Ramayana-Book One, Boyhood by Valmiki and the discussion of Rasa

Taking the bark-cloth from his disciples hands, he walked about, his senses tightly controlled, looking all about him at the vast forest. Nearby, that holy man saw an inseparable pair of sweet-voiced krauñcha birds wandering about. But even as he watched, a Nisháda hunter, filled with malice and intent on mischief, struck down the male of the pair. Seeing him struck down and writhing on the ground, his body covered with blood, his mate uttered a piteous cry. And the pious seer, seeing the bird struck down in this fashion by the Nisháda, was filled with pity.

Then in the intensity of this feeling of compassion, the Brahman thought, "This is wrong." Hearing the krauñcha hen wailing, he uttered these words: "Since, Nisháda, you killed one of this pair of krauñchas, distracted at the height of passion, you shall not live for very long." And even as he stood watching and spoke in this way, this thought arose in his heart, "Stricken with grief for this bird, what is this I have uttered?" (2.10)

As Ingalls states (1.5 p. 113) it is rasa that gives life to poetry as the soul gives life to the body. Woven throughout many of the writings in the discussion of the meaning of rasa the grief associated with the killing of the krauñcha hen is the vehicle for interpretation of this concept. For example for Ananda the rasa is the sharpening of Valmiki's emotion of grief. This inner meaning is the essence of the poem and its outward beauty is the wealth of its direct meaning, word and structure. (p. 114) This grief of the first poet Valmiki born from the wailing of the cock curlew becomes transformed into verse. Grief here is considered the basic emotion transformed through compassion to an inferred meaning beyond the words yet suggested through them like the reflection of the moon in water.

How this primary emotion transforms into poetry is through the "rumination" of the grief through which the pain and torture of the experience becomes "relished" through compassion and the melting of one's thoughts. The verse then flows spontaneously from this "melted" source.

Grieving once more for the krauñcha hen, given over wholly to his grief and lost in his inner thought, he sang the verse again right there before the god. With a smile, Brahma spoke to the bull among sages, "This is a shloka that you have composed. ....Now compose the holy story of Rama fashioned into shlokas to delight the heart. (2.30)

From this viewpoint Rasa, is an aesthetic expression of the affinity of experience among beings found in the heart. Essentially the contemplated emotion goes through a process of literary alchemy. It is absorbed, consumed, elaborated, communicated through the poet and in a subtle, refined and profound manner transforms into poetry that then poised, strikes skilfully through the heart of the reader, becomes art and ultimately reflects the soul. In the sublimation of the emotion there is a radiance, a bliss, that is both impersonal and otherworldly, and is essentially a spiritual experience and where it mirrors the Vedas.

One of the most interesting points made on p 115 is that it would be a mistake to consider that the sage experiences this grief personally. Masson writes of the Indian poet's need to distance himself from the emotion before writing of them. Ingalls states that the poet does not write of his own emotions but of that of others as described in Abhinava's view (the grief is not Valmiki's but that of the grieving bird) which is in direct contradiction to the Ramayana itself that speaks of the "poet's grief and pity". A very thought provoking issue.....to be discussed again later perhaps.