Books / A Rasa Reader Classical Indian Aesthetics Sheldon Pollock

20. 274. Perhaps to hide his transgression (so Ingalls et al. ad loc.).

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  1. Perhaps to hide his transgression (so Ingalls et al. ad loc.).

  2. To the expressed sense of flattery of the king's power.

  3. Presumably Ananda is using the term rasavat in the redefined sense, as he will continue to do in what follows.

  4. The dispute here seems to lie in the difference between the earlier conception of rasa as simply another figure of speech, and Ananda's asserting its independence from and primacy over rhetoric. The distinctive feature of rasa viewed as a figure, i.e., as rasavat, is not the fact that its subject is animate (a view attributed to Udbhata by Shridhara; see Krishnamoorthy 1979b: 306): since anything can in some way be connected with an animate being, that criterion would leave all the other figures with no scope of operation, for they could simply be folded into the category of rasavat. The distinctive feature is whether or not rasa plays a subordinate role in the poem. Note also that the entire discussion that follows presupposes rasa's being located in the character.

  5. That is, as a stimulant factor (as explained below).

  6. VU 4.52.

  7. I omit the kārikās (they are recapitulated in the vrtti) and purely grammatical points.

  8. That is, part human, part divine (as below).

  9. A reference to the Prakrit romance Lilavaī (which is, according to a standard classification that the text itself refers to, divyamānușī, an observation I owe to A. Ollett).

  10. Compare the discussion of Abhinavagupta on the first of the "hindrances" (ABh 1.274, below).

  11. The reference is to Kalidasa's portrayal of the lovemaking of Shiva and Parvati in KS 8 (see DhĀ pp. 316-18).

  12. Possibly from Yashovarman's eighth-century play Rāmābhyudaya (Pollock 2007: 58).

  13. That is, zeal.

  14. A likely echo of Bhatta Lollata (see the headnote to his section).

  15. The rasa is clearly posited of the character, not the audience; hence "experienced" below is likely to refer to the character

as well.

  1. I read pravrddha- (with KM ed., for pravrtta-), and in the next line devaprāya- (with KM ed., for rāmadevaprāya-).

  2. I read svapravrtti- (with KM ed., for pravrtti-).

  3. Discussed in Dhà 1.9 (p. 99), which Ananda quotes here.

  4. Ananda here offers another interpretation of the term vrtti in the kārika, pertaining to either the dramatic modes or forms of alliteration.

  5. Ananda is not referring to the subjective experience of rasa, let alone claiming that all living beings experience the erotic rasa in their everyday lives; the "erotic" here is only pointing toward the desire that underlies it (so correctly Didhiti; compare the statement of Mammata cited in chapter 3 n. 123).

  6. Ananda has been discussing citrakāvya, which includes verbal puzzles, picture poems (technopaegnia), and so on.

  7. Abhinava attributes this and the following verses to Anandavardhana (the former is quoted also in SKĀ 5.3 and ŚP p. 706). The context of the verse requires the construction kavye ... jagat ("the world of the poem"); contrast Ingalls et al. 1990: 639. Abhinava understands the verse differently here (it is filled with rasa in view of [the readers'] submergence in it) and in his analysis of NŚ 6.38 (1.288).

  8. That this tendency was clear to the tradition itself is shown by the intellectual history Ruyyaka provides in AS pp. 3-12. 297. VJ p. 141 (see below, n. 308); ABh 1.273, below. "Semblance of rasa" in animals is first clearly enunciated by (the formalist) Bhoja (SKĀ 5.8).

  9. I conjecture pradhāna- (for pradhānam; see p. 140, apradhānacetana-).