Rasa Roulette

Not until this week has the relationship between religion and aesthetics really been focused on in our readings. Before it was largely just aesthetics and rasa theory. Occasionally religion would be touched on – in the small biographies it would be mentioned that the authors indeed prescribed to a religion, for example Abinava was a Saivite Tantric – but the readings never fully explored how their religion affected the way they viewed rasa and aesthetics. One example that did come up many time was how some of the commentators viewed aesthetic experience as something equitable to the experience of the ultimate Brahman. They were both considered by many to be universalizing experiences, where one transcends their individuality and experiences something beyond themselves. But the religiosity of this concept was never overtly explained. With the title of this course “Religion and Aesthetics” one would think that the two could – and have been – overtly linked. As we are winding up rasa theory –as I believe we are since last week (which were the readings originally intended for this week) did not focus so heavily on rasa as in the past six weeks of this course – the possible connection between aesthetic experience and religion is finally made more clear. The introduction to the translation of the primary text the Bhaktirasamrtasindhu and the independent article by Wulff both address this question of connection.

I often felt there was actually very little to nothing religious about what many of the commentators were talking about and the title of the course confused me. Just because they mention religion occasionally and in an offhand manner does not make rasa RELIGIOUS. It can be argued that pretty much all aspects of South Asian culture are incorporated into the religious sphere because there is no concept of religion in their society due to the fact that there was very little separating the religious from the secular – but that does not necessarily make it true. For sure, some things are not overtly related to the religious realms of consciousness. On page xxv of the introduction to the Bhaktirasamrtasindhu it is mentioned how the tradition Rupa comes out of really emerged in the first half of the sixteenth century. This is when the tradition of discussing the religiosity of aesthetic experience really started to form. I see similarities with this and Pollock’s discussion of the lacuna of the social context in literary theory discussed in his article read a few weeks ago. It is a topic that is present in the background, that some of the commentators and scholars have thought about, but which was possibly seen as either too obvious to go into detail about, or irrelevant. It is not until the tradition has been established – and the questions have been asked - that the topic really gains attention.

Yet with this new tradition I feel as though the commentary on rasa has been taken to the opposite extreme. Rasa no longer feels like the same thing it once was – its ties to drama have become so far removed, as now life in general is seen as the drama. No longer does it appear to have anything to do with drama, poetry or other forms of art. Unless life is art. Now aesthetic experience IS religion, is it still art? Is the first idea of rasa conceived by Bharata in the Natyasastra really connected at all to this idea of rasa imagined by the later scholars such as Rupa? It is almost like a game of telephone – the original intended meaning has been lost long ago.