. But when it comes to the 'manifestation' of rasas, others"-including Vishvanatha ?- "say that the function is called 'tasting.' "131 Vishvanatha's work circulated little outside of eastern India before the nineteenth century and attracted only a few commentators. One of these is Anantadasa, who appears to have been the author's son; he makes no such claim in the introduction of his commentary, but remarks offhandedly in reference to a citation from a work of Vishvanatha that it is by his father. The commentary is not always as reliable as one might expect, given its lineage, but in a few places it does contribute to the exposition.

FROM MIRROR OF LITERARY ART OF VISHVANATHA (V) AND THE EYE OF ANANTADASA (A)

(V) What, then, is literature? Here is our answer: (1.1) Literature is discourse whose soul is rasa. We will later describe the essential nature of rasa. "Soul" here means that which endows something with life, insofar as it is the essence. Nothing lacking rasa can be accepted as being "literature." The etymology of rasa, "taste," is from the passive verb form ("it is tasted") or the impersonal passive ("a taste is had"),132 and as a result, I include in my definition of literature, in addition to rasa itself, emotion as well as the semblances of both rasa and emotion.

.... Now to the question, What is rasa? 3.1. A stable emotion, desire and so on, when manifested by the factors, reactions, and transitory emotions, becomes rasa for the responsive viewer/reader. These aesthetic elements will all be discussed in due course (since the "sensitivities," or psychophysical responses, are in essence reactions, they have not been separately mentioned). To say that rasa is "manifested" is meant to indicate that it has undergone a formal transformation, on the analogy of yogurt transformed from milk.133 Rasa is something brought into being through manifestation; it is not something already existing and then manifested, like a pot by a lamp. Thus, as the author of The Eye for Light on Implicature has averred, "When we say, 'A rasa has been apprehended,' it is just a manner of speaking, as in 'One is preparing cooked rice.' "134 In addition, the term "stable emotion," although obviously implicit in the phrase "desire and so on," is mentioned separately in v. 3.1 in order to indicate that desire and the rest can function as non- stable emotions for other rasas-in other words, that amusement, for example, or anger can

become transitory emotions for the erotic and the heroic respectively. To quote: "An emotion comes to be called stable only when it stays fixed in the rasa."135 We now offer an account of the mode of savoring rasa, which amounts to an account of its essential nature. (3.2-3) What we call rasa is an indivisible whole,136 self-revealing,137 and consisting of blissful consciousness,138 completely insulated from any other object of perception, and thus akin to savoring supreme being. Its life force lies in supermundane rapture. It is savored by certain special people when they cognize it through a superabundance of sensitivity, as being something identical to themselves, like their own body. "The mind untouched by volatility and stolidity is here called 'sensitivity.' "139 According to this definition, sensitivity is an internal property that renders one impervious to things external to the aesthetic event. "Superabundance" refers to the emergence of sensitivity once volatility and stolidity have been eliminated, and the basis for this emergence is a state of absorption in the subject140 of supermundane works of poetry or drama. Rasa is an "indivisible whole" because it is a unity, consisting of a feeling of rapture that brings pleasure by illuminating the aesthetic elements and the stable emotions; we will shortly explain the grounds for this claim.141 It is "self-revealing," in a manner also to be shortly explained;142 and in the phrase "consisting of consciousness" the suffix denoting "consisting"143 should be taken to connote "is consciousness."144 "Rapture" is essentially an expansion145 of consciousness; a synonym for it is "amazement." That amazement is the life force of rasa has been argued by my grandfather Narayana, that great aesthete, salon eminence, and chief scholar-poet. As Dharmadatta stated in his treatise:

Rapture is the essence of rasa, since it is experienced in every instance. Given this, it follows that in every rasa is to be found the fantastic rasa-which, according to the learned Narayana, can therefore be considered the sole rasa.146

When we speak of "certain special people," we mean people possessing merit acquired in a former existence. To quote: "It is only those with merit who, like spiritual adepts, can apprehend the continuum of rasa."147

(Anantadasa) (p. 72): Just as spiritual adepts have a direct realization of the pure supreme being in the form of self-revealing, blissful consciousness, so people of merit directly realize rasa, dappled though it may be by its various components, the stable emotions and so on. To quote: "Rasa has the form of self-revealing and blissful amazement, albeit dappled by the stable emotions, components fused with the factors and other elements, which are not eliminated from the viewer's consciousness."148 Other thinkers, however, hold that after the direct realization of bliss fused with the stable emotions there comes about a manifestation of the actual principle of supreme being consisting of blissful consciousness, whereby all external reality becomes quiescent, and which approximates the state of dreamless sleep or deep meditation. To quote: "When rasa attains plenitude .... "149 My teacher,150 nonetheless, holds that there is nothing more than the experience of what is necessarily a variegated event and the presence of the recognition, "I am experiencing pleasure." ... What the author is intimating by "continuum of rasa" is that rasa, being akin to savoring supreme being, flows in a current unbroken by our awareness of it.

