12. 5.3 RETHINKING "SEMBLANCE OF RASA"

5.3 RETHINKING "SEMBLANCE OF RASA"

The Moon on the Rasa Ocean of Singabhupala (c. 1385)

Singabhupala was king of a small principality in today's western Andhra Pradesh, and by caste a Velamanayudu, a subcaste of Shudras. His Moon on the Rasa Ocean-and it is virtually certain that it is his, not written by one of his court scholars (the most famous of whom was Vishveshvara, author of the Moonlight of Rapture, a work on poetics)-is in the main a treatise on dramaturgy. Aside from the vast amount of Sanskrit (and Prakrit) literature he cites, some of which is extant nowhere else, Singabhupala shows himself to be a subtle and delightful reader of Sanskrit poetry and writer of Sanskrit prose. These traits are illustrated especially well in his reflections on the problem of "semblance of rasa." Consider Singabhupala's discussion of the poem, "The bond of his affection broken ... " (see below), about a woman mourning the death of passion in her marriage. How does rasa theory explain the impact of such a verse? The question is raised nowhere else in the tradition, and Singabhupala has an interesting and shrewd point to make. The rasa cannot, he says, be the erotic, certainly not the erotic enjoyed but also not the erotic thwarted, since there is no chance of "reunion." Yet the poem undoubtedly has a powerful emotional-aesthetic force. How is it to be categorized according to rasa theory? Singabhupala calls it "semblance" of the erotic, whereby he is clearly not making a judgment on the quality of the poem-indeed, Singabhupala goes out of his way, here and elsewhere, to adduce as illustrations verses from the finest works of Sanskrit poetry-but specifying the nature of the experience it produces. A great poem like the Rāmāyana is unthinkable without such semblance-since it is unthinkable without Ravana and his "semblance of the erotic rasa" for Sita-but understanding precisely what the aesthetic power of this semblance is, within the confines of the rasa theory, requires deep reflection. If rasa is the ultimate literary value, how are we to assess the value of a literary work where rasa as such is not-indeed, must not-be present? Equally interesting, if more complicated still, is Singabhupala's treatment of the question of rasa in respect to entities who themselves may be thought incapable of understanding rasa, such as animals and the "uncultured." Singabhupala engages this issue with a direct attack on the views of Vidyadhara in his Single Strand. The difficulty in grasping Singabhupala's argument is tied up, as noted already on Vidyadhara's work, with the more primordial question of the locus of rasa. Is the point that animals or the uncultured have no "discrimination," thereby entailing that rasa-which implicitly, on this view, is located in the character- cannot be located in these characters? Or is it rather that they cannot be an appropriate source of rasa located in the viewer/reader? When Vidyadhara asserts that "the aesthetic elements can function in the case of animals too," that animals "can be foundational factors," he would appear to mean, in the first instance, they can be factors for other animals, not for us. A verse like Kalidasa's "A bee drank honey from a flower cup, after his beloved had drunk" then would be taken to indicate that animals are capable of emotion, that is, self-aware feeling-to which readers can also respond (though Vidyadhara does not explicitly raise this last point). For much of Singabhupala's discussion, this latter step, the viewer/reader's response, is uppermost in his mind. Thus, with respect to another verse of Kalidasa's that Singabhupala cites, it is not the discrimination of the woman and man themselves in the poem (Arundhati and Agastya) that does or does not permit them to function as foundational factors for the erotic rasa, but the discrimination of the viewer/reader, who knows they cannot so function because they are in fact ascetics. If in the end the two poles of the rasa phenomenon-certainly by this point in the history of the discourse-form part of a single continuum, there remains a confusing oscillation, given the varying analytical focal points. Vidyadhara is concentrating on the character when disputing the idea that lack of discernment disqualifies animals from experiencing rasa; Singabhupala is concentrating on the audience when arguing that the lack disqualifies animals from being foundational factors of rasa for the viewer. But of course the case of the audience is logically connected with that of the character: you cannot have a rasa experience from the representation of an entity that cannot have one itself; you are instead experiencing a semblance of rasa-because that is what the entity itself is experiencing.177

