While I took Reading Week to mean a week for my brain to catch up on all the work that had gotten away from me over the past seven weeks of the semester, my body decided that it was the week during which to procure a very painful pinched nerve in my neck. Needless to say, I spent the week following through on none of the lofty goals I’d set out for myself and thus find myself here on Tuesday evening – late in posting my thoughts on the readings!
A book that I’m currently reading is thoroughly titillating. Titled “The Konkans”, it follows the transition of two Konkani men to America in the 1960s. My cultural heritage is Konkani and the book draws on much cultural knowledge to draw the reader in, as it has me. I wonder however, how a person who has neither access to nor knowledge of this now-dying cultural tradition would appreciate the book with its italicized foreign words, dirty inside jokes in Konkani that lose their punch when translated to English?
In some ways, it is this type of loss that I feel most when reading Vedanta Desika's “Hamsasandesa”. Something is lost in the translation I feel that cannot be recovered. Although still quite beautiful and prolific in its production of rasa, I couldn’t help but be left with a sense that I wasn’t getting all of it.
Then I read the Bronner-Shulman article and suddenly I was being given insight that I couldn’t previously latch onto!
Bronner-Shulman tout Venkatanatha, also known as Vednata Desika, as the first poet in the Sanskrit literary tradition to transcend the limits set up by everyone’s favourite adhikavi – Valmiki. Each of his major works exists for the purpose of out-doing a pre-existing major classical prototype. As such, the Hamsasandesa is juxtaposed against Kalidasa’s Meghasandesa (Bronner & Shulman, 11).
The Meghasandesa is viewed in general, as the originating piece of the messenger-poem genre (sandesa-kavya) and serves as the template for all future mahakavyas. This masterpiece focuses on the process of poetic imagination, and on the linguistic and figurative means that further it’s cause. The poem’s unfolding follows a consistent and logical patter that sees the cloud subject directed systematically through desirable locales (Bronner & Shulman, 11). After going fairly in-depth with the characteristics of this genre, Bronner-Shulman assert that the genre of sandesa-kavya “heralds the crystallization of an independent regional Sanskrit tradition” (Bronner & Shulman, 12).
To follow this assertion of the authors, Venkatanatha’s Hamsasandesa stays on course with the route set up by Kalidasa’s poem – in metre, structure, size and narrative logic. Right down to the phrasing structure, the similarities between the two works of poetic greatness are astounding. However, as much as Venkatanatha’s work is a reflection of Kalidasa’s prototype, it is also very much a mirroring – that is, while the topical aspects are similar, the underlying facets seem to be equally opposite the nuances found in Kalidasa’s work. For instance, Bronner-Shulman point out that while both narratives start somewhere in the middle of the Indian sub-continent, they move in opposite directions (Bronner & Shulman, 12).
While reading the Hamsasandesa, the descriptive richness of the landscape struck me more than anything else. Bronner-Shulman very cleverly address why this happened to me – by telling the goose to not be sucked in by the beauty of the lands that it will be flying over, Rama is purposely drawing the attention of the reader to that very thing. Like a child being told not to think of a pink elephant, it is all we want to notice – sometimes to the exclusion of other aspects of the story.
What good is the goose, asks the Bronner-Shulman article. To me, the goose is symbolic of the spread of the Sanskrit literary tradition throughout the Indian landscape. While not of the earth, the goose is able to view the ground from a vantage point that other earth-based beings may not have access to. Similarly, while not of the local people, the Sanskrit tradition provides an overarching entity of kavya-ic richness that one would be hard pressed to produce without the benefit of the mahakavyas that came before. As Bronner-Shulman conclude, Sanskrit brings with it a unique set of assets that transcend local contexts and enable powerful articulation of the regional tradition in its true fullness (Bronner & Shulman, 29).
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Commentary on 'A Cloud Turned Goose': Sanskrit in the Vernacular Millenium
‘A Cloud Turned Goose’ by Shulman and Bronner emphasized some of the themes that we have discussed in class. The article emphasizes the importance of Sanskrit in poetry. More precisely, the authors argue that to understand Sanskrit poetry one must first grasp, the audience, language and theme used in order to relate to the historical biography being displayed. They acknowledge the fact that Sanskrit is a powerful language used to transcend local contexts, but ends up enriching regional histories. With this he begins discussion of the way in which Sanskrit is employed by poets and how this relates to the history or particularities of their time.
One of the first things that these authors argue is the fact that “Sanskrit participated…in the project of inventing and elaborating distinctive regional cultures and identities”. This implies two things. First, that if Sanskrit is employed in poetry which relates specifically to a certain audience that shares a particular cultural identity. In this regard, as we have mentioned in previous classes the social context, cannot be removed from in order to experience rasa, or in other words the intended experience. However, the authors do state that even though the poet sticks to his limited identity he has freedom to appeal to the world (6). This to me would imply some sort of universal appeal on the basis of how emotions are experienced. However, I believe that even the appeal to emotions and the way they are experienced is deeply influenced by one’s social influences.
Second, is the fact that given the social world in India, regional cultures and identities are often closely related to religion. This then brings religion and aesthetics under the same umbrella. This leaves one to ask whether or not religion can be separated from associated meanings that Sanskrit encompasses. From the perspective of these authors and the importance of figurative language, meanings of words and time and space within Sanskrit poetry and the specific way that the audience is suppose to understand the poem, it seems that in order for one to relate to the depth of the poem, one must understand a system of meanings made available through religious symbols, deities and ideals. For example, the union of Rama and Sita towards the ending of the poem would not be fully grasped without a cultural understanding of oneness. More specifically, as the authors claim the oneness one experience here is closely associated with the way the bhakti practitioner through meditation becomes one with God (27). In this respect, religion enriches the understanding of poetry.
Further, the authors exemplify, “how are we to understand the dynamics of the linguist spectrum underlying a poet’s choice of language?” (8). This issue has been at the forefront of our discussions. The idea is who are the intended audience of Sanskrit poetry? Given the spectrum of which the Sanskrit language is enjoyed, culture would play an important role in directly interpreting or understanding the intended experience. However, this does not mean that such poetry should be exclusive to certain regions. Given the scope of difficulty of translating Sanskrit or translating direct meanings, I would think that it would almost become impossible for someone either than the poet himself to interpret the direct meanings. However, the authors do make it a point to establish that Sanskrit enables poets to condense meanings and contents into single sentences (11), so I guess it would be best left up to the Sanskrit specialists to further break down this conflict.
One of the first things that these authors argue is the fact that “Sanskrit participated…in the project of inventing and elaborating distinctive regional cultures and identities”. This implies two things. First, that if Sanskrit is employed in poetry which relates specifically to a certain audience that shares a particular cultural identity. In this regard, as we have mentioned in previous classes the social context, cannot be removed from in order to experience rasa, or in other words the intended experience. However, the authors do state that even though the poet sticks to his limited identity he has freedom to appeal to the world (6). This to me would imply some sort of universal appeal on the basis of how emotions are experienced. However, I believe that even the appeal to emotions and the way they are experienced is deeply influenced by one’s social influences.
Second, is the fact that given the social world in India, regional cultures and identities are often closely related to religion. This then brings religion and aesthetics under the same umbrella. This leaves one to ask whether or not religion can be separated from associated meanings that Sanskrit encompasses. From the perspective of these authors and the importance of figurative language, meanings of words and time and space within Sanskrit poetry and the specific way that the audience is suppose to understand the poem, it seems that in order for one to relate to the depth of the poem, one must understand a system of meanings made available through religious symbols, deities and ideals. For example, the union of Rama and Sita towards the ending of the poem would not be fully grasped without a cultural understanding of oneness. More specifically, as the authors claim the oneness one experience here is closely associated with the way the bhakti practitioner through meditation becomes one with God (27). In this respect, religion enriches the understanding of poetry.
Further, the authors exemplify, “how are we to understand the dynamics of the linguist spectrum underlying a poet’s choice of language?” (8). This issue has been at the forefront of our discussions. The idea is who are the intended audience of Sanskrit poetry? Given the spectrum of which the Sanskrit language is enjoyed, culture would play an important role in directly interpreting or understanding the intended experience. However, this does not mean that such poetry should be exclusive to certain regions. Given the scope of difficulty of translating Sanskrit or translating direct meanings, I would think that it would almost become impossible for someone either than the poet himself to interpret the direct meanings. However, the authors do make it a point to establish that Sanskrit enables poets to condense meanings and contents into single sentences (11), so I guess it would be best left up to the Sanskrit specialists to further break down this conflict.
South Asian Poets in Vernacular Millennium: Seeking Refuge South of the Sanskrit Border
In ‘A Cloud Turned Goose’, Sanskrit in the Vernacular Millenium, Yigal Bronner and David Shulman (Henceforth B-S) offer an analysis of the Vedanta Desika’s Hamsasandesa. This poem is, as you know, composed in Sanskrit and modeled after Kalidasa’s Medhasandesa. However, unlike the classical Sanskrit corpus, this work is highly localized, catering to a specific cultural audience, comprised of various specific cultural references and themes. Localization in composition, for B-S, is inversely proportional to depth of composition, meaning, the more concentrated in space (i.e. localized) a work is, the more deeply it embodies the culture of that geographical region. Yet this work is written in Sanskrit, a language quite removed in time and place from its themes. This begs, for the authors, the crucial question of why this seventeenth-century Tamil poet would chose to compose his masterpiece in Sanskrit, particularly one that is so intimately tied to his a time and space, from which Sanskrit is clearly quite removed. His is not the only such regional work composed in Sanskrit. B-S argue that the fact that many authors of the past (“vernacular”) millennium chose to write regional works in Sanskrit constitutes evidence that the language does not in fact “die” after 1000 AD as argued by Sheldon Pollock. I’m not that the argument presented here – against the effective ‘death’ of the language – Is entirely convincing. To extend the analogy, regarding the lifespan of living, compositional Sanskrit, works like Hamsasandesa operate more like ‘resurrections’ than ‘continuations’ of the linguistic life of the Sanskrit language.
B-S argue against the Pollockian notion that vernacular millennium South Asians do not in fact ‘continually re-imagine the world’ by citing works such as Hamsasandesa as evidence to the contrary. It can be argued, however, that these poets (e.g. Vedanta Desika) do not in fact ‘continually re-imagine the world’ since theirs is the regional and not the universal domain. It is not ‘the world’ they are concerned with, so much as ‘their world’. Pollock argues that Sanskrit literature since this juncture in history, is in fact employed for the sake of repetition. Again, B-S attempt to argue against this in their essay, emphasizing the creative novelty of this poem. However, is the object of study here, Hamsasandesa, not closely modeled after Kalidasa’s masterpiece, Medhasandesa? In light of this, can it really be said to be full of “boldness, originality, and intensity”? Clearly this work is far more than a mechanical reproduction, but can it really be considered new, and indeed a viable example of the continuation of the Sanskrit compositional bloodline?
I am really not sure of how to make sense of why Vedanta Desika (and Southern regional poets like him) elect Sanskrit as their linguistic medium. It seems problematic when one considers that Sanskrit is Northern in origin. The epics, and kavya culture at large, appear to valorize the North over the South. Consider the very plot of the Ramayana where Vishnu’s incarnation, the hight of auspiciousness, resides in the North, and is forced into the South in order to rescue his abducted wife from the southern abode of the demon-king. To further complicate matter, this valorization aligns with ritual and cultural sentiments throughout the subcontinent that North is considered ‘auspicious’, where South is treated as ‘inauspicious’. For example, one is forbidden to face South when performing ritual sacrifices, and is required instead to face North. Also, Yama, god of Death, is considered to lord over the southerly direction, which itself is associated with inauspiciousness, impurity, and death. Rama’s mission is to journey south, rescue his wife, and return to the north, victorious. Ayodhya, in the North, is the home of Rama. Lanka, in the South, is the home of the demon-king Ravana. Interestingly the poem is focused only on the journey southwards, not the journey back. Why does the author chose this story? Why does he choose Sanskrit? Would these themes not problematize a celebration of Southern culture?
Perhaps the very problem here (the privileging of North over South) is the very basis for the author’s selection. Vedanta Desika writes:
Fly to the South.
It has plenty of fantastic temples.
Beatiful sandalwood groves.
It’s the birthplace of peals
And the mother of the Malaya breeze.
Go there and save the life of Janaka’s daughter.
Do it for me.
There’s only one little I should mention:
It’s crawling with Raksasas.
The demons are mentioned almost tangentially, aside from which the verse is laden with images of purity and auspiciousness. Aside from the Raksasas, this appears to be a beautiful and sanctified region. Indeed, one may argue that without the demonization of the South, it, too, would be associated with auspiciousness and purity. Indeed the Ganges flows in the North, but must it be the only source of purity? These cultural tensions may be what the author is addressing. In composing in masterful Sanskrit in order to glorify the South, he demonstrates parity between the two. The goose, in flying Southwards, passes various landscapes, divinities, places of pilgrimage, temples, yogis, etc., all of which are emblematic of purity and auspiciousness. This subverts the notion of Northern superiority or dominance, especially since this southern villager enjoys competent mastery of the Sanskrit language. The author’s linguistic power succeeds here in holding dominion of Sankritic cultural domination.