(V) Furthermore, even though it has been demonstrated that rasa is not some thing separate from the savoring of it (compare such statements as "When there is a fusion of the mind with the meaning of the literary work, there arises the bliss that is the self, which constitutes the savoring of rasa"),151 I still must make it clear that when I say it "is savored," the usage is based upon a

merely hypothetical sense of differentiation; or it can as easily be taken as a reflexive or impersonal passive usage.152 To quote: "Insofar as rasa is in essence merely a state of being tasted, it can be nothing other than consciousness as such."153 Comparable usage elsewhere in this treatise, in similar contexts, 154 is to be taken in this figurative sense, and not literally. One might raise the following objection: if it is indeed the case that rasa is not some thing different from the experience of it, then one winds up arguing that rasa is not an object of knowledge. And since manifestation, which you accept as the mechanism for knowing rasa, is the making known of some particular object, rasa and manifestation would wind up being one and the same thing, since both are forms of knowledge and not objects of knowledge. And how then could rasa possibly be some thing that is manifested, as you claim in verse 1, when the source of manifestation and the thing manifested must be absolutely separate entities, like a lamp and a pot? To quote: "Manifestation produces a cognition of something else."155 This objection is entirely valid. And for this reason it has been argued that "Rasa must be completely distinguished from all acts of making and knowing. It is a unique function, something we can call 'savoring.' "156 And that is why scholars use distinctive terms for it, such as "tasting," "savoring," "rapture," and so on.157 It is only because we are keen to establish the process as such, and to differentiate it from all other language functions, 158 that we have said that rasa is something "manifested." One might object that, if rasa is supposed to consist of bliss, then the tragic and other painful rasas would not in fact be rasas at all. The response is as follows: (3.4) That in the case of the tragic and similar rasas there eventually comes about pleasure requires no other proof than the experience of the responsive viewer/reader. "And similar" is meant to include the macabre and the fearful. Still, in order to permanently silence hostile critics, I offer a second postulate: (3.5ab) Moreover, if they really felt pain, no one would be so eager for it. No rational person ever seeks to bring pain upon himself, and yet we see everyone keenly seeking out literary works featuring the tragic and other such rasas. And still another illogicality would result: (3.5cd) And then, the Ramayana and other such works would be a source of pain. That is, if the tragic rasa were a source of pain, we would face the absurd conclusion that works in which that rasa predominates would themselves be sources of pain. But how, one might still object, can pleasure arise from things that cause pain? (3.6-7) From things that become causes of grief and joy by being based in the real world, real- world grief and joy do indeed arise in the real world. But from those things that become supermundane "factors" by being based in literature-and indeed, from all of them-only pleasure arises. There is no logical problem here. The very things that can indeed be described as causes of pain in the real world-Rama's departure into forest exile, for example-become, when consigned to poetry or drama, part of a process of supermundane "factoring." They thereby cease to be describable as causes and take on the new supermundane descriptor, "factor." And like the bites and scratches made in lovemaking, they give rise only to pleasure. Accordingly, it is a hard and fast rule that real-world grief and joy arise from the causes of real-world grief and joy, whereas in literature, only pleasure arises from all the factors and other aesthetic elements. There should be no conceptual difficulty with this. One might still ask why stories about Harischandra159 and so on, whether seen in a drama or

heard in poetry recitation, cause weeping and other signs of pain. The response: (3.8ab) The weeping and so on, similarly, must be understood to be a result of an aesthetic "melting" of the heart.160 It might be asked161 why this sort of rasa manifestation is not found in everyone as a result of listening to poetry. Here is the response: (3.8cd) The relishing of rasa cannot arise without some predisposition toward the various stable emotions, desire and the rest. Predispositions are acquired both in the present existence and in former ones, and make the savoring of rasa possible. If the former were not causal factors, then even dry theologians and ritualists would savor rasa; if the latter were not, then it would never be the case that some men keen to savor rasa162 turn out to be incapable of doing so. To quote Dharmadatta, "Savoring rasa is possible only for audience members163 with the requisite predispositions. Without them, people are like the walls and wooden posts and stone floor inside the theater."164

