AESTHETICS

(Bharata_Natyashastra)
The term aesthetics has no equivalent in Indian thought. One could perhaps coin a
word Saundarya Shastra, roughly translated as treatise on beauty, or use Alamkara
Shastra, treatise on rhetoric. Can a single theory be used as a criterion for judging and
understanding the arts of India written, visual, and performing? Is there any underlying unity
to the arts, since no one text can be said to encompass all art forms? Although some classical
arts do derive their antecedents from Bharatas Natya Shastra, the earliest extant text on
the arts, this text, as the name suggests, was concerned with dramaturgy and, by extension,
dance and music. The problem is exacerbated in the visual arts of architecture, sculpture, and
painting, since these disciplines have individual texts dedicated to their exposition. However,
furrowing through this mass of textual prescriptives and descriptives, some concepts and
terms seem to emerge as common. Of these, beaconlike, is rasathat word which brings to
mind a multitude of sensations through taste, emotion, and delight.
The term rasa, in its most widely employed sense, means the sap or juice of plants, an extract
or fluid. In its
secondary sense, rasa signifies the nonmaterial essence of a thing, the best and finest part of
it, like perfume. As essence, it is described as atman (soul), or the giver of life to a literary
work, which is the body. In its tertiary sense, it denotes taste, flavor, or relish, often yielding
pleasure. As in the case of a taste like sweetness, there is no knowing of rasa apart from
directly experiencing it. The final and subtlest sense, however, is the application of the word
to art and aesthetic experience, in which it becomes synonymous with ananda, the kind of
bliss that can only be experienced by the spirit. Rasa, as one of the foremost criteria of art
criticism, has been theorized, developed, and commented upon by innumerable savants and
rhetoricians over the centuries. Starting with Bharata, author of the supposed secondcentury
Natya Shastra, and ending with that intellectual giant of the eleventh century, Abhinava
Gupta of Kashmir,
rasa runs through a gamut of meanings.
It is sufficiently clear that rasa for the early thinkers has only an aesthetic form. It is,
on one level, the content of art, as a sentiment, mood, or emotion. This led to the
development of the eightfold scheme of rasa. On the other level, rasa is the joy resulting
from an indescribable aesthetic experience, variously called alaukika (otherworldly) and
chamatkara (wondrous). The purpose of art creation is clearly entertainment and moral
instruction. By the time of Abhinava Gupta, rasa takes on a metaphysical dimension. By
championing a ninth rasa based on the mood of equanimity and tranquillity, in which the
knowledge of ones soul forms the fulcrum, Abhinavas philosophical leaning is evident. Art
now has the power to give a sense of liberation, or moksha. The experience of rasa, or what
is called rasanubhava, transforms from mere joy to a state of undifferentiated bliss called
ananda, analogous to Brahman, the Supreme Reality in Vedanta. To these aesthetic and
metaphysical aspects of rasa, the bhakti (devotion) resurgence, spearheaded by the fifteenth-

