Books / A Rasa Reader Classical Indian Aesthetics Sheldon Pollock

34. 175. Rather than the character, the actor, and the viewer.

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  1. Rather than the character, the actor, and the viewer.

  2. Krishna's principal accoutrement.

  3. Jiva cites various proof texts in the course of these arguments, including BhPu 7.4.36-41.

  4. The idea, implied already by Pratiharenduraja (on KASS 4.2, above; see n. 125), is explicitly formulated first in SD 3.16cd- 17ab.

  5. Jiva here cites SD 3.15.

  6. I conjecture -anukūla (for -anukūlya-).

  7. Dharasura is located in Andhra in the Telugu Jaiminiya Bharatamu (see Ramaraju 2002: 520; I am unable to confirm this). 182. So Pratap in his edition; see 1978: 33 (where the key parallels are also listed).

  8. Important variants from the Kāvyaparīksa are included in the notes to the translation that follows. In an earlier publication I tentatively placed Shrivatsa in the 1560s (Pollock 2005: 22). That date should now be revised upward at least a generation.

  9. The standard nine plus preyān, dānta (sic, for udātta), and uddhata (taken from Bhoja).

  10. See Minkowski 2011.

  11. DR 4.43, above.

  12. The key term is avaranabhanga or bhagnāvaranatva (avarana had already been used in rasa discourse in Mallinatha's commentary on the Ekāvalī, p. 88.21).

  13. Pace Tubb and Bronner 2008: 625. Abhinava's actually terminology (nirvighnasvasamvedana, ABh 1.261; nirvighnapratīti, 1.273, 284) does not necessarily aim at the same thing.

  14. It is not entirely clear, despite the origins of the idea in a mystical treatise, that anything particularly mystical adheres to this notion of "removing the veil" of ignorance in Vishvanathadeva's (and later Jagannatha's) treatment. A general epistemological sense is suggested as early as Shankara's commentary on the Brhadāranyaka Upanișad 1.5.18.

  15. The term is used in Vedanta to describe phenomenal reality as such.

  16. taddharmarateḥ sākșibhāsyāyāḥ (referring to the viewer/reader's emotion, as in the sākșibhāsyo ratyādi that follows). sākșibhāsya, a technical term common in Vedanta, refers to the ontological status of the object of affective states, erroneous cognitions, and other internal events. In other cognitions, consciousness in conjunction with the mind (antahkarana) illuminates external objects.

  17. Uddyota, pp. 119-20.

  18. A reference to KP 1.2.

  19. Vishvanathadeva is referring to himself.

  20. hāsya (expect hasa) appears also in Shrivatsa's version. See also above, chapter 3 n. 158.

  21. Vishvanathadeva here adds a note attempting to explain the two spellings of the term, sahacāri and sahakāri.

  22. The author defers but will return in due course to the specific question of Sita's status as a foundational factor.

  23. A state or modification of the mind where it assumes the form of-that is, possesses as internalized content-the object it is cognizing.

  24. That is, of the viewer/reader; see p. 92.

  25. Shrivatsa adds: "The self, which itself remains unknown, shines forth, and were that lacking, perception and the other cognitive instruments would not be capable of providing cognition, i.e., knowledge of something that is unknown" (Kāvyaparīkșā p. 15).

  26. Compare RG pp. 25, 27, below.

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  1. Tattirīya Upanisad 2.7.1. The passage itself has nothing to do with the rasa of aesthetic discourse, but a long history of etymological speculation in the Vedas authorized this sort of equivalence (see Taittirīyopanisadbhāsyavārttika 2.422-426; also Gangadhara Sastri, ed., RG p. 40 n.).

  2. Not NS but DR 4.43 (with ātmānanda- instead of brahmānanda). Others also cite as "Bharata" Dhanamjaya or Dhanika (thus Shrivatsa quoting Dhanika; see KP p. 602.29 and DR p. 219.1), or even Bhatta Nayaka (see n. 147 above).

  3. KP (BHU ed.) p. 130, in restating the position of Abhinavagupta.

  4. vrtti here refers to the psychological, not the linguistic modality (compare RG p. 26).

  5. SKA 5.1, above (Vishvanathadeva cites 5.2-4 as well, and an untraced Prakrit verse, "To the nature of the poet corresponds the charm of his literary composition"). This is followed by a more or less accurate summary of Abhinava's theory from KP.

  6. That is, it is itself a form of consciousness and hence self-revealing. (Here follows a sentence that seems to be an insertion, since it interrupts the argument: "It can be said to arise only metaphorically, from the arising of relishing.")

  7. Pañcadaśi 7.90cd, 92ab. The two verses enunciate, in the case of consciousness itself, at once the necessity of cognition and its limits. As Vidyaranya goes on to add, "To see a pot we indeed need both eyes and light; to see light, however, we need only eyes, not a second light." Rasa is a form of consciousness, and like consciousness it is cognized by the mind-that is, the mind removes anything obscuring rasa or consciousness-but again, like consciousness, it is not an object illuminated but rather is itself illumination. For a thing to be illuminated by a lamp, anything covering the thing needs to be removed, and this is what the "cognitive process" achieves. But whereas normal objects then require consciousness to illuminate them, rasa, or consciousness es not. itself, does not.

  8. As Jagannatha shows (RG p. 28, below) and Vedanta discussions of the mahāvakya confirm, the point of the parallel is that both rasa and scripture are phenomena of human language, but unlike any other, since they produce a superhuman, transcendent effect.