Indeed Sanskrit provides the author linkage to a “wider literary universe [one encompassing] pan-Indian epics, cosmopolitan and local Sanskrit kŒvya, scientific discourses, and vernacular poetry”, but that wider universe is not accessible in these regional works themselves, nor to their audiences. The authors are aware of the Sanskrit universe, but short-circuit it by emphasizing the regional. Regional Sanskrit works (e.g., Sakala Malla’s Udasa-raghava, Nilakantha Diksita’s Sivalilarnava) are preoccupied with regional features, including metric schemes , syntax, idioms, geography, topography, cultic practice, historic tradition, etc (7) which serve to affirm a local reality. Sanskrit may offer the poetic license to enter the realm of “worldwide potential”, but in emphasizing specifically regional themes, these author consciously refrain from partaking in, and perpetuating, that “universal” domain. I agree with Pollock’s notion that the space crafted by Sanskrit literature was intended “precisely to occlude local differences, or rather, to make the local universally standard” (6). This is how and why these regional poems are different. They employ in the Sanskrit language, but shy away from ‘Sanskrit cosmopolitan culture’. These regional works, after all, were not intended to travel far and wide. As B-S argue regional Sanskrit works are geared towards a local audience, “not meant to travel the length and breath of the cosmopolis”. B-S argue also that Sanskrit served, along with vernaculars, “in the project of inventing and elaborating distinctive regional cultures and identities”. However, these regional identities, once established, succeed in eclipsing the cosmopolitan feature of ‘living’ compositional Sanskrit. Sanskrit serves their culture, they don’t serve Sanskrit culture. They thus effectively collapse the cosmopolis. Such works as these, therefore, are only residual resurrections of ‘living Sanskrit’: The Sanskrit language is not employed here because its supremacy is assumed, but, rather, it is masterfully employed in protest of that linguo-cultural supremacy.
Raj
PS - This was a GORGEOUS poetry. I would love to be able to read it in Sanskrit! Perhaps we can hear some of it in class.
B-S argue against the Pollockian notion that vernacular millennium South Asians do not in fact ‘continually re-imagine the world’ by citing works such as Hamsasandesa as evidence to the contrary. It can be argued, however, that these poets (e.g. Vedanta Desika) do not in fact ‘continually re-imagine the world’ since theirs is the regional and not the universal domain. It is not ‘the world’ they are concerned with, so much as ‘their world’. Pollock argues that Sanskrit literature since this juncture in history, is in fact employed for the sake of repetition. Again, B-S attempt to argue against this in their essay, emphasizing the creative novelty of this poem. However, is the object of study here, Hamsasandesa, not closely modeled after Kalidasa’s masterpiece, Medhasandesa? In light of this, can it really be said to be full of “boldness, originality, and intensity”? Clearly this work is far more than a mechanical reproduction, but can it really be considered new, and indeed a viable example of the continuation of the Sanskrit compositional bloodline?
I am really not sure of how to make sense of why Vedanta Desika (and Southern regional poets like him) elect Sanskrit as their linguistic medium. It seems problematic when one considers that Sanskrit is Northern in origin. The epics, and kavya culture at large, appear to valorize the North over the South. Consider the very plot of the Ramayana where Vishnu’s incarnation, the hight of auspiciousness, resides in the North, and is forced into the South in order to rescue his abducted wife from the southern abode of the demon-king. To further complicate matter, this valorization aligns with ritual and cultural sentiments throughout the subcontinent that North is considered ‘auspicious’, where South is treated as ‘inauspicious’. For example, one is forbidden to face South when performing ritual sacrifices, and is required instead to face North. Also, Yama, god of Death, is considered to lord over the southerly direction, which itself is associated with inauspiciousness, impurity, and death. Rama’s mission is to journey south, rescue his wife, and return to the north, victorious. Ayodhya, in the North, is the home of Rama. Lanka, in the South, is the home of the demon-king Ravana. Interestingly the poem is focused only on the journey southwards, not the journey back. Why does the author chose this story? Why does he choose Sanskrit? Would these themes not problematize a celebration of Southern culture?
Perhaps the very problem here (the privileging of North over South) is the very basis for the author’s selection. Vedanta Desika writes:
Fly to the South.
It has plenty of fantastic temples.
Beatiful sandalwood groves.
It’s the birthplace of peals
And the mother of the Malaya breeze.
Go there and save the life of Janaka’s daughter.
Do it for me.
There’s only one little I should mention:
It’s crawling with Raksasas.
The demons are mentioned almost tangentially, aside from which the verse is laden with images of purity and auspiciousness. Aside from the Raksasas, this appears to be a beautiful and sanctified region. Indeed, one may argue that without the demonization of the South, it, too, would be associated with auspiciousness and purity. Indeed the Ganges flows in the North, but must it be the only source of purity? These cultural tensions may be what the author is addressing. In composing in masterful Sanskrit in order to glorify the South, he demonstrates parity between the two. The goose, in flying Southwards, passes various landscapes, divinities, places of pilgrimage, temples, yogis, etc., all of which are emblematic of purity and auspiciousness. This subverts the notion of Northern superiority or dominance, especially since this southern villager enjoys competent mastery of the Sanskrit language. The author’s linguistic power succeeds here in holding dominion of Sankritic cultural domination.
Indeed Sanskrit provides the author linkage to a “wider literary universe [one encompassing] pan-Indian epics, cosmopolitan and local Sanskrit kŒvya, scientific discourses, and vernacular poetry”, but that wider universe is not accessible in these regional works themselves, nor to their audiences. The authors are aware of the Sanskrit universe, but short-circuit it by emphasizing the regional. Regional Sanskrit works (e.g., Sakala Malla’s Udasa-raghava, Nilakantha Diksita’s Sivalilarnava) are preoccupied with regional features, including metric schemes , syntax, idioms, geography, topography, cultic practice, historic tradition, etc (7) which serve to affirm a local reality. Sanskrit may offer the poetic license to enter the realm of “worldwide potential”, but in emphasizing specifically regional themes, these author consciously refrain from partaking in, and perpetuating, that “universal” domain. I agree with Pollock’s notion that the space crafted by Sanskrit literature was intended “precisely to occlude local differences, or rather, to make the local universally standard” (6). This is how and why these regional poems are different. They employ in the Sanskrit language, but shy away from ‘Sanskrit cosmopolitan culture’. These regional works, after all, were not intended to travel far and wide. As B-S argue regional Sanskrit works are geared towards a local audience, “not meant to travel the length and breath of the cosmopolis”. B-S argue also that Sanskrit served, along with vernaculars, “in the project of inventing and elaborating distinctive regional cultures and identities”. However, these regional identities, once established, succeed in eclipsing the cosmopolitan feature of ‘living’ compositional Sanskrit. Sanskrit serves their culture, they don’t serve Sanskrit culture. They thus effectively collapse the cosmopolis. Such works as these, therefore, are only residual resurrections of ‘living Sanskrit’: The Sanskrit language is not employed here because its supremacy is assumed, but, rather, it is masterfully employed in protest of that linguo-cultural supremacy.
Raj
PS - This was a GORGEOUS poetry. I would love to be able to read it in Sanskrit! Perhaps we can hear some of it in class.
The cloud competes with the goose
Take all those classical poets-from Valmiki on
They came all the way up
To a vast ocean of experience,
The experience that is you,
But they never even dipped their toes.
Compassion: shouldn't you pay me
some attention? I jumped in.
I can't touch bottom,
I'm drowning, and God
Sits there smiling.
They came all the way up
To a vast ocean of experience,
The experience that is you,
But they never even dipped their toes.
Compassion: shouldn't you pay me
some attention? I jumped in.
I can't touch bottom,
I'm drowning, and God
Sits there smiling.
This verse is such a perfect summary of the theme of the paper "Sanskrit in the vernacular millennium. In this paper the authors posit that the life and essence of Sanskrit poetry as far from dead at the end of the first millennium, but rather to have existed through the following centuries in an every more vibrant and vital form than the classical prototypes in poems rooted in the microcosm of cultural regions. Using the justaposition of Kaidasa' Meghasandesa with Venkatanatha's Hamsasandesa "Goose Messenger, Bronner and Shulman craft a precise and impressive agrument for the importance of the deep and subtle poetry of cultural regions. Using subject matter pecific to the everyday banalities of the world they show that through the skill of the poet the ordinary and particular can become transcendent and reach the "universal".
They chose their genre the sandesa-kavya to illustrate their point. This is a superbly skillful choice as this genre became well rooted and developed as it spread to particular cultural areas such as Kerala, were it emerged as distinct regional Sanskrit traditions.
The interplay between the Meghasandesa and the Hamsasandesa highlights how the form and purpose of the poetry speak to each other as aesthetic progression through time. The Hamsansandesa as the response text reflects, but does not copy, depends upon, but goes beyond imitatation of the Meghasandesa and in fact the agenda of the poem is to prove how it superpasses its predecessor. The proof of its superiority is thoroughly and precisely woven into the language of the poem. For example, Kalidasa's Meghasandesa focuses on the poetic imagination and the linguistic and figuative ways of portraying it. In this love messanger poem the cloud is the hero messanger linking the two estranged lovers, as it travels through idealized localities, describing idealized beings. Venkatanatha's response poem challenges the need for idealization to fulfull the poetic imagination and rather relies on the indigenious and the particular as the fuel of expression of the universal. His story returns to Valmilki's Ramayana. He turns Kalidasa's cloud messanger into a goose and rails repeatedly and ceaselessly in both subtle and overt ways against the clouds to make his point of the superiority of his poetry. These very clouds are attacked overtly and invertly (as a metaphor for the poem itself).
Smoke, light, water and wind put together:
what does a cloud have to do with a serious matter?
Venkatanatha establishes that his solid messenger "the goose" is superior to the unstable and transitory cloud by referring back to the first great precedent the Ramayana where Rama approached the goose with great respect. Through this double method of authenticating his own choice of messsanger by aligning himself with Valmiki the divine poet and by undermining the authority of Kalidasa's messenger the dreary and unattractive cloud, Venkatantha cleverly argues himself into the position of the superior poet.
This paper is breathtakingly impressive, it is finely crafted, beautifully clear in the explanation, presentation and illustration of the topic. The argument is finely tuned and explained stanza by stanza to the point that it could be used in a writing course for the "excellent development and explanation of a thesis topic". Through the deconstruction of various stanzas in the Hamsadandesa as a reflection and mirror response to the Meghasandesa a treasure of subtle meaning is revealed. The paper itself reflects how poetry is a fine balance of intellectual and linguistic cleverness and refinement of feeling and sentiment.
Scratching the Surface of the Temporal Goose Hole
I really enjoyed reading Vedanta Desika’s Hamsasandesa. It was a poem full of the rasa for love-in-separation. I thought it was beautifully described and pleasurable to read. Reading the Bronner and Shulman article I was struck with how intricate they believed to poem to be. All the complex fluid temporality was a little over the top, did the author really think about all this? If so it makes a very elaborate poem.It goes along with the belief that there are many layers of enjoyment of aesthetic experience. There is even reference inside the text to this understanding of the difference between an audience of learned experts versus philistines. “No real poet will open his mouth (or beak) for an audience of boors.” (1.47) I always enjoy little verses such as this - so sorry Vedanta Desika if you think we are boors reading your poetry today!
Monday, February 25, 2008
"Sanskrit Fused with the Vernacular"
Bronner and Shulman’s “A Cloud Turned Goose”,\ illustrates how Sanskrit has remained a powerful expressive tool in the second millennium of India, as it interacts with vernaculars (which have their own expressitivity) and is able to transcend regional borders as well. Therefore, they show how the “local” becomes “universal” through this phenomenon and they show how the Hamsasandesa poem illustrates this. These poems are rich with local linguistic materials in which the reader can identify with. These regional Sanskrit poems are thus, not understood in depth by those outside of the region. Does this mean that the outsider is not able to realize the bigger meaning behind these poems? (this being the relationship of God with his lovers who in reality share one universe). How can this poem be universal if all cannot understand it? If it is than has Sanskrit died (Pollock) because it is unable to raise feelings of aesthetic pleasure in any person, but it has to be a specified person? Bronner and Shulman offer a sound argument on the survival of Sanskrit poetry in the second millennium, but it is not as convincing as Pollock’s. When Bronner and Shulman say that Sanskrit has survived through the interaction of it with the vernacular, it seems that they are discussing a different Sanskrit, which has lost its “pureness”. Thus Pollock refers to (I believe) the death of the Sanskrit language that was universal and beyond cultural distinctions. Shulman and Bronner clearly show this exclusion by stating: “such activation anticipates an audience well-versed in and sensitive to the rich intertexts”. (28) This excludes any other individual who remains outside of this context. Therefore, can we say that aesthetic experience is dependent upon context? This interesting to me because when I first read the Hamsasandesa I never got any of the directional, time and space references out of it, which the authors go in depth to explain. Therefore, I was not able to relate to it and hence, I did not get any experience out of the poem.
