123. ABHINAVAGUPTA'S THEORY OF ÆSTHETICS 141

ABHINAVAGUPTA'S THEORY OF ÆSTHETICS 141

subjective and the objective aspects of the æsthetic experience at the Kathartic level is effected, is different from that, through which a similar universa lisation is got at the level of "Isvara". He discovered that the dramatic technique is such as brings about the universalisation, without much conscious effort on the part of the spectator. He realised the distinction between the mystic and the æsthetic methods of purification. He held the former to be painful and the latter to be pleasant. He asserted the superiority of the latter over the former.1 He has accordingly interpreted the Natya Sastra of Bharata so as to show how dramatic technique brings about universalisation by purifying both the subject and the object from all that is impure in them, TRIADIC RELATION.

Influenced by his mystic tendency, he draws a distinction between ordinary worldly experience and æsthetic experience in terms of dyadic and triadic relations. He points out that ordinary experience of daily life is an outcome of the subject-object relation. In it the subject is free to pick and choose from the presented, according to the individual disposition, need and cognitive capacity at a particular time. Hence in ordinary life the experiences of two persons about one object are seldom the same. Thus, every day experiences result from the dyadic relation of the subject and the object. The æsthetic experience is totally different from it. It is an experience, which is got, not through objective perception of the presented, but through subjective realisation of what is presented through artistic medium. do We know that in the case of religious contemplation, as when a worshipper contemplates on Visnu, the object, that figures in consciousness, is not simply a copy of a statue or picture, which he places before himself, but some-

1. Dh.L. 29.

142 20TTHT2 HO CHAPTER I11 TqUDAVAZIHSA

thing essentially different from it, something that the mind constructs with the help of what is presented to optical sense, something1, in the determinate apprehension of which, the directly present image, statue or picture, is only a medium. Similarly in the case of æsthetic experience, the æsthetic object which is presented on the stage, does not figure in the spectator's consciousness in the form, in which it is directly presented, but in one, which is essentially different from it, which the imaginative mind of the spec- tator, stimulated by artistic presentation, constructs. The æsthetic object is only a medium, which helps the imagi- native mind to have free play in the world of imagination, This is the view of the æsthetic object, which Bharata himself held, as we have already stated in the first chapter. It is on the basis of recognition of the constituents of æsthetic object as a medium to the rise of basic mental state that they have been called Vibhava, Anubhava and Vyabhicāribhāva, We stated that, according to Abhinavagupta, universali- sation of the æsthetic object and subject is effected through dramatic technique. Let us, therefore, find out what are the constituents of the subject and the object in the æsthetic field, and what is that particular method of presentation of the object, which leads to the universalisation. CONSTITUENTS OF THE ÆSTHETIC OBJECT AS A

CONFIGURATION.

We have presented Bharata's view of the asthetic object. Abhinava simply polishes it. The constituents of æsthetic object, as polished by Abhinava, may be presented as follows :- a lo A.(1) The æsthetic object is necessarily a situation, in which one or more human beings are involved.

1. A. Bh., Vol, I. 288.