Originary Concepts of Classical Indian Art Part II

-->

Rasadhwani –Emotive Resonance or Rapture

A. Srinivas Rao

31st May 2012

“Raso vai saha. Rasam hyevayam labdhva anandi bhavati” Yajur Veda, Taittiriya Upanishad 2.7 “For He indeed is Rasa, having obtained which, one attains bliss”.

Padmapani, Ajanta, 450-480CE

Art experience or encounter with an art object is not an intellectual engagement but an intuitive insight, of feeling and resonance with one’s life experience. It is “an experience in being and not in knowing”. In the last essay we examined the direct encounter with an art object through its form rupa which is sensory. The content of the art object artha is revealed not merely by its sensory features but revealed as structural, metaphoric and suggestive meaning through inference and intuition. What has not been discussed is its capacity for resonance with feeling or emotion that is central to art. What we need is an idea that integrates the sensory data and emotive content into an epistemic (knowledge) framework. This framework is provided by Rasa, the subject of this essay.  

Rasa is the axial concept of Indian aesthetics and so central is its position that commentators down the centuries “with mount meru as a stylus and the oceans as their inkpot” have not exhausted their energies in exploring its meaning. Rasa challenges us in translation as no word in English seems to fit the idea which is loosely, delectation, ‘gustatory’ experience, relish etc. The best word that might fit is “sapience” derived from the Latin word sapere, to taste, to be wise, to know; in other words sapience is a kind of intuitive knowledge of what an artist is trying to communicate. The term rasa has had a long textual history since the Vedas as the above mentioned quote indicates. Beginning with Bharata it has been appropriated by dramaturgists, poets, philosophers and artists in varied ways and finally is set to rest rather conclusively in the 10^th – 11^th century CE by the great polymath Abhinavagupta, who was considered the greatest intellectual India has had after possibly Nagarjuna. We shall trace the historical evolution of the term Rasa and the outline the various theoretical discussions surrounding it.

Rasa has most likely come from its botanical roots as referred to in the Vedas. The Rik Veda refers to dhiyas thought- visions as the commingling of mind and intuition in the ‘heart’ hrid. This synthesis in the heart as a form of visionary rapture is possibly induced by the soma rasa a mild psychotropic extract as a ‘juice’. The Vedic seers refer to visions in the heart that undergo purification. This reference to heart is as a centre of ones being or a seat of consciousness, a focal point of emotional, intellectual and intuitive integration finds resonance with the term for aesthete (sahridaya). With the change in tone and tenor of the Veda from formulaic incantation (mantra) to speculative thought (upanishad), rasa was transformed to ‘essence’ and as though identical with the Supreme Being “Raso vai saha”, ‘He is Rasa’. From the Vedic ‘seer’ of the rasa the idea was transferred to and held in esteem by the kavi or poet who became the bridge between the Vedic and aesthetic tradition. The kavi was exalted as not just an artist but a seer not just of imagination but in vision. The kavi was also called as the creator (prajapati) who produced the kavya or epic poetry to be performed on stage. This is where Bharata the sage who systematised theatre in his monumental work the Natyashastra (200BCE-200 CE) which is reverentially called the fifth Veda. Natyashastra’s authoritative account of rasa states -“that which is relished is rasa -rasyate anena iti rasaha” and that “no meaning can emerge from speech in the absence of rasa,- nahi rasadate kaschidapyartha pravartate”.