Interesting enough, Shulman and Bronner also state that “depth” in a poem “reflects the fusion organic fusion of scholar and poet”. (28) Thus, the need to study poetry in order to get something out of it. This is funny because Abhinava totally disregarded this, as the scholar and the study of poetry, was a way of belittling the genius of the poet. The interesting thing here I noticed is the emphasis on rasa in classical Sanskrit poetry and the definitions of the alankara’s have changed according to time and space. The poetic devices that Bronner and Shulman discuss, such as repetition and experience, reflect poetry as we know it today. Does this mean that classical Sanskrit poetry discusses a different aesthetic enjoyment, than poetry in the vernacular Sanskrit? Or that aesthetic theories and experiences no longer existed after Classical Sanskrit? Is localized poetry really universal, if a universal audience remains in the dark in accordance with the meaning? I have a hard time following Bronner’s and Shulman’s argument, I guess its because of the interpretation of Hamsasandesa that they stress, what seemed to be a simple poem in my eyes, turned out to be more complicating than I expected.
Finally, I guess the “language of the Gods” becomes open to other cultures or more inclusive with the incorporation of the vernacular, opening it up to a wider audience. I believe the poets chose Sanskrit because of its classical status and changed it into regional pieces of genius. The poet, in this case Venkatanatha is a genius not only because he created genius poetry, but he created a tradition as well.
Interesting enough, Shulman and Bronner also state that “depth” in a poem “reflects the fusion organic fusion of scholar and poet”. (28) Thus, the need to study poetry in order to get something out of it. This is funny because Abhinava totally disregarded this, as the scholar and the study of poetry, was a way of belittling the genius of the poet. The interesting thing here I noticed is the emphasis on rasa in classical Sanskrit poetry and the definitions of the alankara’s have changed according to time and space. The poetic devices that Bronner and Shulman discuss, such as repetition and experience, reflect poetry as we know it today. Does this mean that classical Sanskrit poetry discusses a different aesthetic enjoyment, than poetry in the vernacular Sanskrit? Or that aesthetic theories and experiences no longer existed after Classical Sanskrit? Is localized poetry really universal, if a universal audience remains in the dark in accordance with the meaning? I have a hard time following Bronner’s and Shulman’s argument, I guess its because of the interpretation of Hamsasandesa that they stress, what seemed to be a simple poem in my eyes, turned out to be more complicating than I expected.
Finally, I guess the “language of the Gods” becomes open to other cultures or more inclusive with the incorporation of the vernacular, opening it up to a wider audience. I believe the poets chose Sanskrit because of its classical status and changed it into regional pieces of genius. The poet, in this case Venkatanatha is a genius not only because he created genius poetry, but he created a tradition as well.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
K.C. Bhattacharyya-the Concept of Rasa and the heirarchy of feeling
In the readings this week I realized that since we have begun this course there are a multiplicity of meanings associated withthe concept of rasa and I began to create a list of the many definitions as they arise in our readings. It quickly became apparent that like Indra's web or a many faceted jewel, the complexity of the concept has given rise to various writers focusing on different facets of this theory of aesthetic enjoyment. Where in Aesthetic Rapture: by Masson/Patwardhan (p 1) in speaking of the important Natyasastra of Bharata (the oldest known Indian work on the theory of literature) they identify the most important chapter in this enormous work as the 6th chapter on rasa defining it as “aesthetic or imaginative experience" and pick the interesting illustration of the subordination of literary perfection to the ability to evoke profound feeling response in artistic work as paramount to its success with the quote:
“We speak, generally of poetry, even where flaws exist, as long as there is clear evidence of rasa just as a jewel does not cease to be a jewel even if a worm bores a small hole into it.”
In the evolution of the understanding of Indian poetics they identify Ananda as using the term camatkara (aesthetic delight) for the first time, a term like many others introduced by Abhinava which later became the field of associated terminology for the tradition, closely linking delight with rasa. They quote Ananda as saying:
“the essence of rasa is aesthetic delight (camatkara) and is found in all the rasas.
Throughout all of the descussions of rasa various qualities of feeling become its descriptive network. And the ability to sensitively experience these feelings by the spectator/reader becomes the touchstone of the success of the endevour. This leads to the intrinsic heirarchy of the audience for Indian poetics, where the audience if minutely defined by the refinement of feeling as the restriction for entering into this rarified world. This paramour of feeling is known as the Sahradya (sensitive reader) whose heart is often said to “melt” (dravati) in the aesthetic response. The greater the ability for sympathetic response the more suitable the person is as the audience for artistic expression.
As Masson and Patwardhan point out that Abhinava attributes this responsiveness only to some people not to all, stating that "Mimamsakas and Vedic scholars are simply not sensitive to literature." and “those people who are capable of identifying with the subject matter, since the mirror of their hearts has been polished through constant recitation and study of poetry and who sympathetically respond in their own hearts are known as sensitive readers (sahrdaya)
In K.C. Bhattacharyya's article "The concept of Rasa" he defines rasa as "artistic enjoyment". stating that “rasa” in Indian Aesthetics signifies the essence of feeling and is to be taken either as "an eternal feeling or as an eternal value that is felt." In the precise and illuminating analysis of the heirarchy of feeling in the response to an artistic work Bhattacharyya specifies what he means by this interpretation of the word rasa in a most remarkable lucid way and ends with some startling comments on the experience of this ultimate purpose of artistic endevour as residing entirely in the skill and refinement of the sahrdaya who is capable of the highest feeling among feelings and subsequently the experience of rasa.
Fundamentaly he defines three types of feelings direct, sympathetic and contemplative. with each the distance between the experiencer and the object increases and allows for an impariality and freedom (from attachment to the object one assumes) and through this rarified distance from the immediate object of pleasure, the object becomes a symbol, an indicator of eternal reality and the ground for the merging of feeling with universal and the highest experience of rasa or enjoyment what Battacharyya refers to as the "universal heart". In this impersonalization the feeling is freed from an object and becomes eternalized.
The final startling conclusion that Battacharyya makes in his analysis of the "experience of beauty" is that any object is capable of becoming beautiful if contemplated from this refined point of view by a being of great power of sensitive feeling. He posits that the interplay between pleasure and pain is simply the relationship between union and affinity as sympathy with the object through feeling. Ugliness he defines as simply separation from the sympathetic response. Fundamentally he states that with the courageous love the feeling of identity and enjoyment may be transmuted to any object thus obliterating all experience of ugliness and pain entirely in terms of the purity and depth of their inherent ability to give joy.
A most remarkable concept that is also reflected in Tantric Buddhism in the ultimate nature of phenomena as luminous, mutable and empty and therefore all ultimately in terms of the nature of phenomena as inherently a creation of mind as of "one taste" all multiplicity being a function of consciousness....interesting parallel.
“We speak, generally of poetry, even where flaws exist, as long as there is clear evidence of rasa just as a jewel does not cease to be a jewel even if a worm bores a small hole into it.”
In the evolution of the understanding of Indian poetics they identify Ananda as using the term camatkara (aesthetic delight) for the first time, a term like many others introduced by Abhinava which later became the field of associated terminology for the tradition, closely linking delight with rasa. They quote Ananda as saying:
“the essence of rasa is aesthetic delight (camatkara) and is found in all the rasas.
Throughout all of the descussions of rasa various qualities of feeling become its descriptive network. And the ability to sensitively experience these feelings by the spectator/reader becomes the touchstone of the success of the endevour. This leads to the intrinsic heirarchy of the audience for Indian poetics, where the audience if minutely defined by the refinement of feeling as the restriction for entering into this rarified world. This paramour of feeling is known as the Sahradya (sensitive reader) whose heart is often said to “melt” (dravati) in the aesthetic response. The greater the ability for sympathetic response the more suitable the person is as the audience for artistic expression.
As Masson and Patwardhan point out that Abhinava attributes this responsiveness only to some people not to all, stating that "Mimamsakas and Vedic scholars are simply not sensitive to literature." and “those people who are capable of identifying with the subject matter, since the mirror of their hearts has been polished through constant recitation and study of poetry and who sympathetically respond in their own hearts are known as sensitive readers (sahrdaya)
In K.C. Bhattacharyya's article "The concept of Rasa" he defines rasa as "artistic enjoyment". stating that “rasa” in Indian Aesthetics signifies the essence of feeling and is to be taken either as "an eternal feeling or as an eternal value that is felt." In the precise and illuminating analysis of the heirarchy of feeling in the response to an artistic work Bhattacharyya specifies what he means by this interpretation of the word rasa in a most remarkable lucid way and ends with some startling comments on the experience of this ultimate purpose of artistic endevour as residing entirely in the skill and refinement of the sahrdaya who is capable of the highest feeling among feelings and subsequently the experience of rasa.
Fundamentaly he defines three types of feelings direct, sympathetic and contemplative. with each the distance between the experiencer and the object increases and allows for an impariality and freedom (from attachment to the object one assumes) and through this rarified distance from the immediate object of pleasure, the object becomes a symbol, an indicator of eternal reality and the ground for the merging of feeling with universal and the highest experience of rasa or enjoyment what Battacharyya refers to as the "universal heart". In this impersonalization the feeling is freed from an object and becomes eternalized.
The final startling conclusion that Battacharyya makes in his analysis of the "experience of beauty" is that any object is capable of becoming beautiful if contemplated from this refined point of view by a being of great power of sensitive feeling. He posits that the interplay between pleasure and pain is simply the relationship between union and affinity as sympathy with the object through feeling. Ugliness he defines as simply separation from the sympathetic response. Fundamentally he states that with the courageous love the feeling of identity and enjoyment may be transmuted to any object thus obliterating all experience of ugliness and pain entirely in terms of the purity and depth of their inherent ability to give joy.
A most remarkable concept that is also reflected in Tantric Buddhism in the ultimate nature of phenomena as luminous, mutable and empty and therefore all ultimately in terms of the nature of phenomena as inherently a creation of mind as of "one taste" all multiplicity being a function of consciousness....interesting parallel.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Rasa: Savour of the Self…?
Some of you may already be aware of the sad fact that I don’t watch movies, neither in the theatres or on television. However, I did succeed in watching one last month. I was babysitting my nieces, Anjali, 7, and Emily, 5. They’re quite the little ladies: fun, charming, smart, cute and full of energy. I had gotten them C.S. Lewis’ “Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” for Christmas, and they quite enjoyed hearing the story (as I remember quite enjoying hearing it as a child). My sister had rented the movie, and Emily insisted I watched it with her. How could I refuse? I was not so concerned with my enjoyment of the film, but was rather eager to facilitate Emily’s. This, for me, is reminiscent of the typology of feeling advanced by K.C. Bhattacaryya, as articulated both by himself (in “The Concept of Rasa”) and by J. N. Mohanty (in “Feelings, Poetics, and Religion”). His classification asserts three essential levels of feeling: primary object feeling, sympathy with object feeling, and sympathy with sympathy. These correspond to three different ways in which consciousness relates with an object. If I may apply this scheme to the experience with Emily, had I held a particular attachment in seeing the movie myself, I would have been engaging in ‘primary object feeling’, where my consciousness (through feeling) would be attached to the object. However, this was not the case. Rather, I was attached to the notion of helping her enjoy the film, and so, this would fall under “sympathy with object feeling”. I sympathized with her enjoyment of the film rather than pursuing my own enjoyment thereof. In order for me to have exhibited level three of Bhattacharyya’s distinction, my sympathy would have had to lie with sympathy itself, without fixating particularly on Emily’s enjoyment, or any other object specifically. Had I ruminated on the carefree joy experienced by children viewing films (without particularly focusing on my own love of the story, or Emily’s), I would have experienced sympathy with sympathy, which Bhattacharyya associates with the experience of rasa. Although I would like more practice applying his theory to practical situations, it quite appeals to me on paper.
I proceeded to watch the movie with the little one in my lap, enjoying her enjoyment at the scenes unfolding. I was happy to be there with her, and I was happy that she was happy. But my mind often drifted -- to my own reading of the book, to Jungian archetypes, to my courses, to classes, to errands needing to be done, etc. However, there was a point in the film where Aslan, the majestic lion, King of Narnia, was sacrificed upon a stone table. I watched intently as the girl-protagonists, Susan and Lucy, cried bitterly, before the corpse of the noble beast. I was totally absorbed in that moment, at the dawn, when the table cracked and that same slain lion was resurrected in actual flesh, the moment when the injustice inherent in his sacrifice succeeded in outweighing even the gravity of death itself. I not only grieved for the death of the lion, not only grieved for the grief of the girls, but I was lost to grief itself. The lion did not matter, the girls did not matter, nor did my own personal experience: all was washed away by waves of grief. In that moment, I forgot my responsibilities, forgot that Emily was on my lap, forgot that I was in my parent’s living room in front of a television set. I was lost in the film. This, I believe, coincides with the experience of rasa.
