Wrestling with Rasa

I thought the readings this week were absolutely fascinating. So fascinating that I wrote too much, and since I had given such a hard time to Raj for his long blog post I decided to try and not be a hypocrite and cut down my entry by a lot!

Rasa theory began with Bharata’s Natyasastra. Udbhata was probably the first literary critic to focus on rasa. Ingalls cites Jacobi as assigning Ubhata as the first to believe rasa was the soul of poetry, but this is unlikely, as Ananda was really the first to assign it as the chief goal of poetry. (Ingalls, 7)

Before going into too much of a discussion on rasa I like to lay out the 8 categories of bhava=rasa as described in the BhNS, as it is easy to get muddle between what is bhava and what is rasa:

bhava (abiding emotions) of the Actor = rasa (flavour experienced) of the audience

Rati (sexual desire) = srngara (erotic)
Hasa (laughter)= hasya (comic)
Soka (grief) = karuna (tragic)
Krodha (anger) = raudra (furious or cruel)
Utsaha (heroic energy) = vira (heroic)
Bhaya (fear) = bhayanaka (fearsome or timorous)
Jugupsa (disgust) = bibhatsa (gruesome or loathsome)
Vismaya (wonder or amazement) = adbuta (wondrous)
[added later: ?? = santa (peace)]
(from Ingalls, 16)

This week I think I understand more clearly what Ananda meant when he said “grief if the basic emotion of the rasa of compassion, for compassion consists of relishing (or aesthetically enjoying) grief” (Ingalls, 116-117) Why do people get pleasure out of watching plays or reading texts that do not have “pleasurable” rasas, such as grief and fear? Bhattayaka was probably the first to comment on such a question, stressing the subjectiveness of rasa as an aesthetic experience of the spectator (Raja, 287).

Continuing with this question, Abhnava explained that there must be a qualitative difference between the bhava, the feeling that is expressed by the actor, and the rasa, the flavour of that emotion that is felt by the audience. If they were the same, and the audience was experiencing real pain, real fear, real grief, they would not be enjoying themselves and would “close the book or leave the theatre”.

I have actually experienced real feelings when watching a movie once - Hotel Rwanda. It was not pleasant, it was so traumatizing for me I was in cold sweats and started to hyperventilate. My mom made me leave the theatre. The emotions I felt while watching that movie were too real to be pleasurable. I did not relish in it. Was the bhava too real that it was not distanced from the rasa? I wonder if this would have been acceptable to these Sanskrit critics. Are the boundaries being pushed too far today, either making us desensitised to emotions expressed on screen thanks to over exposure, or making them too real. Is the suggestion, the dhvani, lost?

Sankuka prescribed rasa to be the imitation of the feelings felt by the audience (Ingalls, 18). Rasas are not real emotions, they are the feelings one gets after watching real emotions on stage. But are not these real emotions, the bhava, fake emotions as they are acted out by actors? Abhinava also make the distinction between real emotions and the rasa. If the actor were to experience either the bhava or the rasa he would forget his lines, therefore he is simply faking the emotion, making it not real. (Ingalls, 36)

Therefore rasa would be imitations of imitations of emotions. They are so distanced from real emotions that this may be an explanation for why one can feel pleasure when experiencing not so typically pleasant emotions in the form of rasa. The “not-so-pleasantness” is less “not-so-pleasant” because you are getting a feeling distanced from a real feeling by the factor of two.

It seems contradictory then that many commentators, such as Bhatta Lollata - the earliest commentator on the BhNS that we know of - said that rasa was the intensified form of the bhava, which has been strengthened by the actor (Ingalls, 17). Maybe it is intensified as it is simplified. Real emotions felt by people are often muddied and confused. The bhavas on stage and in the poetry and often condensed examples of an emotion and the responding rasa is simpler, and therefore a clearer emotion. Making it seem intensified.

Bhattanayaka appears to have believed that rasa does not belong to someone else, as that would make others indifferent. Yet it does not belong to ourselves (here Abhinava disagrees). Rasa is actually not even perceived, it is something to simply enjoy. The audience realizes they are experiencing the rasa, and upon this realization they experience enjoyment. But this enjoyment is very different from the enjoyment one experiences with direct experience or from memories.

I found it most fascinating how this enjoyment, according to Bhattanayaka, was related to the Advaita understanding of realizing atman = Brahman. The moksa, or release, one experiences with the realization that we are all a part of a greater reality, the ultimate. (Ingalls, 35-36)

but now I have gone way over my intended limit, even after deleting more than half of my post :-(