Rasa abhinaya in Kathakali, Kalanilayan Gopi Ashan

Theatre was paradigmatic of all Indian art and was the wellspring of inspiration for all art forms encompassing poetry, music, dance, painting etc. Bharata was its original seer. To Bharata a dramatic performance was a play of emotions and the successful manifestation of these on the stage was realised when the audience relished or resonated (rasaasvadana) within their own self the dominant emotional theme of the play. To invoke the experience of rasa in the spectator Bharata proposed breaking down the emotions into what he considered their components. To do this he developed his psychology of bhavas or emotions and made these bhavas the basis of his theory. Bharata views bhavas as causal, “that which makes manifest” or that which brings forth or makes aware a person’s mental state. However not all bhavas according to Bharata are mental they also had physical complements. To begin with he proposed that emotional states while transitory have differential levels of inertia. The dominant emotion of a composition was to him the relatively permanent which he called as stationary (Sthayi bhavas). He believed that the dominant taste or flavour of a composition (rasa) emerges from these sthayi bhavas. He classified sthayi bhavas into eight kinds and held that the dominant rasa in a composition emerges from these eight inertial emotive states and thus has its correspondence to each of these moods. Thus they form eight pairs of sthayibhava-rasa viz. pleasure (rati)-Erotic (sringara), laughter (hasa)- Merriment (hasya), grief (shoka)-Compassion (karuna), anger (krodha)-Wrath (raudra), enthusiasm (utsaha)-Heroism (vira), fear (bhaya)-Horrific (bhayanaka), aversion (jugupsa)-Disgust (bhibhtsa), wonder (vismaya)-Amazement (adbhuta). He further states that as against the more fixed sthayi bhavas, there are 33 relatively transient emotions based on psychological states of the mind called vyabhicharibhava which are supplements to the dominant emotion set by the sthayi bhava. These include indifference, exhaustion, doubt, envy, infatuation, exertion, sloth, abjectness, anxiety, delusion, recollection, constancy, modesty, alertness, pleasure, agitation, lethargy, arrogance, dejection, zeal, languor, forgetfulness, sleep, awakening, impatience, understanding, sickness, passion, death, fright, argument, dissimulation and ferocity. To this rather exhaustive list Bharata added physical manifestations of the above states he called as anubhavas such as flustering, languorous movements etc. ;  of these certain kinds of physical manifestations were called sattvika bhavas, eight of which he enumerated as stupefaction (stambha), perspiration (sveda), horripilation-goose bumps (romancha), stuttering (swarabhanga), tremor (vepathu), turning pale (vaivarnya), tears (ashru), nervous breakdown (pralaya). Together with the sthayi, vyabhichari and sattvika bhavas this was a list of 49 states. He then discusses the situational factors or contingent conditions under which these bhavas emerge which he calls vibhavas. Vibhavas could be stimulating (alambana) or rather pertaining to the person in respect of whom an emotion is being felt or excitatory (uddipana) i.e. the ambient environment, season, landscape etc. Having thus made such elaborate classification Bharata makes a proposition the “Rasa Sutra” that has been commented by scholars down the centuries “tatra vibhava, anubhava, vyabhicharabhava samyogat rasa nispattih” i.e. Rasa emerges from primary emotions caused by their excitants, secondary manifestations of that emotion, and the context or landscape (psychological and physical) where they are played out. In other words, the vibhava, the anubhava and vyabhicharabahva give rise to the dominant emotion or sthayi bhava which in turn makes manifest the Rasa or sapience.

Over time with social stratification becoming more rigid with their norms of ritual purity, it was poetry and poetics and not theatre which was considered the paradigmatic art by the scholarly class of Brahmins. The Holy Grail was now “what is the soul of poetry”? Through the centuries that followed, rhetoricians had a succession of answers each contesting the previous one. These were six schools of thought (from 6^th -11^th century CE) or the six points of departure (prasthana). There was the school that held rhetoric as central to poetry (alamkaraprasthana). This school was supported by the views of Bhamaha, Vamana, Udbhata and Rudrata. They maintained that rhetorical devices were like an ornament to poetry raising the question of whether it was an imposed beauty or intrinsic.  The next school was that of poetic quality (gunaprasthana) championed by Dandi  and maintained that poetry must have qualities like pun, clarity, sweetness, vigour, poise, etc or even incandescence (kanti) and propriety (auchitya). The next school was that of style in metrical composition (ritiprasthana) by Vamana where the merit of a poem was in the skill over styles of metre like Gaudi, Vaidarbhi and Panchali. The next school of Kuntaka was that of indirect meaning (vakrotijivitaprasthana) which held that poetry hints that there is an indirect meaning that is true than the one obvious. The next school was called the dhwaniprasthana by Anandavardhana and referred to poetry being more than the sum of parts like rhetoric, metre, words, meaning etc. a whole with resonant levels of meaning more than the one explicitly stated. Anandavardhana spoke of three kinds of dhvani, i.e. resonance of subject, rhetoric and sapience (vastudhvani, alankaradhvani and rasadhvani). This last kind of dhvani ties up with the last school of Rasa which is the rasaprasthana which takes us back to the originary notion by Bharata in his Natyashastra. This school which was finally considered the most definitive had a lineage of scholars, Lollata, Sankuka, Tauta and Nayaka, followed by and crowned by Abhinavagupta.

Abhinavagupta, frontispiece "Abhinavagupta" KC Pandey,1935

Most of the scholars mentioned above seem to have been almost wholly Kashmiri Brahmins, the prince of among them being Abhinavagupta (950-1020 CE) a polymath of unrivalled genius. Abhinavagupta’s works are numerous and fall into three principal categories Aesthetics, Tantra, and Kashmiri Saiva philosophy. His commentary on Bharata’s Natyashastra called Abhinavabharati and his commentary on Anandavardhana’s Dhvanyaloka called Lochana happen to be the grand synthesis of aesthetic thought in India. Abhinava began by challenging the views of Lollata, who viewed rasa as an effect with the vibhavas etc as causes making rasa as something produced (utpattivad). He also rejected Sankuka’s idea that Rasa is inferred by the spectator from the artist or actor making rasa a cognitive object (anumittivad). He also did not accept Nayaka’s idea that rasa was a relationship of an enjoyer and enjoyed (bhuktivad) but did take up the idea of generalisation (sadharanikarana) which we shall see presently.