(3.20ab) Rasa is not an object to be known, because it stands in an invariable relationship with our apprehension of it. An object that is knowable, something like a pot, can exist without our knowing it. This is not the case with rasa, however, since it does not exist unless it is apprehended. (3.20cd-21a) Rasa also cannot be considered something made, insofar as it is essentially embedded in the assemblage of aesthetic elements, the factors and so on.165 If rasa were "something made," an effect, then the factors and so on would have to be considered its cause. But then the factors could not be apprehensible at the moment we apprehend rasa (as they indeed are), since we never have perceptual knowledge simultaneously of both a cause and its effect. We cannot simultaneously touch a cooling cream and have an awareness of the pleasure we derive from touching it.166 The idea here is that because we apprehend rasa as something "essentially embedded in the assemblage of aesthetic elements," the factors and so on, it cannot be caused by an awareness of the factors, etc. (3.21b) But rasa is not, for all that, something always existent, because we lack prior awareness of it167-that is to say, it has no continuous existence at the time we have no consciousness of it. And it is assuredly not the case that a thing that really is permanently existent would cease to exist on the occasions when we have no consciousness of it. (3.22-25a) Nor again is it something that comes into being later (after the performance), since it has a form of self-revelation and the blissfulness of some direct awareness; but neither can it be said to be a present entity because of its utter difference from anything made or brought to awareness. Insofar as rasa has as its object the particularized reflection on the aesthetic elements on the part of the responsive viewer/reader, and is clearly something of which we are conscious as consisting of pure bliss, it cannot be nonconceptual sense experience that grasps rasa. But neither is rasa brought to our consciousness by conceptual sense experience, because it is not something fit for connection with linguistic expression.168 Things brought to consciousness through conceptual sense experience are captured in linguistic usage. And this is not the case with rasa.169 (3.25b-cd) Insofar as rasa is a direct awareness, it cannot be thought of as something

supersensory, but neither is the cognition of rasa strictly170 sensory, because it is possible for it to arise through language alone. Tell us, then, the true nature of rasa, which seems to fall under a description of something never before seen or heard of. (3.26ab) Accordingly, rasa is truly supermundane and brought to consciousness by receptive readers/viewers. But what proof is there for its existence? Here is our answer: (3.26cd) The learned hold171 the act of relishing to be the proof of rasa-which is in fact nothing other than the act itself. Relishing means savoring; its nature has already been described as follows: "When there is a fusion of the mind .... " But here one might object: if rasa is not something brought about as an effect, how can the sage have defined it thus: "Rasa arises from the conjunction of factors, reactions, and transitory emotions"? Here is the response: (3.27ab) The "arising of rasa" is used in the secondary sense of the arising of the relishing of rasa. 172 Relishing, since it is identical with rasa, can no more be some effected thing than rasa itself. Yet it can be figuratively referred to as an effect because of its episodic nature (relishing passing into and out of existence); and thereby a figurative sort of effectedness can be attributed to rasa itself.

One might object: if it is the stable emotion when combined with the other aesthetic elements that becomes rasa, how can rasa be said to be either "self-revealing"173 or a "unity" (3.2)? Here is the response: (3.28) Insofar as desire or any other stable emotion becomes a rasa precisely because it is transformed into a state of awareness, the fact of rasa's being both self-revealing and a unity is proven as a matter of course. If desire and the rest were entirely different from consciousness as such, then rasa could indeed not be proven to be self-revealing. But far from being different, they in fact become identical, as we have maintained. To quote:174 "Although relishing too is not something effected, since it is nothing other than rasa itself, nonetheless, because of its episodic nature we figuratively refer to it as an effect, just as we refer to a stable emotion as an effect though it is identical to savoring, being a transformation of the viewers' beginningless predispositions." Moreover, "And since we maintain that pure pleasure, amazement, and so on are identical to rasa, one may make one's bed on our tenets and sleep in peace for a thousand heavenly years."175 And again, "Although rasa is nothing other than itself-that is, than the experience of it-it comes to be objectified in the act of cognition as being identical to the stable emotions present in the predispositions." Should anyone not accept the view that cognition is self-revealing, the Vedantins will come and lower the boom on him.176 Finally, because again rasa is identical to cognition, it is a unified "whole." The stable emotions and so on are first apprehended individually, but then all appear as a unity and turn into rasa. To quote: "The factors, the reactions, the sensitivities, and the transitory emotions are first apprehended part by part, but then become a whole." And last: "But in actual fact rasa should be understood to be a unity, just like supreme being as understood in Vedanta."