I have been reflecting on these very concepts pertaining to rasa, particularly as outlined in Section V, “Rasa – Imaginative Experiences”, of J.L. Mason and M.V. Parwardhan “Aesthetic Rapture: The RasŒdhyŒya of the NŒ ya§Œstra” (the tag-team feud instigated by Aklujkar and Gerow against Mason and Parwardhan will not be addressed here; we’ll surely have amply opportunity to do so in class). One of the most intriguing observations included in this reading is that aesthetic experience (e.g., the sorrow generated by the spiteful slaughter of the noble lion) does not latch itself to the concerns of actual space and time. It does not impinge on any ‘actual’ event. It occurs in a dream-like world which is construed of real life elements, but whose constituent aspects (plot, characterizations, props) in no way affect the course of reality. The dramatic action exists somehow insulated form our normal time and space. While watching the scene, I, myself, was not sorrowful, but sorrow was awakened in me. My real-word sequence of events run parallel with the sequence of events in the film, but the agents of sorrow stemmed from the film, not reality, therefore, it could not rightly be said that I was experiencing sorrow, for, my experience was not grounded in any ‘real’ cause. The agents of the grief are not real, but exist only in the dream-world of drama. The Indian literary critics are sure to highlight the distinction between real life causes (karana), and causes giving rise to aesthetic experience (vibhavas-s). They are not the same. A karana gives rise to actual sorrow because it harms the observer in a lasting way. The vibhava only invokes the permanent emotional state (e.g., §oka), but it is itself fleeting, and can inflict no lasting pain or damage to the observer. While experiencing karuöa rasa, one cannot really be grieving, because one has lost nothing. This distancing from the actual causes of sorrow is what affords the relishing of that sorrow, else the observer would be filled with suffering proper. Indeed, I am not sure where my personality self even fits into the whole experience. As the authors write, the spectator does not completely identify with the actor or the character; a certain “aesthetic distance” is retained. Hence the difficulty in assigning as locus to the rasa. My sorrow was not occurring in my personality-self as a result of real-life adversity.
I am very much intrigued by the notion that rasa experiences are similar to religious experiences in that they are inner, subjective, and “liable to evaporate under rigorous questioning”. This sentiment is quite nicely articulated in the following quote: “I respect the person who in the face of great poetry is forced into silence. His visibly thrilled body bears testimony to the intention of the poet which is beyond the reach of words, but which vibrates in his language that overflows with emotion” (26). Although I didn’t have as powerful an experience while watching The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as that, there nevertheless was a moment when I lost track of time, forgot where I was, and indeed, lost myself. If my personality-self was lost to the film, who I wonder, was remaining? In whom, or what, resided the relishing of sorrow? The difficulty of assigning a locus to rasa, confirms, for me, the presence of a transcendental dimension to the experience of rasa. It seems impossible to grapple with issues pertaining to rasa theory without metaphysical import. Not only does the play/film take place in a realm divorced of actual space and time, but it is a realm into which the observer can journey, like the children falling into Narnia at the back of the wardrobe. When one is engaged in the experience of rasa, one is oblivious to the factors that contribute towards the experience (actors, gestures, props, plot sequence, setting, and the like). One seems to become oblivious of ordinary causality. Indeed it is said that time stands still in the presence of great art. But what could this mean? Is this the same timelessness which the mystics purport to experience? Interestingly enough rasa is not subject to our will. We cannot merely will it to occur. We must be carried away, but by what? It cannot stem from the aspect of self which exercises will, nor in the aspect which perceives time and space. What is left? In rasa, where are we, when are we, indeed, who are we? The more deeply I reflect upon the nature, origin, and locus of rasa, the more of a parallel I see between Rasa Theory and Heidegger’s Poetic Dwelling, particularly insofar as both schools of thought impinge upon conceptions of human selfhood. So much does this parallel appeal to me that I am dangerously toying with the idea of exploring this connection for my term paper. It would be challenging, but rewarding I think to explore this potential relation. Please, somebody talk me out if it. The quote above speaks about the association between the aesthetic experience and silence, and in so doing notions of the ineffable, the numinous, the sublime, the mystical do not seem to be far-fetched. I wish to close with a line from English Romantic poet John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (for fellow poetry nerd, the poem in may be found in its entirety at the link below). The work itself reflects upon an object of beauty, an ancient urn, itself timeless, serving as an apt symbol for the timeless relishing of its beauty. The poem culminates in Keats timeless stanza, which, is phrased as a message from the urn itself, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Thanks for reading,
Raj
http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html
I proceeded to watch the movie with the little one in my lap, enjoying her enjoyment at the scenes unfolding. I was happy to be there with her, and I was happy that she was happy. But my mind often drifted -- to my own reading of the book, to Jungian archetypes, to my courses, to classes, to errands needing to be done, etc. However, there was a point in the film where Aslan, the majestic lion, King of Narnia, was sacrificed upon a stone table. I watched intently as the girl-protagonists, Susan and Lucy, cried bitterly, before the corpse of the noble beast. I was totally absorbed in that moment, at the dawn, when the table cracked and that same slain lion was resurrected in actual flesh, the moment when the injustice inherent in his sacrifice succeeded in outweighing even the gravity of death itself. I not only grieved for the death of the lion, not only grieved for the grief of the girls, but I was lost to grief itself. The lion did not matter, the girls did not matter, nor did my own personal experience: all was washed away by waves of grief. In that moment, I forgot my responsibilities, forgot that Emily was on my lap, forgot that I was in my parent’s living room in front of a television set. I was lost in the film. This, I believe, coincides with the experience of rasa.
I have been reflecting on these very concepts pertaining to rasa, particularly as outlined in Section V, “Rasa – Imaginative Experiences”, of J.L. Mason and M.V. Parwardhan “Aesthetic Rapture: The RasŒdhyŒya of the NŒ ya§Œstra” (the tag-team feud instigated by Aklujkar and Gerow against Mason and Parwardhan will not be addressed here; we’ll surely have amply opportunity to do so in class). One of the most intriguing observations included in this reading is that aesthetic experience (e.g., the sorrow generated by the spiteful slaughter of the noble lion) does not latch itself to the concerns of actual space and time. It does not impinge on any ‘actual’ event. It occurs in a dream-like world which is construed of real life elements, but whose constituent aspects (plot, characterizations, props) in no way affect the course of reality. The dramatic action exists somehow insulated form our normal time and space. While watching the scene, I, myself, was not sorrowful, but sorrow was awakened in me. My real-word sequence of events run parallel with the sequence of events in the film, but the agents of sorrow stemmed from the film, not reality, therefore, it could not rightly be said that I was experiencing sorrow, for, my experience was not grounded in any ‘real’ cause. The agents of the grief are not real, but exist only in the dream-world of drama. The Indian literary critics are sure to highlight the distinction between real life causes (karana), and causes giving rise to aesthetic experience (vibhavas-s). They are not the same. A karana gives rise to actual sorrow because it harms the observer in a lasting way. The vibhava only invokes the permanent emotional state (e.g., §oka), but it is itself fleeting, and can inflict no lasting pain or damage to the observer. While experiencing karuöa rasa, one cannot really be grieving, because one has lost nothing. This distancing from the actual causes of sorrow is what affords the relishing of that sorrow, else the observer would be filled with suffering proper. Indeed, I am not sure where my personality self even fits into the whole experience. As the authors write, the spectator does not completely identify with the actor or the character; a certain “aesthetic distance” is retained. Hence the difficulty in assigning as locus to the rasa. My sorrow was not occurring in my personality-self as a result of real-life adversity.
I am very much intrigued by the notion that rasa experiences are similar to religious experiences in that they are inner, subjective, and “liable to evaporate under rigorous questioning”. This sentiment is quite nicely articulated in the following quote: “I respect the person who in the face of great poetry is forced into silence. His visibly thrilled body bears testimony to the intention of the poet which is beyond the reach of words, but which vibrates in his language that overflows with emotion” (26). Although I didn’t have as powerful an experience while watching The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as that, there nevertheless was a moment when I lost track of time, forgot where I was, and indeed, lost myself. If my personality-self was lost to the film, who I wonder, was remaining? In whom, or what, resided the relishing of sorrow? The difficulty of assigning a locus to rasa, confirms, for me, the presence of a transcendental dimension to the experience of rasa. It seems impossible to grapple with issues pertaining to rasa theory without metaphysical import. Not only does the play/film take place in a realm divorced of actual space and time, but it is a realm into which the observer can journey, like the children falling into Narnia at the back of the wardrobe. When one is engaged in the experience of rasa, one is oblivious to the factors that contribute towards the experience (actors, gestures, props, plot sequence, setting, and the like). One seems to become oblivious of ordinary causality. Indeed it is said that time stands still in the presence of great art. But what could this mean? Is this the same timelessness which the mystics purport to experience? Interestingly enough rasa is not subject to our will. We cannot merely will it to occur. We must be carried away, but by what? It cannot stem from the aspect of self which exercises will, nor in the aspect which perceives time and space. What is left? In rasa, where are we, when are we, indeed, who are we? The more deeply I reflect upon the nature, origin, and locus of rasa, the more of a parallel I see between Rasa Theory and Heidegger’s Poetic Dwelling, particularly insofar as both schools of thought impinge upon conceptions of human selfhood. So much does this parallel appeal to me that I am dangerously toying with the idea of exploring this connection for my term paper. It would be challenging, but rewarding I think to explore this potential relation. Please, somebody talk me out if it. The quote above speaks about the association between the aesthetic experience and silence, and in so doing notions of the ineffable, the numinous, the sublime, the mystical do not seem to be far-fetched. I wish to close with a line from English Romantic poet John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (for fellow poetry nerd, the poem in may be found in its entirety at the link below). The work itself reflects upon an object of beauty, an ancient urn, itself timeless, serving as an apt symbol for the timeless relishing of its beauty. The poem culminates in Keats timeless stanza, which, is phrased as a message from the urn itself, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Thanks for reading,
Raj
http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html
Creating Drama: the life of an academic.
The set up for this week’s readings was very interesting and informative for how the tradition of literary criticism continues today - illustrating that the practice of commentaries will not die anytime soon. We look back at these old texts and see the commentaries below them, but if we look at our own scholarly world one realizes that all the book reviews and many articles are following the same format – taking what has already been said and either bringing it down with all their might, or trying to decipher what exactly was being said.
I actually quite liked the first reading “Aethetic Rapture”- it was full of interesting biographical information (ex. pg. 5) and little things that made me smile. There was a fantastic selection of quotes throughout this reading. Particularly on pg. 37 involving love from the BhNS. I would like to comment of the same quote Antonia concluded her blog with, possibly because it is the best quote I have ever read.
“Most people always want happiness. And women, of infinite variety, are the source of happiness.”
“One practices austerities for the sake of religion. And after all, we are (only) concerned with religion because we want to be happy. The source of happiness is women, and we want to make love to them.” (from somewhere in the BhNS - found in MP pg. 37)
I would love to see where this came from originally, unfortunately we do not have the end notes, but I intend to look it up. Basically the only reason one does austerities (and, well, “one” obviously refers to men only...) is because they really want to make love to women! Does this comment not make religion void because women are the only true path to happiness? Sex is the only true religion, apparently! Therefore there is no reason to practice austerities.
Masson and Patwardhan mention how Abhinava believed that “poetry should be enjoyed, it should not be studies. Abhinava has nothing but scorn for the purely “intellectual” pursuit of poetry, for the curse of the academies.” (pg. 20) I wonder how this could be true. Does not Abhinava spend a great deal of time studying poetry? If he just simply enjoyed it I am sure he would not have written the commentaries he has. If we all simply enjoyed poetry would literary criticism exist as a discipline? It could be argues that we need the fleshing out and the over analysing of the poetry to truly understand the work, and thus appreciate it. But it often become an over analysis. Part of enjoying poetry for yourself is to interpret how you feel it should be interpreted. Not write long commentaries on how it must be interpreted!
I was entertained when they described the Dhvanyaloka as “more often that [sic] not it deals with the theme of a woman trying to make a traveller understand that she wants to sleep with him.”(pg. 7) (This illustrates the Gerow and Aklujkar critique of spelling errors!!) Masson and Patwardhan do not appear to be the greatest fans of poor Ananda – nor of the discipline of literary criticism. This might be an explanation for why there were so many mistakes in the article. I seriously wonder why two people who do not appear to like over analysis attempt to become specialists in over analysis! Maybe someone should over analyse this conundrum.
__
Even though I was entertained by this reading - and was able to think to myself “hmmm, strange” a few times about what was being said - I obviously do not have such a knowledge in this material to have picked out all the apparently horrible mistakes that were in this reading. Luckily we have Gerow and Aklujkar’s article to shine light on all the mistakes. It is indeed amazing that so many mistakes could have passed, why was this book written in such haste, and with so many biases present.
I know Dr. Aklujkar well, he was my first Sanskrit professor and the person who first introduced me to Indian philosophy and literature – he is actually the reason I am here now! - so reading this harsh criticism was funny because he is the nicest, sweetest man ever!