  9. I read yat sāksād aparokșād brahma (see Brhadāraņyaka Upanișad 3.4.1, for yaḥ sāksād aparo brahma).

  10. Pollock 2011: 40.

  11. See Bhaminīvilasa 4.32; Pollock 2001a: 404-12 for other references in what follows.

  12. The title makes reference to Shiva, its planned five chapters (only two were completed) being called "faces" in a play on pañcānana śiva, the "five-faced" aspect of the deity.

  13. See below, n. 247.

  14. See in general Pollock 2001b; with particular reference to Jagannatha, Tubb and Bronner 2008.

  15. Or perhaps not so new, given the view Abhinavagupta attributes to Bhatta Lollata (and ridicules); see Bhatta Lollata fragment #2a and n. 175, above.

  16. Shakuntala, in the drama of that name by Kalidasa.

  17. In Vedanta the self is conceived as having three aspects: existential (sat), cognitive (cit), and affective (ānanda). Nonaesthetic insight may remove the cognitive obscurations of the self, but not necessarily the affective ones. As Jagannatha will note, the unveiling that occurs in an aesthetic experience is transitory ("for the time being," that is, so long as "actualizing" insight lasts), unlike the unveiling that occurs in a mystical experience.

  18. Not all readers have the dispositions that make them sensitive to literature. See Dharmadatta, cited SD 3.8cd+, above.

  19. Much of the following recapitulates Mammata (the actual quote is from KP 4 kārikā 28), though Abhinava nowhere mentions the unknowing that obscures the "bliss component" of the self (see SSS n. 188 above). In the midst of this exposition Jagannatha introduces a second analysis of Abhinava (yad vā, p. 26.10), followed by his own correction (vastutas tu, p. 27.3). 221. I add the genitive phrase here and below for the sake of clarity. Jagannatha is most decidedly not referring to the stable

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emotion in the character.

  1. Abhinava nowhere defines vyakta/vyakti/vyanjana in this way. For the history of the transformation of "manifestation" see sections 4.2 and 4.6 of the introduction.

  2. Nagesha formulates the question to which the following section is intended as the response: "It may be that the aesthetic elements can be said to be illuminated insofar as they are considered predispositions in the observing subject, but how can the elements in themselves be illuminated by one's consciousness, with which they have no collocation and hence no connection?"

  3. On this technical Vedanta phrase see above, n. 191.

  4. The two different examples highlight two different processes: the former accounts for the purely internal, imaginary existence of the aesthetic elements, whereas the latter explains how, for example, a foundational factor like Shakuntala can be "perceived" in the actress (Ojha p. 72).

  5. The clause is added in accordance with Ojha (p. 72).

  6. The mention of the tālu (palate) would seem to require jakāra- (for gakāra-), though gakāra (referring to the first phoneme in the word for cow, gauh) is normal in such contexts (see also Nyāyamañjarī vol. 2, p. 151).

  7. I translate the printed vibhāvādicarvaņā-, but Madhusudhan Shastri's conjecture bhāvanāviśeșa-, "the power of a particular kind of 'actualization'" (see 25.11, 30.6, which he may also be right to attach to -tattatsthāyi-) is required, though it lacks ms. support and leaves the origin of the variant unexplained (perhaps an old dittograph; see line 1).

  8. Compare sthāyyupahitacidānanda- in the summary (34.12).

  9. "This is because the aesthetic state is not a form of consciousness delimited by a mental state" (as normal states are), according to Nagesha (I do not see the corruption in this gloss that Ojha finds). See below, p. 27.12; the experience of rasa is tad[i.e., rasa ]ākārāntaḥkaraņavṛtti.

  10. The subtle distinction between the stable emotion and consciousness of the emotion was made first, it would appear, in the SRA 7.1352-1356 (perhaps parallel is BhR 3.12-13, which defines rasa as either the "sensitive mentality" produced by the aesthetic elements or the pleasure that results).

  11. I read asya viśistātmano (with mss., for asyā, in all printed editions).

  12. Bhagavadgītā 6.21, in a description of yoga.

  13. Taittirīya Upanisad 2.7.1 (a śruti text, and hence, normatively, more directly probative than a smrti text like the Bhagavadgītā).

  14. Chändogya Upanisad 6.8.6. The analogy with the Upanishadic passage was first drawn by Vishvanathadeva (p. 101, above); see also Kāvyaparīkșā p. 17. 236. Since she is King Dushyanta's mistress and later wife.

  15. I read sādhāraņam (with mss., for sādhāraņa -; see also Ojha).

  16. The style here is that of the crabbed "new logic," originating in about the thirteenth century, and Jagannatha's implicit ascription of it to Bhatta Nayaka is a breathtaking anachronism.

  17. Such as an old man or one who has withdrawn from all worldly concerns.

  18. I read dharādhareya -... adhunika- (with the majority of mss., for dharādhareyatva -... adhunikatva-).

  19. See rasapratitau p. 28.9 (less likely, the apprehension of a foundational factor like Shakuntala in oneself)

  20. Here not the expected (and necessary) "literary language" (see chapter 3 n. 6) because in the next sentence Jagannatha misunderstands Bhatta Nayaka's use of the term abhidhā.

  21. abhidhā for Bhatta Nayaka is literary language (especially figurative language), which disarms normal referentiality; it is not referentiality itself.