Rasa and Dhvani

Rasa: The theory of rasa is attributed to Bharata, a sage-priest who may have lived about ad 500. It was developed by the rhetorician and philosopher Abhinavagupta (c. ad 1000), who applied it to all varieties of theatre and poetry. The principal human feelings, according to Bharata, are delight, laughter, sorrow, anger, energy, fear, disgust, heroism, and astonishment, all of which may be recast in contemplative form as the various rasas: erotic, comic, pathetic, furious, heroic, terrible, odious, marvelous, and quietist. These rasas comprise the components of aesthetic experience. The power to taste rasa is a reward for merit in some previous existence.

From Bharata on, emotion (rasa, meaning “flavor” or “relish”) is recognized as the heart of drama and all art. Rasa thus came to mean the feeling that a poet conveys to a sympathetic reader, aesthetic taste, or aesthetic rapture (Gupta). Rasa, the aesthetic rapture accompanying the appreciation of dance and drama, is mentioned in the Upanishads, and some claim that it is even comparable to “the realization of ultimate reality”. The differences between aesthetic rasa and Brahman realization of the form of the Absolute became important philosophical issues.

According to the Alamkgra Riighava, “Aesthetic beauty cannot exist unless the heart of the man of good taste is moved to impersonal delight by the fascination of the expression of rasa.”

What holds good of poetry, drama, dance, and histrionic art holds good also of painting and sculpture. Jayadeva, author of the Candrciloka, makes this absolutely clear in the following words, “The enjoyable rasa or the aesthetic experience in poetry, drama and any other art-work has to pass through the successive stage of bibhciva, etc., and then only can it become the enduring sentiment” The consolidation and evocation of rasa, then, represent the function of all the fine arts. This is the central conception in India since Bharata’s Natyaimtra first expounded the doctrine of rasa with its eight categories, viz., Love or Happiness, Gaiety or Humor, Compassion, Fury, Valor, Awesomeness, Loathsomeness, and Wonder. From the third or fourth century onwards Silence or Tranquility was not only added as the ninth category but considered as the supreme rasa. The Visaudharmottara and the Apardjitapracchha (c. third to fourth century A.D.) expound nine rasas, while the Samranganastitradhara (c. eleventh century A.D.) treats eleven rasas expressed in images and paintings.

The eight ultimate and generic categories of rasas, according to Bharata, emerge from the following “basic states of consciousness” (sthdyi-bhdva) in order, viz., Iove, merriment, grief, anger, effort, fear, repulsion, and surprise. The “transient feelings” (vyabh~chdri-bhtiva) are thirty-three, viz., despondency, languor, apprehension, envy, etc. What is significant in the classic Indian treatment of aesthetics is the process of personalization or universalization which dissociates the natural or mundane emotion from the particular character and specific situation so that it is relished simply as abstract, aesthetic sentiment in the supramundane (aloukika) plane. In other words, in drama, acting, painting, sculpture, and music, we do not experience fleeting, shifting, and accidental states of mind, true of particular persons and situations, but abiding sentiments that transcend persons, times, and places, and invest the mind of “a person of attuned heart” (sa-hrdaya) with serenity (viirdnti). Artistic presentation overcomes the restlessness of passion (rajas) and the inertia of ignorance or darkness (tamas) and introduces the silence and beatitude of the pure mind (sattva). “Aesthetic experience is the experience of the universalized aesthetic object by the universalized subject in the state of perfect bliss (ananda), due to the predominance of sattva.” That is why aesthetic enjoyment is considered akin to the supreme bliss of Brahman-apprehension. Indian thought stresses the fruitful interchange between the aesthetic and spiritual moods and apprehension.

Dhvani: The theory of dhvani is a landmark in the history of Sanskrit poetics. Ënandavardhana, and Abhinavagupta expressly refer to their debts to grammarians. Anandavardhana, states: “This designation (dhvani) was first devised by the learned and that it has gained currency in a haphazard fashion. The foremost among the learned are grammarians because grammar lies at the root of all studies. They indeed, refer to articulate letters by term dhvani or suggester. In the same way, since the element of suggestion is common (to both) not only the word and its meaning, but its essential verbal power and also that which is usually referred to by the term poetry has been given the same designation, viz., dhvani by the other learned men whose insight into the fundamental truth about poetry was profound and who were followers of the principles laid down by grammarians.” (K. Krishnamurty (tr.), Dhavanyaloka, pp. 27-29)

Abhinava specially refers to Bhartahari and maintains that the word dhavni has four meanings according to various ways of grammatical formation. They are the suggestive word, suggestive meaning, the power of suggestion, and the suggested meaning. The poem with such words and meaning is also called dhvani. Mammata also maintains that the grammarias employed the term dhvani as the suggester of sphota and their followers (dhvanivadins), then employed the term for both - the word and meaning capabe of suggestion by subordinating the literal meaning (vacya).”

There is ultimate unity of word and meaning. Differentiation or word and meaning becomes explicit at the stage of madhyama vak. But even at this stage word and meaning are inner realities. Vak as consciousness is the parama jyotis (Supreme Light) and akrama (above temporal sequentially). Audible external speech in time, therefoore, manifested in temporal sequentality. The audible external word reveals the inner word (madhyama nadatmaka antara sphota). Sphota is vyagya (revealed) and the audible var¸ a (letter) is the vyaujaka. Var¸a as dhvani (external sound) reveals sphota, the inner word. This dhvani has another quality of resonance. It reaches our ears through resonance. The power of revealing or suggesting things on the one hand and the process of resonance on the other offer a sound foundation of the aesthetics of suggestion. The process of resonance as it is seen in the case of sound, may be equally seen in the echo of other levels of meaning. This dhvanana or anusvara or anura¸ana is basically a quality of sound, but it has been further expanded to explain the nature of aesthetic experience. In terms of manifesting the unmanifest, it is called vyaujana or suggestion. AnuÀvana or anura¸ana, i.e., resonance further elaborate the process. As the sound and words go on producing another sound and word and sound-waves and the word-waves gradually reach our ears, so the vacaka, vacya, etc., go on manifesting other levels of meaning. Beauty consists in the process of resonance on the one hand and suggestion or revelation of the unmanifest on the other.

Beauty and the experience of beauty, as dhvani is, thus, deeply rooted in the concepts of vak, nada and sabda. 

 

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