Antonia mentioned she was surprised this was published. But it is important for something of this nature to be published as many people would just take what was being said, nod their heads saying “oh ok” and not question things. People have biases, people have opinions - it is so hard to know what is actually correct, who to actually trust. Especially, when one does not have such a vast background knowledge in the topic at hand.
A similar structure is found with the second set of articles for this week’s readings. K.C. Bhattacharyya’s article was an interesting discussion fleshing out rasa theory even further – it appears as though this theory can be discussed until the end of time! It contains a good description of rasa and it was interesting to have an account of what is considered beauty and ugliness. Mohanty’s presentation paper discussed the previous article, yet in a much less aggressive light compared to Gerow and Aklujkar’s article!
I actually quite liked the first reading “Aethetic Rapture”- it was full of interesting biographical information (ex. pg. 5) and little things that made me smile. There was a fantastic selection of quotes throughout this reading. Particularly on pg. 37 involving love from the BhNS. I would like to comment of the same quote Antonia concluded her blog with, possibly because it is the best quote I have ever read.
“Most people always want happiness. And women, of infinite variety, are the source of happiness.”
“One practices austerities for the sake of religion. And after all, we are (only) concerned with religion because we want to be happy. The source of happiness is women, and we want to make love to them.” (from somewhere in the BhNS - found in MP pg. 37)
I would love to see where this came from originally, unfortunately we do not have the end notes, but I intend to look it up. Basically the only reason one does austerities (and, well, “one” obviously refers to men only...) is because they really want to make love to women! Does this comment not make religion void because women are the only true path to happiness? Sex is the only true religion, apparently! Therefore there is no reason to practice austerities.
Masson and Patwardhan mention how Abhinava believed that “poetry should be enjoyed, it should not be studies. Abhinava has nothing but scorn for the purely “intellectual” pursuit of poetry, for the curse of the academies.” (pg. 20) I wonder how this could be true. Does not Abhinava spend a great deal of time studying poetry? If he just simply enjoyed it I am sure he would not have written the commentaries he has. If we all simply enjoyed poetry would literary criticism exist as a discipline? It could be argues that we need the fleshing out and the over analysing of the poetry to truly understand the work, and thus appreciate it. But it often become an over analysis. Part of enjoying poetry for yourself is to interpret how you feel it should be interpreted. Not write long commentaries on how it must be interpreted!
I was entertained when they described the Dhvanyaloka as “more often that [sic] not it deals with the theme of a woman trying to make a traveller understand that she wants to sleep with him.”(pg. 7) (This illustrates the Gerow and Aklujkar critique of spelling errors!!) Masson and Patwardhan do not appear to be the greatest fans of poor Ananda – nor of the discipline of literary criticism. This might be an explanation for why there were so many mistakes in the article. I seriously wonder why two people who do not appear to like over analysis attempt to become specialists in over analysis! Maybe someone should over analyse this conundrum.
__
Even though I was entertained by this reading - and was able to think to myself “hmmm, strange” a few times about what was being said - I obviously do not have such a knowledge in this material to have picked out all the apparently horrible mistakes that were in this reading. Luckily we have Gerow and Aklujkar’s article to shine light on all the mistakes. It is indeed amazing that so many mistakes could have passed, why was this book written in such haste, and with so many biases present.
I know Dr. Aklujkar well, he was my first Sanskrit professor and the person who first introduced me to Indian philosophy and literature – he is actually the reason I am here now! - so reading this harsh criticism was funny because he is the nicest, sweetest man ever!
Antonia mentioned she was surprised this was published. But it is important for something of this nature to be published as many people would just take what was being said, nod their heads saying “oh ok” and not question things. People have biases, people have opinions - it is so hard to know what is actually correct, who to actually trust. Especially, when one does not have such a vast background knowledge in the topic at hand.
A similar structure is found with the second set of articles for this week’s readings. K.C. Bhattacharyya’s article was an interesting discussion fleshing out rasa theory even further – it appears as though this theory can be discussed until the end of time! It contains a good description of rasa and it was interesting to have an account of what is considered beauty and ugliness. Mohanty’s presentation paper discussed the previous article, yet in a much less aggressive light compared to Gerow and Aklujkar’s article!
Monday, February 11, 2008
Rasa Revisited
This week’s readings highlighted some of the issues that we discussed over the past couple of weeks, regarding rasa. There are a few things that particularly stood out. The first thing I would like to discuss is the question we left open at the ending of last week’s class. Professor Rao asked if theories such as rasa and dhvani can be applied to “western” religions. Upon doing the readings I realized that it would be a very difficult task. This is because of more than one concept. The most prominent is this idea of religious experience. Not only does this imply that rasa imposes karma, through the idea of refining emotions, but also the idea that an aesthetic experience would have to be one that is culturally shared. More specifically, in “Aesthetic Rapture”, the author argues that “nothing in the real world happens or is affected” (24), adding to the fact that whatever happens in the drama is a reenactment of what happened in the past. This not only culturally assumes that one believe in karma or numerous lives, but also assumes that this experience of rasa is culturally understood. In other words, even though the author does make clear that rasa is individually experienced, the elaborate work that has been done to explain rasa alludes to the idea that one must understand societal conventions in order to fully grasp this idea of rasa. This is seen through the fact that Rama’s characteristics must be understood fully by both the actor and audience in order to eventually transcend one’s own personality.
This on its own is very problematic. On the one hand religious experience is understood and explained through rasa, but then on the other hand how can the irrational such as ones experiences and emotions be fully comprehendible to the point of an aesthetic experience? I guess this is why the author points out that post-Abhinava a lot of commentators were silenced.
Another interesting point that was reiterated through our readings on the rasa theory was the idea of the theory starting out as the foundation, and then later commentators such as Abhinava building or refining this foundation. Much like a building needs exact measurements, it is very interesting to see how rasa theory needs much refining to make it understandable. What would be fascinating to know, is how Abhinava was able to filter out this theory as already existing in art, and how the rasa theory was understood by those who were “awed” by Abhinava’s intelligence.
This idea of multiplicity of the rasa’s refined to one rasa highlighted in “On Santa Rasa in Sanskrit Poetics” is another theme that I found particularly interested in. The author states, “just as Brahman is the one real basis of all apparent multiplicity”. In this regard, the author shows how love is the one real basis of all the other apparent feelings. However, as the rasa theory makes clear the experiencing of multiplicity must happen before the experiencing of oneness/truth/ love. Therefore, it is only through the experiencing of these emotions that one is able to refine or transcend these emotions to experience the true rasa of love. One can agree with this argument on the basis of dualism. The idea is that one cannot know pleasure unless they have experienced pain. In this regard one is able to know the exact understandings of what each stand for.
On the contrary, definitions are socially created and one knows without touching the stove, that it is extremely hot. In this instance, the idea of multiplicity is discredited and the emotions experienced are not other worldly but instead worldly.
I guess the more readings you do on Rasa does make the subject matter more understandable, but at the same time more confusing.
This on its own is very problematic. On the one hand religious experience is understood and explained through rasa, but then on the other hand how can the irrational such as ones experiences and emotions be fully comprehendible to the point of an aesthetic experience? I guess this is why the author points out that post-Abhinava a lot of commentators were silenced.
Another interesting point that was reiterated through our readings on the rasa theory was the idea of the theory starting out as the foundation, and then later commentators such as Abhinava building or refining this foundation. Much like a building needs exact measurements, it is very interesting to see how rasa theory needs much refining to make it understandable. What would be fascinating to know, is how Abhinava was able to filter out this theory as already existing in art, and how the rasa theory was understood by those who were “awed” by Abhinava’s intelligence.
This idea of multiplicity of the rasa’s refined to one rasa highlighted in “On Santa Rasa in Sanskrit Poetics” is another theme that I found particularly interested in. The author states, “just as Brahman is the one real basis of all apparent multiplicity”. In this regard, the author shows how love is the one real basis of all the other apparent feelings. However, as the rasa theory makes clear the experiencing of multiplicity must happen before the experiencing of oneness/truth/ love. Therefore, it is only through the experiencing of these emotions that one is able to refine or transcend these emotions to experience the true rasa of love. One can agree with this argument on the basis of dualism. The idea is that one cannot know pleasure unless they have experienced pain. In this regard one is able to know the exact understandings of what each stand for.
On the contrary, definitions are socially created and one knows without touching the stove, that it is extremely hot. In this instance, the idea of multiplicity is discredited and the emotions experienced are not other worldly but instead worldly.
I guess the more readings you do on Rasa does make the subject matter more understandable, but at the same time more confusing.
Rasa as Emotion and Feeling
This weeks readings discussed the fine details of rasa and its relation to religious experience. Aesthetic Rupture, specifically explored Abhinava’s views on the concept rasa, and noteworthy to mention praises his genius along with other Sanskrit scholars versed in poetics. Gerow and Aklujkar discuss the concept of santa rasa and its position in rasa theory as a concept forced into the existing function of the term rather than reconstituting a novel reinterpretation of rasa. Santa rasa as they (Gerow and Aklujkar) state is "the single inner reality brought out, but not created, by the dramatic multiplicity which informs it." (82) Therefore, it is like Brahman, the one real basis of all multiplicity. In contrast, "The Concept of Rasa" illustrates that the aesthetic enjoyment one obtains from art does not assume or speculate any religious suggestions, that it is a feeling aroused in the individual, dependent upon their feelings. Thus, very interestingly the article refers to the Universalism of the human heart, as it is the one source that each person has in common when experiencing aesthetic enjoyment. In "Feeling, Poetics and Religion" Mohanty outlines a religious philosophy based on feeling.
What I find interesting about this weeks reading is the heavy emphasis on feelings and emotions (categories that are usually controversial in the study of religion). The concept of rasa itself is void of scientific reason. How do we know if we have had an aesthetic experience if it is that which is beyond words? If there is nothing that validates an aesthetic experience how can we speak of it in such detail? Since experiences are different according to each individual, and cannot really be tested how do we measure this experience? I believe that the rasa experience is irrational because it is that beyond words, but the initial feeling or emotion that the spectator receives can be discussed rationally. For example, Love experience is a Universal emotion that can be understood across boundaries, as we have all felt this in our lifetime, however the way that the spectator experiences love by relishing upon it transcends the universal notion of love and it becomes something that is irrational or unexplainable. In other words the bhavas are Universal, but the feelings that they arise in the form of rasa is beyond this universalism. (I hope this makes sense)
Interesting enough while reading these articles passion plays crossed my mind. These plays are art representations that I believe reflect the concept of rasa. Patwardhan states: "rasa is meant to mean emotion, this is not an objective thing in the real world it is a private experience." (16, on the margins) Thus, the spectator is overcome by sensitivity, which is in turn aided by the vibhavas. Passion plays strive to accomplish a similar aesthetic experience as the spectator, as a result of viewing these plays, is overcome with a relished emotion. I guess Passion plays create an atmosphere where rasa can be viewed as rational, as did the theatrical re-enactments of the Ramayana. As stated in last weeks and this weeks reading the rasa of compassion is usually what is conveyed. Perhaps these passion plays started to become more and more centered on the idea of God, and as a result aesthetic experience became religious experience.
What I find interesting about this weeks reading is the heavy emphasis on feelings and emotions (categories that are usually controversial in the study of religion). The concept of rasa itself is void of scientific reason. How do we know if we have had an aesthetic experience if it is that which is beyond words? If there is nothing that validates an aesthetic experience how can we speak of it in such detail? Since experiences are different according to each individual, and cannot really be tested how do we measure this experience? I believe that the rasa experience is irrational because it is that beyond words, but the initial feeling or emotion that the spectator receives can be discussed rationally. For example, Love experience is a Universal emotion that can be understood across boundaries, as we have all felt this in our lifetime, however the way that the spectator experiences love by relishing upon it transcends the universal notion of love and it becomes something that is irrational or unexplainable. In other words the bhavas are Universal, but the feelings that they arise in the form of rasa is beyond this universalism. (I hope this makes sense)
Interesting enough while reading these articles passion plays crossed my mind. These plays are art representations that I believe reflect the concept of rasa. Patwardhan states: "rasa is meant to mean emotion, this is not an objective thing in the real world it is a private experience." (16, on the margins) Thus, the spectator is overcome by sensitivity, which is in turn aided by the vibhavas. Passion plays strive to accomplish a similar aesthetic experience as the spectator, as a result of viewing these plays, is overcome with a relished emotion. I guess Passion plays create an atmosphere where rasa can be viewed as rational, as did the theatrical re-enactments of the Ramayana. As stated in last weeks and this weeks reading the rasa of compassion is usually what is conveyed. Perhaps these passion plays started to become more and more centered on the idea of God, and as a result aesthetic experience became religious experience.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
The role of social context in Saskrit poetics
You’re free to go wandering, holy man.
The little dog was killed today
by the fierce lion making its lair
in the thicket on the banks of the Goda river.