Abhinava’s bold conclusions were that Rasa was not an object of knowledge, not the effect of a cause, not located in time though impermanent and as an experience was revelatory i.e. neither direct nor indirect, neither mundane nor supernal, nor indefinable. Rasa dissolves the distinction between the knower and the known, it is whole and undivided with no parts nor types, it is not cognition but a re-cognition, a revelation to oneself of ones own depth, a form of self contemplation, akin to a magical bloom (adbhutapushpavat), a wonder (chamatkara), full of intelligence, self luminous beatitude (akhandaswaprakashanandachimaya) and finally the twin brother of tasting the Absolute (brahmaswadasahodara). 

Ardhanariswara, Elephanta Caves, 5th-8th CE

Abhinava’s theory is called the notion of revelation (abhivyaktivada). The cardinal process is the transmutation from the gross to subtle, the mundane to transcendent, and individual to the universal. Abhinava took the ideas of Anandavardhana’s dhvani or multiple levels of resonance of meaning, or the power of suggestion (vyangya shakti). Anadavardhana maintained that suggestive or evocative meaning (Dhvani) is the essence of art. The indirect meaning of an art object penetrates the superficial and resonates with multiple meanings without rejecting any. Abhinava also creatively used Nayaka’s notion of a suppression of the aesthete’s ego through a process of generalisation (sadharanikarana) and defined conclusively the process of revelation of rasa.   This transformation requires a prepared aesthete, quiescent (vishranti) and detached (samvit) mind both of the artist and the aesthete. The aesthete (sahridaya) is one who can identify with the subject, whose heart is sensitive and polished (and not hardened by poring over dry metaphysical texts) and is capable of complete identification with the object (tanmayibhava) that distinguishes not experience of his own self from that of the artist-protagonist and is responsive to suggestive revelation (abhivyakta).  This capacity of unfettered identification (tanmayibhava) dissolves subject-object consciousness, permits expansion of consciousness (chittavistra) and finds release in rasa. As the aesthete perceives the vibhavas, etc portrayed, she evokes within the sthayi bhava of the artist, identifies herself with the character’s situation using her imagination (pratibha), she identifies herself entirely (tanmayibhava) with the character or art object leading to a suppression of one’s ego and generalisation of the sthayi bhava and experience (sadharanikarana). This suppression of ego leads to an experience that is freed from the inadequacies of one own self or that of the artist (vita-vighna, pratiya grahyata) and reveals the depth of one’s own self, tasting bliss of an undivided (akhanda) rasa. This is the state of rasa, an ineffable rapture. Abhinavagupta was a Kashmiri Saiva, a school which conceptually distinguished two modes of consciousness that is unitary: visranti where consciousness turns inward and abides in its own luminosity; vimarsha where consciousness expands outward to embrace objects. This dualism in unity is portrayed by the Ardhanariswara where Brahman or the absolute is not just self luminous as Siva but also self conscious as Parvati looking into a mirror.

Maheshamurti Siva, Elephanta Caves 5th -8th CE

Rapture or emotive resonance (rasadhvani) is the quest for an inner meaning in an artwork; a meaning that is cryptic, esoteric or metaphorical. Perception merely engages the sensory boundaries of an art object and is constitutes its direct meaning. The indirect meaning makes manifest what is not seen, or uncovers an alternative idea embedded in the first. The dhvanivadins or school of suggestive meaning maintain that of the three levels of meaning of a word or text or art object, (denotative, metaphorical and suggestive) it is resonance of indirect meaning with the surface or sensory meaning that makes for great art. While inference (anumana) impels a quest for an indirect meaning it is judgement (paramarsha) that confers its final bonafide. Judgement comes form training and latent tendencies (siksha and samskara) of the aesthete (sahridaya). An encounter with an art object that goes beyond direct sensory perception uses inference and judgement to divine an unknown fact from those known. Inference is prompted by two processes one being expectancy (akanksha) driven by a desire to complete the meaning through inquiry; the second being analysing the primary meaning (mukhyarthabadha) without destroying the artistic unity of the object. This impels a shift in meaning that could be sudden or gradual, revealing the idea or authorial intent of the artist. Each level of meaning vibrates in consonance with the overall meaning giving birth to rasadhvani.

After Abhinava a few more followed to comment on the essence of literature like Mammatha, in Kavyaprakasa, Vishwanatha of Sahitya Darpan and Jagannatha in Rasagangadhara but none would equal the zenith that Abhinava scaled. Indian intellectual output after this period declines perceptibly owing to varied causes both external and internal and became effete and weak to be re-vivified by the Mughals and their unique synthesis and finally the domination by the West.