FROM THE MOON ON THE RASA OCEAN OF SINGABHUPALA

(p. 292) Now to semblance of rasa: (265cd-266ab) The principal rasa becomes a "semblance" when a subsidiary rasa is amplified by willfulness,178 just as a king becomes a semblance of a king because of an undisciplined minister. To quote the Light on Emotion:

The erotic becomes semblance of the erotic when overwhelmed by the comic; the comic, semblance of the comic when overwhelmed by the macabre; [293] the heroic, semblance of the heroic when overwhelmed by the fearful; the fantastic, semblance of the fantastic when associated with the tragic; the violent, semblance of the violent when associated with grief and fear;179 the tragic, semblance of the tragic when overwhelmed by the comic; the macabre, semblance of the macabre when possessed of the fantastic and erotic; and the fearful, semblance of the fearful from contact with the violent and the heroic.180

The erotic rasa, to take that case, becomes predominantly a semblance in four different ways: from unrequited passion; from passion for more than one person; from passion being represented between animals; or from its being represented between the uncultured. "Unrequited passion" is when passion is absent in one member of the couple. Thus there is semblance of the erotic in the case of Sita and Ravana because of her complete lack of passion for him .... 181 [294] One might object that the absence of passion in one member cannot logically make for semblance of the erotic, because then we would have semblance of love at first sight, as in the case of Ratnavali, who feels passion for the king of Vatsa before he feels it for her.182 I would reply that "absence" is of three types: [1] the absence of something before it comes into being; [2] absolute absence; [3] the absence of something after it ceases to exist. [1] In the first, because passion can be expected to arise once its cause (such as seeing the love object) is present, we have no semblance of the erotic; we do, by contrast, in the latter two types, because passion does not arise even in the presence of its cause. Other scholars [295] hold that it is only with reference to absence of passion in the woman that semblance of the erotic arises, but this is mistaken. For rasa is unable to be savored when there is no passion in the man too. Consider the following poem:

The bond of love is broken, the respect due to affection has trickled away, trust has come to an end, and he passes strangely before me like a stranger. I think about this over and over, my friend, and all the days gone by, and I can't see why my heart doesn't break into a hundred pieces.183

Here the woman's passion, although manifested by such transitory emotions as despair, remembrance, and the like-we infer these from her thinking about "all the days gone by" prior to the time when her heart was broken-fails to attain beauty because [3] the man's passion has ceased to exist (this is indicated by the breaking of the "bond of love" expressed in the verse). We can also have semblance of rasa by reason of [2] the absolute absence of passion in a man, as in the following verse:

"What woman are you thinking of with your eyes closed a moment,

pretending to be meditating? Look at the person standing here before you, wounded by love's arrows- you are a savior, can you not protect her? Your compassion is a sham, is there any other man more pitiless than you?" So Mara's daughters-in-law, jealous of Enlightenment,184 addressed the Victor-and may he protect you.185

Here we have semblance of rasa because of the Buddha's complete absence of passion. [296] There is semblance of the erotic rasa when passion for one and the same woman is represented in more than one man. Take for example the following verse:

When the fighters struck each other, their life breaths simultaneously departed, and they carried on their dispute-now in heaven-in quest of a single nymph.186

Here two warriors attain divine status by dying in battle without retreating, and the passion both have for a certain heavenly nymph, which is conditioned by their incomparable heroic qualities,187 is semblance because it appears as equally distributed between them. We also have semblance when passion for one and the same man is found in more than one woman. In the following verse,188 an antagonist has gone to heaven when slain by the hero's sword, and since the passion for him is equally distributed among Menaka and other courtesans of the heavenly world, it is semblance of passion. One might object that, if this were so, then the passion of a "playboy" and similar types of protagonist would always be semblance. But that would be incorrect. The fact that a playboy behaves uniformly toward multiple women is a function of his comportment, not [297] his passion. His passion is intense only for one of them, and middling or weak for the others-and hence it is not a semblance. But in the above case of the warriors we are right to posit semblance because the workings of the passion are equally distributed over multiple partners. Here is an example of semblance of the erotic rasa when passion is represented between animals:

A bee drank honey from a flower cup, after his beloved had drunk, and with his horn a black buck scratched his mate, who closed her eyes at his touch.189

Here is an example of semblance of the erotic rasa when passion is represented between the uncultured:

She fainted at orgasm. "She's dead!" the bumpkin thought, and ran, and the cotton stalks with half-opened pods seemed to laugh out loud.190

In this poem we deduce the bumpkin's uncultured character from his inability to distinguish between death and fainting from orgasmic sex. The proponent of the view that rasa does indeed exist in the uncultured might here object:

passion in animals or the uncultured should not be classified as semblance, "since the aesthetic elements can function in the case of animals too,"191 and we apprehend their capacity for savoring rasa. Poor fellow, I can see you are an intimate of the poet Vidyadhara, that obsequious attendant of Narasimhadeva, King of Utkala, self-styled master of the literary erotic.192 [298] Here is how Vidyadhara has justified his view in the Single Strand :... 193 In response, first of all, it makes no sense that animals can be foundational factors. The sage has decreed that, in the case of the erotic rasa, a foundational factor can only be something brilliant, pure, and beautiful,194 and it is, as everyone knows, completely inconceivable for animals to be thus, since they engage in none of the requisite practices: lathering their bodies with fragrant unguents, performing ablutions, decorating themselves with ornaments, and so on. And it is mistaken to argue195 that a bull elephant can be a foundational factor for a cow elephant by virtue of properties innate to the species, because on that argument the bull would be functioning as an actual cause of the cow's passion, not a foundational factor. Moreover, something becomes a foundational factor thanks not to properties specific to its species, but to things that expand the mind of the viewer/reader who "actualizes" the experience, properties that have something desirable about them. Again, what Vidyadhara calls "awareness of the foundational factor and other aesthetic elements"16 can really signify only discernment of propriety,197 and since animals are devoid of such discernment, they cannot be foundational factors.198 If this entails that for people199 who have no such knowledge of foundational factors and the other aesthetic elements [299] there can only be semblance of rasa, then so be it, for it supports our view that rasa in someone uncultured200 can only be a semblance, given that "uncultured" is meant to stand for a person devoid of discernment. Furthermore, it is false to claim that "it is the sheer presence of the aesthetic elements that actuates the rasa, not awareness of them as aesthetic elements."201 To explain: there are two options here. The first is that rasa is actuated by the presence of an aesthetic element distinguished as such. If you accept that the actuating capacity belongs to a thing distinguished in this way, you are simultaneously accepting that there is a role played by discernment-and thereby accepting our position. You cannot respond that "being distinguished" here means simply possessing properties that distinguish one thing from another, without discernment playing any role. This is because there is no set number of distinctions: they are what enable us to register the strong points in the entity in question, and are not mutually exclusive either.202 The second option is that rasa is actuated by the presence of some thing as such. But then in a poem like "Arundhati sat behind her husband like the goddess Svaha behind the sacred fire,"203 it would turn out that the erotic rasa was being savored, for after all we have the presence of both a foundational factor in the two individuals, a man and woman plain and simple, and a physical reaction, here that of sitting behind.204 And again, in a poem like the one above, where the country bumpkin thinks the woman has died, we have the presence of a foundational factor in the two individuals, a man and woman plain and simple ... well, my opponent can rush forward if he wishes and try to rescue an erotic rasa here-a rutting elephant sinking in the mud !- from the comic rasa produced from the man's lack of discernment. But really, enough of his trying to talk his way out of these being cases of semblance of rasa. But wait, he might ask one last time, it is a foundational factor such as Sita, i.e., the thing as such-and not the thing as differentiated205 in any way-that enables an apprehension of woman as such, and when that comes about rasa arises in the audience members. How do you explain that?

Well, I would respond, as foundational factor, "Sita" relinquishes the various specific properties- being the daughter of Janaka, the wife of Rama, and so on-that would inhibit the arising of rasa, and is taken as206 differentiated by other properties-being graceful, brilliant, pure, beautiful. It is as such that the factor is able to communicate that sense of "woman" in general, not because of its being a mere species of woman herself. In this way all is in order.