Sheldon Pollock's article "Social Aesthetic and Sanskrit Literary Theory" makes some very insightful points regarding the social fabric as a crucial source for understanding the subtle and complex meanings in Sanskrit poetry. In this self sufficient quatrain that stands without any other context for explanation he details the historical interpretation through centuries of peotic theorists. Beginning with Anandavardhana in his Dhavanayaloka where he introduces the subtle theory of the analysis of dhvani aesthetic suggestion a theory that writers used as the basis for further theory and aesthetic analysis for hundred of years.
Pollocks article however highlights the fact that dispite the remarkable intricacy and subtlety of his theory one important area, that of social discourse, crucial to the theory of suggestion was almost entirely overlooked. Fundamental to the understanding of the implicit meaning (and the true significance) which is inseperable from social context. For example in the above poem the vastudhavani, commands and prohibitions [where the command is in fact a prohibition] the knowledge of the society, its mores and social conventions are the key to understanding the meaning of the contradiction and is not accessible to anyone unfamiliar with the social conventions traditionalized in Prakrit poetry.
These social complexities are clearly described by Pollock by an historical summary of the confusion in interpretation of this poem through the explanation of some of the most prominent Sanskrit poetic theorists through many centuries. To begin he clarifies that in the poem itself there is nothing to tell us this is a woman speaking, that the thicket is a place of rendezvous, that the point of the vers is to keep the mendicant away or any explanation why a lion would be less threatening than a dog.
Based on Anandavardhana's premise other interpretations followed such as Abhinavagupta, Anada's commentator who claimed "these are the words of a certain woman spoken in order to save a trysting place...fromthe intrusions of a mendicant...His waling in that place is a natural activity that has been inhibited by fear of a dog." Abhinava's contemporary Bhoja explains the difference between the implied and implicit meaning as "you are free to wander" is explicit, a prohibition is understood: 'There is a lion in that thicket and since you are afraid even of a dog, don't go there.' The prohibition implies the speaker's rendevous with someone in the thicket by the river' and is understood by the reader.
Mahimabhatta of the next generation of theorists explained more fully in his Vyaktiviveka tht eh logical procedures of inference are entirely adequate to explain the phenomenon of suggestion ant that therefore dhvani was unnecessary. He explains 'A certain woman, hungry for the sweet pleasure of undisturbed lovemaking, has made a rendezvous with some lucky fellow in a deserted forest spot alive with bees attracted by the sweet smelling flowers. There is an ascetic who wanders there to pick the flowers and she percieves his coming to her spot as an impediment to her plans. Being clever, she acts like a simple girl in mentioning to him only the absence of any reason to fear through the death of the dog-though of course she knows full well that lions are vicious creatures-in hope of giving him some good news. And thus by means of a command she brings about a prohibition of his wandering (leaving the issue of where all this knowledge was derived from unsolved).
In Hemacandra (ca 1175) in his Kavyanausasana he interprets the poem as "A certain loose woman is always leaving her house, under the pretext of fetching water fromthe river, in order to meet her lover in a thicket on the bank of the Godavari river. She regards a mendicant as an obstacle inthat he destroys the thicket by gathering flowers [for his worship]. And though she is a clever woman she speaks here like an ingenue: "the dog" that used to harass you whenever you entered our compound was careless and to our good fortune was 'killed" or slaughtered today by "the" well known fierce lion...the lion will not bother you here [in the village] since it is "making its liar" or constantly staying in a thicket on the banks of the Godavari. You may therefore continue to wander without worry...
Here the prohibition is that the mendicant may go to one place but not another a dicussion carried out later by Kamalakara in the 17th c.
All of these examples of historical interpretation are used by Pollock to build his argument for the importance, relevance and necessity to reestablish the importance of social context for the discovery of the true meaning in Sanskrit poetics. Even with the detailed breakdown of the theory of pragmatics such as tone of voice, time, place, persons and so on we are still missing the source of the context in which the poem was rooted. An understanding of the culture through this social context is essential to understand the implied meaning of the verse.
In conclusion on this topic Pollock makes two interesting points. One that despite the great sophistication of the poetic theories in regard to revealing the mechanisms of implication and suggestion they do not make available the information necessary to understand them. In other words regardless of the complexity the pure theory of language such as vrtti offered by Ananda, what is missing is social particulars that would explain what is socially meant in this time and place by the thicket, the illicit rendevous, the attitude in this society towards adultery and so on. It is in terms of this larger social world with its gender pardigms for exampla it was only the woman who organizes adultery therefore the female voice as trickster that the reader becomes the "insider" and confidant of the speaker and the satisfaction of knowing the implied meaning is discovered. This understanding is located in the "permanence predictability the common-sense of the social world that is made all the more permanent, predictable and commonsensical through the poetry."
The final interesting and perhaps debatable point that Pollock makes is that for readers like Ananda the sphere of social or literary convention was one they inhabited too deeply to see." The poetry was understandable through that world but it is a world occluded to theory because it is too far inside consciousness to be rendered an object of consciousness. That literary suggestion is social and sequesters the social from critical inspection. It is on this last point that I would suggest a rousing debate could take place. Particularly in the modern world of intense self analysis and disection of our social and cultural mores it seems almost cavalier to dismiss this area of reality from a fruitful analysis of its parts to derive details of specific characteristics of this society, its values and practices that would lend even greater sophistication to the poetic theory.
The little dog was killed today
by the fierce lion making its lair
in the thicket on the banks of the Goda river.
Sheldon Pollock's article "Social Aesthetic and Sanskrit Literary Theory" makes some very insightful points regarding the social fabric as a crucial source for understanding the subtle and complex meanings in Sanskrit poetry. In this self sufficient quatrain that stands without any other context for explanation he details the historical interpretation through centuries of peotic theorists. Beginning with Anandavardhana in his Dhavanayaloka where he introduces the subtle theory of the analysis of dhvani aesthetic suggestion a theory that writers used as the basis for further theory and aesthetic analysis for hundred of years.
Pollocks article however highlights the fact that dispite the remarkable intricacy and subtlety of his theory one important area, that of social discourse, crucial to the theory of suggestion was almost entirely overlooked. Fundamental to the understanding of the implicit meaning (and the true significance) which is inseperable from social context. For example in the above poem the vastudhavani, commands and prohibitions [where the command is in fact a prohibition] the knowledge of the society, its mores and social conventions are the key to understanding the meaning of the contradiction and is not accessible to anyone unfamiliar with the social conventions traditionalized in Prakrit poetry.
These social complexities are clearly described by Pollock by an historical summary of the confusion in interpretation of this poem through the explanation of some of the most prominent Sanskrit poetic theorists through many centuries. To begin he clarifies that in the poem itself there is nothing to tell us this is a woman speaking, that the thicket is a place of rendezvous, that the point of the vers is to keep the mendicant away or any explanation why a lion would be less threatening than a dog.
Based on Anandavardhana's premise other interpretations followed such as Abhinavagupta, Anada's commentator who claimed "these are the words of a certain woman spoken in order to save a trysting place...fromthe intrusions of a mendicant...His waling in that place is a natural activity that has been inhibited by fear of a dog." Abhinava's contemporary Bhoja explains the difference between the implied and implicit meaning as "you are free to wander" is explicit, a prohibition is understood: 'There is a lion in that thicket and since you are afraid even of a dog, don't go there.' The prohibition implies the speaker's rendevous with someone in the thicket by the river' and is understood by the reader.
Mahimabhatta of the next generation of theorists explained more fully in his Vyaktiviveka tht eh logical procedures of inference are entirely adequate to explain the phenomenon of suggestion ant that therefore dhvani was unnecessary. He explains 'A certain woman, hungry for the sweet pleasure of undisturbed lovemaking, has made a rendezvous with some lucky fellow in a deserted forest spot alive with bees attracted by the sweet smelling flowers. There is an ascetic who wanders there to pick the flowers and she percieves his coming to her spot as an impediment to her plans. Being clever, she acts like a simple girl in mentioning to him only the absence of any reason to fear through the death of the dog-though of course she knows full well that lions are vicious creatures-in hope of giving him some good news. And thus by means of a command she brings about a prohibition of his wandering (leaving the issue of where all this knowledge was derived from unsolved).
In Hemacandra (ca 1175) in his Kavyanausasana he interprets the poem as "A certain loose woman is always leaving her house, under the pretext of fetching water fromthe river, in order to meet her lover in a thicket on the bank of the Godavari river. She regards a mendicant as an obstacle inthat he destroys the thicket by gathering flowers [for his worship]. And though she is a clever woman she speaks here like an ingenue: "the dog" that used to harass you whenever you entered our compound was careless and to our good fortune was 'killed" or slaughtered today by "the" well known fierce lion...the lion will not bother you here [in the village] since it is "making its liar" or constantly staying in a thicket on the banks of the Godavari. You may therefore continue to wander without worry...
Here the prohibition is that the mendicant may go to one place but not another a dicussion carried out later by Kamalakara in the 17th c.
All of these examples of historical interpretation are used by Pollock to build his argument for the importance, relevance and necessity to reestablish the importance of social context for the discovery of the true meaning in Sanskrit poetics. Even with the detailed breakdown of the theory of pragmatics such as tone of voice, time, place, persons and so on we are still missing the source of the context in which the poem was rooted. An understanding of the culture through this social context is essential to understand the implied meaning of the verse.
In conclusion on this topic Pollock makes two interesting points. One that despite the great sophistication of the poetic theories in regard to revealing the mechanisms of implication and suggestion they do not make available the information necessary to understand them. In other words regardless of the complexity the pure theory of language such as vrtti offered by Ananda, what is missing is social particulars that would explain what is socially meant in this time and place by the thicket, the illicit rendevous, the attitude in this society towards adultery and so on. It is in terms of this larger social world with its gender pardigms for exampla it was only the woman who organizes adultery therefore the female voice as trickster that the reader becomes the "insider" and confidant of the speaker and the satisfaction of knowing the implied meaning is discovered. This understanding is located in the "permanence predictability the common-sense of the social world that is made all the more permanent, predictable and commonsensical through the poetry."
The final interesting and perhaps debatable point that Pollock makes is that for readers like Ananda the sphere of social or literary convention was one they inhabited too deeply to see." The poetry was understandable through that world but it is a world occluded to theory because it is too far inside consciousness to be rendered an object of consciousness. That literary suggestion is social and sequesters the social from critical inspection. It is on this last point that I would suggest a rousing debate could take place. Particularly in the modern world of intense self analysis and disection of our social and cultural mores it seems almost cavalier to dismiss this area of reality from a fruitful analysis of its parts to derive details of specific characteristics of this society, its values and practices that would lend even greater sophistication to the poetic theory.
The Moral of the Story, the Story of the Moral: A Meditation on Bhoja’s Contribution to Sanskrit Literary Theory
Pollock, in his essay, “The Social Aesthetic and Sanskrit Literary Theory” explores the extent to which one can viably resuscitate “the social” from the remains of Sanskrit literature and literary theory (199). By social, Pollock refers to a sphere whereby social and moral are unified (197). Pollock here problematizes the notion that Shastra alone is the domain of instruction, while Literature, in contrast, is regarded as a “form of abstraction from, even transcendence of, the social by way of aesthetic self-transcendence” (198). According to this view, teaching is not the aim of literature. Pollock writes that “in the same way that literary theory itself now became less prescriptive about the writing process and more descriptive about the reading process, the notion of rasa was radically displaced from text to reader” (198). In other words, forget about the extent to which the text embodies the experience of the author: how, rather does the reader experience the text? Pollock proceeds to outline the influence of the Kashmiri commentarial tradition (850-1050 CE) - e.g., Anandavardhana, Abhvanagupta – by treating dhvani and rasabhasa. It is here where we get the idea that aesthetics is about experience rather than instruction. However, I wonder, to what extent may we regard these commentators and literary theorist as representative of Sanskrit readership as a whole? I suppose we have little choice but to heavily consider the thoughts of these commentators, since the opinions of the non-commentating readership remains unknown to us. I wish to focus this entry on the third and final section of Sheldon Pollock’s essay, “Moral Passion”, where he specifically addresses Bhoja’s Srngaprakasa. Pollock, by invoking Bhoja, demonstrates the extent to which Sanskrit literature’s purpose is a didactic and therefore indicative of "the social".
For Bhoja, a literary work involves a “connected series of sentences that make an episode, a connected series of episodes that make a total meaning, and a total meaning that makes a moral argument” (218). The overall aesthetic impact of a work, then, for Bhoja at least, stems from an “elimination of faults” which occurs as a result of avoiding impropriety. In the case of the object of my study, the Ramayana, this is overwhelmingly clear: act like Rama, not like Ravana. But I wonder whether or not the didactic element is merely a substratum of its aesthetic appeal. If all Sanskrit literature is equally didactic – that is, centered around advancing and preserving certain values – then why does the Ramayana so stand out in this regard? Wouldn’t other works be celebrated in a similar fashion? Why is this tale the didactic example of all literature, according to Bhoja, is crafted explicitly with social values in mind? I’m not sure what to make of this, though is seems true in the examples that Bhoja/Pollock give, e.g., Nirosadasaratha (Faultless Dasaratha), Bhavabhuti’s Mahaviracarita, Bhatta Narayana’s Venisamhara, Harivamsa, and Kalidasa’s Sakuntala (219).
I am also very intrigued by Bhoja’s original contribution to literary theory, particularly that all of the stable moods (and associated rasa) stem from the erotic impulse, i.e., srngara, passion. Ok, let’s think about this. The eight sthayibhavas / rasas (emotional moods) are: rati-srngara (love), hasa-hasya (laughter), soka-karuna (sorrow), krodha-raudra (anger), utsaha-vira (energy), bhaya-bhayanaka (fear), jugupsa-bibhatsa (repugnance), vismaya-adbhuta (wonder). And how does "passion" for into all of these? Well, Bhoja argues that one can love to quarrel (srngara manifesting as krodha) or love to joke (srngara manifesting as hasa). Dull indeed would be an individual bereft of passion, but does passion really come into play with bhaya (fear), jugupsa (repugnance), or vismaya (wonder), for example? One might be able to love to laugh, love to fight, but can one love to fear or love to grieve? I would be interested in hearing more about how Bhoja constructs srngara as the basis for all of the other sthayibhavas.
This construction of passion intriguingly fits into Bhoja’s contruction of the hero and how he fits into the purpose of literature. The hero is the moral exemplar, who is the personification of the work’s didactic element. This concept is clearly exemplified in the extent to which Rama is the hero of the epic and also a moral exemplar for society at large. Bhoja painstakingly discusses the need for the hero – he possessing the sought agter qualities – to come out on top. The protagonist must defeat the antagonist in order to advance the moral theme of the work, and in so doing validate the purpose of literature itself. If Rama does not defeat Ravana, what kind of lesson does the reader take away from the tale? The hero, for Bhoja, is a moral agent. This is interesting because of associations with heroic and chivalrous in English. The protagonist almost necessarily sports an air of righteousness. I wonder if I can think of a modern example where the bad guy wins, and it’s ok. The more I think about it, actually, the more convincing the association between virtue and protagonist go hand in hand: the hero is more often than not heroic.
I overall find Pollock’s conclusion convincing, that Bhoja clearly demonstrates how literary theory recapitulates social theory in the Indic context. I would like to at some point tweak these ideas more finely in application to the Ramayana and its reverence as a tale of ideals. It is interesting that that in both epics, particularly in the Mahabharata, the reader is very frequently taken on a detour from the main plot so as to be told a story (for example, the story of Nala in the Mahabharata) which invariably carries moral and social significance. It appears that every story has a moral. Is also appears that, generally speaking, the moral, for Bhoja is the basis of story-telling.
For Bhoja, a literary work involves a “connected series of sentences that make an episode, a connected series of episodes that make a total meaning, and a total meaning that makes a moral argument” (218). The overall aesthetic impact of a work, then, for Bhoja at least, stems from an “elimination of faults” which occurs as a result of avoiding impropriety. In the case of the object of my study, the Ramayana, this is overwhelmingly clear: act like Rama, not like Ravana. But I wonder whether or not the didactic element is merely a substratum of its aesthetic appeal. If all Sanskrit literature is equally didactic – that is, centered around advancing and preserving certain values – then why does the Ramayana so stand out in this regard? Wouldn’t other works be celebrated in a similar fashion? Why is this tale the didactic example of all literature, according to Bhoja, is crafted explicitly with social values in mind? I’m not sure what to make of this, though is seems true in the examples that Bhoja/Pollock give, e.g., Nirosadasaratha (Faultless Dasaratha), Bhavabhuti’s Mahaviracarita, Bhatta Narayana’s Venisamhara, Harivamsa, and Kalidasa’s Sakuntala (219).
I am also very intrigued by Bhoja’s original contribution to literary theory, particularly that all of the stable moods (and associated rasa) stem from the erotic impulse, i.e., srngara, passion. Ok, let’s think about this. The eight sthayibhavas / rasas (emotional moods) are: rati-srngara (love), hasa-hasya (laughter), soka-karuna (sorrow), krodha-raudra (anger), utsaha-vira (energy), bhaya-bhayanaka (fear), jugupsa-bibhatsa (repugnance), vismaya-adbhuta (wonder). And how does "passion" for into all of these? Well, Bhoja argues that one can love to quarrel (srngara manifesting as krodha) or love to joke (srngara manifesting as hasa). Dull indeed would be an individual bereft of passion, but does passion really come into play with bhaya (fear), jugupsa (repugnance), or vismaya (wonder), for example? One might be able to love to laugh, love to fight, but can one love to fear or love to grieve? I would be interested in hearing more about how Bhoja constructs srngara as the basis for all of the other sthayibhavas.
This construction of passion intriguingly fits into Bhoja’s contruction of the hero and how he fits into the purpose of literature. The hero is the moral exemplar, who is the personification of the work’s didactic element. This concept is clearly exemplified in the extent to which Rama is the hero of the epic and also a moral exemplar for society at large. Bhoja painstakingly discusses the need for the hero – he possessing the sought agter qualities – to come out on top. The protagonist must defeat the antagonist in order to advance the moral theme of the work, and in so doing validate the purpose of literature itself. If Rama does not defeat Ravana, what kind of lesson does the reader take away from the tale? The hero, for Bhoja, is a moral agent. This is interesting because of associations with heroic and chivalrous in English. The protagonist almost necessarily sports an air of righteousness. I wonder if I can think of a modern example where the bad guy wins, and it’s ok. The more I think about it, actually, the more convincing the association between virtue and protagonist go hand in hand: the hero is more often than not heroic.
I overall find Pollock’s conclusion convincing, that Bhoja clearly demonstrates how literary theory recapitulates social theory in the Indic context. I would like to at some point tweak these ideas more finely in application to the Ramayana and its reverence as a tale of ideals. It is interesting that that in both epics, particularly in the Mahabharata, the reader is very frequently taken on a detour from the main plot so as to be told a story (for example, the story of Nala in the Mahabharata) which invariably carries moral and social significance. It appears that every story has a moral. Is also appears that, generally speaking, the moral, for Bhoja is the basis of story-telling.
The Taken-for-Grantedness of the Social Conditions of the Aesthetic Suggestion
It appears as though I have come down with a cold, and passed out while doing the readings yesterday evening. Not good. Especially since this is my week to be presenter! So I apologize for the very late post, and hopefully I will be better tomorrow to be coherent and able to talk.
Each week we progress further and further into rasa theory, continually building on the knowledge we attempted to gain the week before. Sheldon Pollock’s article was a very interesting discussion building on what we read last week. Although he often mentions how he disagrees with Ingalls – who was the translator of the text and author of the introduction – he continues to hold the scholar in high respect. “If I disagree on occasion with Daniel Ingalls in my understanding of some of these issues, it is a disagreement made possible only by the strong and serious arguments he himself provided in his magisterial scholarly oeuvre.” (199) Going on to praise Ingalls’ “fine translation” (201). The only reason I mention this is because of its parallels to the Sanskrit tradition of commentaries. Each scholar built upon the work of the last, their own opinions shaped by their disagreements with others. Yet common lacunae in subject matter often seem to be passed down through the generations of scholars. Here I am talking particularly about the main theme of the Pollock article, and that is the social and moral context of the works - or the social conditions of the aesthetic suggestion.
The first section of the article was the one I found most interesting, concerning itself with what the theorists were unconcerned to theorize about. Throughout reading the section I kept saying to myself: well they probably do not talk about the importance of the social context because they are not so far removed from the original context that they did not come into the same problems we experience as readers today, distanced by time and space. The subject was omitted because it was seen as too obvious by the Sanskrit scholars, a given, a “no-duh”, simply not worth spending the effort commenting on – even though they overanalyzed everything else!
Yet it is so pertinent to our modern day understanding. We are so far removed from the original social context that we do not immediately identify the alluded to social conventions that must have been more obvious to the originally intended audience - as well as the commentators who still lived in a similar social environment.
We are given the original poem, followed by these seemingly crazy commentaries discussing what the poem is really about. To the modern reader – here I am referring specifically to me – these leaps in inference often seem absurd. How are they getting all these little details out of a few simple lines of poetry? For example, in Mahima’s commentary (given on pg 204) all of a sudden flowers come into the equation, yet nowhere are flowers found in the poem. Maybe these seemingly large leaps in assumption only seem absurd to us, yet maybe they were once accepted as simple “no-duhs”. Thickets meant lovin’ spots – I just had to put that one in there! – women were always the adulterer’s therefore it was a woman talking – hello double standard, can men even be unfaithful? – etc.. The commentators did not feel the need to justify their leaps to assumptions because they were living in that context, and the little hints were obvious to them.
Finally after pages of me saying this to myself Pollock concludes what I felt to be the obvious – my own “no-duh”, or the wonderful Pollockism “taken-for-grantedness” – “It is the very taken-for-grantedness of this world, for its part, that renders it invisible to readers like Ananda; the sphere of social (or literary) convention was one they inhabited too deeply to see... it is a world occluded to theory because it is too far inside consciousness to be rendered an object of consciousness.” (208) Thank you Pollock, I agree wholeheartedly.
Each week we progress further and further into rasa theory, continually building on the knowledge we attempted to gain the week before. Sheldon Pollock’s article was a very interesting discussion building on what we read last week. Although he often mentions how he disagrees with Ingalls – who was the translator of the text and author of the introduction – he continues to hold the scholar in high respect. “If I disagree on occasion with Daniel Ingalls in my understanding of some of these issues, it is a disagreement made possible only by the strong and serious arguments he himself provided in his magisterial scholarly oeuvre.” (199) Going on to praise Ingalls’ “fine translation” (201). The only reason I mention this is because of its parallels to the Sanskrit tradition of commentaries. Each scholar built upon the work of the last, their own opinions shaped by their disagreements with others. Yet common lacunae in subject matter often seem to be passed down through the generations of scholars. Here I am talking particularly about the main theme of the Pollock article, and that is the social and moral context of the works - or the social conditions of the aesthetic suggestion.
The first section of the article was the one I found most interesting, concerning itself with what the theorists were unconcerned to theorize about. Throughout reading the section I kept saying to myself: well they probably do not talk about the importance of the social context because they are not so far removed from the original context that they did not come into the same problems we experience as readers today, distanced by time and space. The subject was omitted because it was seen as too obvious by the Sanskrit scholars, a given, a “no-duh”, simply not worth spending the effort commenting on – even though they overanalyzed everything else!
Yet it is so pertinent to our modern day understanding. We are so far removed from the original social context that we do not immediately identify the alluded to social conventions that must have been more obvious to the originally intended audience - as well as the commentators who still lived in a similar social environment.
We are given the original poem, followed by these seemingly crazy commentaries discussing what the poem is really about. To the modern reader – here I am referring specifically to me – these leaps in inference often seem absurd. How are they getting all these little details out of a few simple lines of poetry? For example, in Mahima’s commentary (given on pg 204) all of a sudden flowers come into the equation, yet nowhere are flowers found in the poem. Maybe these seemingly large leaps in assumption only seem absurd to us, yet maybe they were once accepted as simple “no-duhs”. Thickets meant lovin’ spots – I just had to put that one in there! – women were always the adulterer’s therefore it was a woman talking – hello double standard, can men even be unfaithful? – etc.. The commentators did not feel the need to justify their leaps to assumptions because they were living in that context, and the little hints were obvious to them.
Finally after pages of me saying this to myself Pollock concludes what I felt to be the obvious – my own “no-duh”, or the wonderful Pollockism “taken-for-grantedness” – “It is the very taken-for-grantedness of this world, for its part, that renders it invisible to readers like Ananda; the sphere of social (or literary) convention was one they inhabited too deeply to see... it is a world occluded to theory because it is too far inside consciousness to be rendered an object of consciousness.” (208) Thank you Pollock, I agree wholeheartedly.
Circular Causality: Social Aesthetic and Sanskrit Literary Tradition
The word ‘impinge’ is of some synchronistic value to me, having made a pivotal appearance in a Jungian course I took last year; thus I could not resist but pick up on Sheldon Pollock’s use of this pregnant word in his article. “The social,” he says, “impinges on Sanskrit literature and literary theory at every possible level” (223). However, this road of influence is not a one-way street. Rather, this literary theory is the foundation of, and inspiration for the very social structures that it gains its rasa from! As Pollock asserts, “aesthetic sentiment becomes intelligible only against a broader discourse of social sentiment” (223).
The importance of dhvani and rasa surface once more in Pollock’s writings. In this case, he argues that Sanskrit acts as a connector between the preceptor and the aesthetic experience. Furthermore, the religious aspects of the Sanskrit language adds a dimension of morality to the literary tradition that might not exist anywhere other than in Indian social circles. Pollock equates the concept of dhvani with the social aspects of literary tradition. He argues that it is important to comprehend the social context of the author’s writings in order to grasp the dhvani of the situation. Furthermore, Pollock equates rasa with the overarching moral compass that guides the social contextualization of the writings themselves. When literature portrays an instance that goes against the grain of societal norms, one experiences false feelings – he calls these ‘false bhavas’ and relates them directly to moral discourse. He asserts that true bhava (passion) only is rasa. False passion does not rasa create.
For instance, as amply discussed in the Dhvanyaloka and by Pollock, the Ramayana is a work of true bhava and is worthy of invoking rasa. The morality eschewed by its story and the characteristics embodied by Rama (as well as many of the other ‘good’ characters who fulfill dutifully their roles in society) are what makes the story a moral one – one that incites true bhava (passion), and by extension, one that fosters true rasa. The ideal of good triumphing over bad in a just society is promoted through the juxtapositioned characters of Rama versus Ravana. The audience is automatically called to revere Rama and revile Ravana. By mirroring the character of Rama, one is able to experience the true rasa of the Ramayana. In this illustration, societal values of good over evil are reflected in this literary masterpiece, and in turn this work of literature works to promote an uphold the moral scaffolding of the society in which it finds itself.
This brings me back full circle to the topic of ‘impingement’. The quote I have special Jung-like reverence for is from James Joyce’s ‘The Dubliners’: “I heard the rain impinge upon the Earth…” – that is, the rain struck the earth with a force and a collision ensued. Perhaps in such a forceful manner, literary tradition is like the dry earth, waiting to be imbued with the raindrops that impregnate society with morality.
The importance of dhvani and rasa surface once more in Pollock’s writings. In this case, he argues that Sanskrit acts as a connector between the preceptor and the aesthetic experience. Furthermore, the religious aspects of the Sanskrit language adds a dimension of morality to the literary tradition that might not exist anywhere other than in Indian social circles. Pollock equates the concept of dhvani with the social aspects of literary tradition. He argues that it is important to comprehend the social context of the author’s writings in order to grasp the dhvani of the situation. Furthermore, Pollock equates rasa with the overarching moral compass that guides the social contextualization of the writings themselves. When literature portrays an instance that goes against the grain of societal norms, one experiences false feelings – he calls these ‘false bhavas’ and relates them directly to moral discourse. He asserts that true bhava (passion) only is rasa. False passion does not rasa create.
For instance, as amply discussed in the Dhvanyaloka and by Pollock, the Ramayana is a work of true bhava and is worthy of invoking rasa. The morality eschewed by its story and the characteristics embodied by Rama (as well as many of the other ‘good’ characters who fulfill dutifully their roles in society) are what makes the story a moral one – one that incites true bhava (passion), and by extension, one that fosters true rasa. The ideal of good triumphing over bad in a just society is promoted through the juxtapositioned characters of Rama versus Ravana. The audience is automatically called to revere Rama and revile Ravana. By mirroring the character of Rama, one is able to experience the true rasa of the Ramayana. In this illustration, societal values of good over evil are reflected in this literary masterpiece, and in turn this work of literature works to promote an uphold the moral scaffolding of the society in which it finds itself.
This brings me back full circle to the topic of ‘impingement’. The quote I have special Jung-like reverence for is from James Joyce’s ‘The Dubliners’: “I heard the rain impinge upon the Earth…” – that is, the rain struck the earth with a force and a collision ensued. Perhaps in such a forceful manner, literary tradition is like the dry earth, waiting to be imbued with the raindrops that impregnate society with morality.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Dhvani and Rasa Applied
This weeks readings once again stressed the importance of dhvani and rasa in Indian literature. Pollock’s article on the surface stressed two important things. First, he illustrated that Sanskrit literature was important because it connected readers to an aesthetic experience highly valued in Indian culture. Second, one reaches the core of Pollock’s argument when he emphasizes that not only does Sanskrit literature become important because of its religious dimension, but also because of its power to display the social and moral norms within Indian society. Within the constraints of dhvani and rasa theory, Pollock showed how dhvani alludes to social aspects. Thus, he argued that in order to properly understand dhvani, one must understand the social context the author is talking within. Moreover, he argues that rasa works parallel to ones moral consciousness. He states that false bhavas are related to moral discourse. In other words, one gets false feelings when literature represents portrayals of stories that goes against the social order or norms within society. Lastly, Pollock outlines the true bhava-passion- which closely relflects the aesthetic experience. He quotes Bhoja, “passion alone is rasa, and the sole means of fulfilling the four life-goals” (pg 220).
Upon reading this week’s readings, one thing that struck my attention the most was the discussion of both literature conveying social and moral implications and this idea of putting things into context. What I find interesting is how such an analytical discussion in Indian literature can connect with the Quran. Pollock quotes, “aesthetic suggestion is a semantic function that produces in sensitive readers the idea of something different from the direct sense, by means of nine different factors of pragmatic specificity: that of the speaker, the addressee, the tone of the voice, the syntagm of the sentence, the expressed sense, the presence of a third person, the context, the time, or the place” (206). Much like the way that Indian verses are given significance through these nine different factors, the Quran is often studied in a similar way. The correlating theory in the Islamic tradition is referred to as the ‘occasions of descent’. According to this theory the verses in the Quran must be put into context in order to reveal dhvani.
In addition, the ideal of literature reflecting moral and social aspects in a certain culture can also be applied to the Quran. The dyvanyaloka and Pollock makes clear that in the Ramayana the good wins and the bad loses. In this sense, the idea is that one must mimic Rama not only in his behaviours, but in the way in which he functions within the social constraints of society to be depicted as good, whereas one must refrain from mimicking Ravana because he loses the battle, hence emphasizing his bad character. The Quran promotes similar social and moral ideals. The idea is that God favours Muhammad in his efforts, seen through the victory of war, so if one wants to go to heaven, one must mimic Muhammad’s characteristics.
Ultimately, Indian literature argues that mimicking Rama and experiencing his rasa is the true aesthetic experience according to this weeks reading. In other words, this is the way in which passion is developed thus a guiding principle to the main goals in Hinduism. In Islam such feelings of love/passion is attained through realizing or seeing the truth in the prophet and his acts of wisdom. This too reflects the guiding principle which takes one closer to residing in paradise with God.
The idea that devices employed in Indian literature can be used to also look at or reflect upon other cultures, really caught my attention the most in this weeks readings.
Upon reading this week’s readings, one thing that struck my attention the most was the discussion of both literature conveying social and moral implications and this idea of putting things into context. What I find interesting is how such an analytical discussion in Indian literature can connect with the Quran. Pollock quotes, “aesthetic suggestion is a semantic function that produces in sensitive readers the idea of something different from the direct sense, by means of nine different factors of pragmatic specificity: that of the speaker, the addressee, the tone of the voice, the syntagm of the sentence, the expressed sense, the presence of a third person, the context, the time, or the place” (206). Much like the way that Indian verses are given significance through these nine different factors, the Quran is often studied in a similar way. The correlating theory in the Islamic tradition is referred to as the ‘occasions of descent’. According to this theory the verses in the Quran must be put into context in order to reveal dhvani.
In addition, the ideal of literature reflecting moral and social aspects in a certain culture can also be applied to the Quran. The dyvanyaloka and Pollock makes clear that in the Ramayana the good wins and the bad loses. In this sense, the idea is that one must mimic Rama not only in his behaviours, but in the way in which he functions within the social constraints of society to be depicted as good, whereas one must refrain from mimicking Ravana because he loses the battle, hence emphasizing his bad character. The Quran promotes similar social and moral ideals. The idea is that God favours Muhammad in his efforts, seen through the victory of war, so if one wants to go to heaven, one must mimic Muhammad’s characteristics.
Ultimately, Indian literature argues that mimicking Rama and experiencing his rasa is the true aesthetic experience according to this weeks reading. In other words, this is the way in which passion is developed thus a guiding principle to the main goals in Hinduism. In Islam such feelings of love/passion is attained through realizing or seeing the truth in the prophet and his acts of wisdom. This too reflects the guiding principle which takes one closer to residing in paradise with God.
The idea that devices employed in Indian literature can be used to also look at or reflect upon other cultures, really caught my attention the most in this weeks readings.
"Rasa = Love"
This weeks reading on the dhvanyaloka further defined (and complicated) the term dhvani, but more specifically focused on the concept of rasa in kavya. The Pollock reading specifically addressed one of the problems we discussed in last weeks class; the issue of weather or not Sanskrit poems need to be put into context in order to understand them. Pollock argues that the poems analyzed in Ingall’s interpretation need to be put into context socially because Sanskrit writings reflect a certain place and time in history. I am not a hundred percent sure, but I think he goes further to say that; we cannot aesthetically enjoy a poem unless this is done. Pollock sates: "Language is only the Mechanism of such poetry, yet it has monopolized theoretical reflection. The poetry is about the people and their world, and is intelligible only through that world. Yet it is a world occluded to theory because it is too far inside consciousness to be rendered an object of consciousness" (208). Point well taken Pollock! How the hell are we suppose to understand someone else’s experience of "their world"?
What I found very interesting was Pollock’s discussion on rasabhasa as "something required to complete that ideal type, but as the literary promulgation of an immoral order, against which theory imposed increasingly harsh strictures" (214) He clearly illustrates feeling that violate the social order, thus they are false feelings. Are they really? The fact that they arouse emotions in the viewer could possibly mean that the viewer has these feelings, but are socially demanded to suppress them. Perhaps Kavya tried to convey a hidden message, in hopes to rearrange an existing social order.
This weeks readings on the dhvanyaloka explicitly point out te realtionship between religious aesthetic enjoyment and the aesthetic enjoyment one gets from kavya. Abhinava states: "aesthetic enjoyment is the cessation of that obstruction of the true nature of the self which is caused by the thick darkness of ignorance" (82). Abhinava admits that the reaching of rasa is similar to the relishing of the ultimate Brahman Therefore, like the Brahman who reaches his ultimate goal of enlightenment through relishing so too rasa is brought about. Here there is only similarity between the processes, but no mention of similarity between the aesthetic enjoyment reached. Ultimately, it is safe to say that the experience is different as the concentration that is needed by the Brahman and the audience memebr or reader differs immensely. The Brahman focuses his attention on God (or a higher being), while the audience memeber concentrates on issues of earthly life.
The last topic that I will touch on is an attempt to relate the Pollock reading with the dhvanyaloka readings. Anada states: "the rasa of love is sweet in comparison to the other rasa's because it gives delight", (280) becase the heart is overcome to a greater degree thany any other rasa. Can we than say rasa is equal to love? since it is the ultimate rasa. Pollock argues "passion alone is rasa", (220) "since passion is shown to be understood fundamentally according to a moral typology." Since the predominate theme of kavya is love (also in the form of passion) as it removes the person from ugliness and darkness and brings them into beauty and lightness. Is this the main function of "rasa"? If it is than I would argue that kavya is religious, as it seeks to take away the individual from the dark evils of the world (devil) and bring them closer to the beautiful and light aspects of heaven (God). Maybe I have taken this too far (too much focus on dhvani and rasa).
What I found very interesting was Pollock’s discussion on rasabhasa as "something required to complete that ideal type, but as the literary promulgation of an immoral order, against which theory imposed increasingly harsh strictures" (214) He clearly illustrates feeling that violate the social order, thus they are false feelings. Are they really? The fact that they arouse emotions in the viewer could possibly mean that the viewer has these feelings, but are socially demanded to suppress them. Perhaps Kavya tried to convey a hidden message, in hopes to rearrange an existing social order.
This weeks readings on the dhvanyaloka explicitly point out te realtionship between religious aesthetic enjoyment and the aesthetic enjoyment one gets from kavya. Abhinava states: "aesthetic enjoyment is the cessation of that obstruction of the true nature of the self which is caused by the thick darkness of ignorance" (82). Abhinava admits that the reaching of rasa is similar to the relishing of the ultimate Brahman Therefore, like the Brahman who reaches his ultimate goal of enlightenment through relishing so too rasa is brought about. Here there is only similarity between the processes, but no mention of similarity between the aesthetic enjoyment reached. Ultimately, it is safe to say that the experience is different as the concentration that is needed by the Brahman and the audience memebr or reader differs immensely. The Brahman focuses his attention on God (or a higher being), while the audience memeber concentrates on issues of earthly life.
The last topic that I will touch on is an attempt to relate the Pollock reading with the dhvanyaloka readings. Anada states: "the rasa of love is sweet in comparison to the other rasa's because it gives delight", (280) becase the heart is overcome to a greater degree thany any other rasa. Can we than say rasa is equal to love? since it is the ultimate rasa. Pollock argues "passion alone is rasa", (220) "since passion is shown to be understood fundamentally according to a moral typology." Since the predominate theme of kavya is love (also in the form of passion) as it removes the person from ugliness and darkness and brings them into beauty and lightness. Is this the main function of "rasa"? If it is than I would argue that kavya is religious, as it seeks to take away the individual from the dark evils of the world (devil) and bring them closer to the beautiful and light aspects of heaven (God). Maybe I have taken this too far (too much focus on dhvani and rasa).
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