century Bengal Vaishnava saints, added a new impetus. This movement, characterized by a
deep passionate love for the divine, expressed itself in terms of human relationships. Lover
and beloved, sacred and profane, mystical and carnal merge into a vocabulary of distilled
adoration. Krishna becomes the conventional lover, heroic warrior, and religious Godhead,
and Radha is the beloved, the cowherdess, and the divine soul. Rupa Goswamin, follower
of the fifteenthsixteenth century saint Chaitanya, borrowed the existing rasa phraseology to
create his own version, making it into a tenfold scheme, which, however, did not survive the
scrutiny of the rhetoricians.
The fountainhead of the rasa theory is Bharatas su tra or aphorism in the Natya
Shastra: Vibhava Anubhava Vyabhichari Samyogat Rasa Nishpattih (the coming
together of vibhava, anubhava and vyabhichari bhava creates rasa). The implicit term is
bhava, which means mood or mental state. Each of these factors makes up a whole that
is greater than the sum of its parts. Vibhava is any condition that excites or develops a
particular state of mind, which then becomes the actual cause or determinant of the creation
of art. There are two kinds of vibhava: alambana, or stimulants, and uddpana, or
excitants. Examples of alambana vibhava are characters in a work of art such as heroes
and heroines, messengers, villains, companions, jesters, servants, and so on. Thus the heroes
and heroines poetically called Nayaka and Nayika, as chief protagonists in a work of art,
are decisively classified and codified in infinite detail. Based on minute observation and
experience, their physical, emotional, and mental states, especially in various situations of
love, are tenderly captured and conventionalized, thus becoming essential subjects for all art
forms.
Poets, dancers, and painters alike favor the Abhisarika Nayika, or one who boldly goes
out to meet her lover to keep her tryst. Uddpana vibhava are factors that enhance the
underlying mood or sentiment. The actions and behavior of the characters, their
ornamentations, manners, and body language are all examples. Deflections, postures, and
gestures are suggestive of an inner state. Metaphors and similes from nature used to express a
mood are also examples of uddpana vibhava, such as the languorous caress of a gentle
breeze or dark monsoon clouds as poignant reminders of past togetherness. Anubhava are
the consequences, the physical reactions, and the external manifestations or indications of a
feeling by appropriate gestures. Some anubhava include lla (when one imitates a loved
one), vibhrama (extreme fluster), and lalita (gentleness in behavior). The eight sattvika
bhava, or temperamental states, are also part of the anubhava. These include becoming
rooted to a spot, perspiration, shock, goosebumps, change of voice, trembling, change of
color, weeping, and fainting. Vyabhichari bhava are mental reactions, ancillary or
subordinate feelings, and moods that are transitory. These are also called sanchari bhava
and are generally thirty-three in number. Some examples are nirveda (mental anguish), mada
(intoxicated state), moha (perplexed condition), garva (extreme pride), and vrida (shyness).
An artwork, according to this theory, would have one major mood permeating it, with
the other transitory moods serving only as embellishments. This dominant mood is called
sthay bhava and is both universal and latent. When the vibhava, anubhava,

vyabhichari bhava come together in an appropriate manner in an artwork, this

predominant, latent, and universal sthay bhava is aroused and transformed into rasa. The
principle of auchitya, or appropriateness, governs the rules of technique such as line,
proportion, measure, color, and design. These, if correctly followed, would necessarily lead
to the proper delineation of a mood, as illustrated in Table 1. Rasa is therefore both the
aroused sthay bhava as well as the experience of the arousal. To the eight rasas, a ninth
was added. This was shanta, or tranquillity, its sthay bhava being shama (to be calm) or
nirveda (world-weariness). The tenth rasa, championed by the Bengali saints, is bhakti rasa,
with its sthayi bhava as madhura rati, or mystical love. Of all these, one sentiment
dominates; a work of art propels a spectator forward, or becomes the occasion of a rasa
experience.
Of all the rasas, the early rhetoricians and later writers on poetics give preeminence to
shringara, calling it rasa raja (king of the sentiments) or rasa pati (lord of the sentiments).
The depiction of the amorous sentiment in all Indian artvisual, performing, and literaryis
bold, uncompromising, and celebratory of life. From the works of Kalidasa, the renowned
fourth-century Sanskrit poet, to Konarak and Khajuraho (medieval temples), one sees a
plethora of this sentiment in all its subtle nuances and in the infinitely varied forms of love,
both in union and separation.

Those artworks that are found wanting of rasa are considered flawed. As a result, all
the techniques enunciated in the manuals of each art form are based on principles through
which these rasa states can be evoked. These principles are evident in the rules of proportion
in architecture; in the detailed formulations of the principles of tala (measurement) and
bhanga (stance) of Indian sculpture; in the relative disposition and proportion of color and
perspective in painting, in the patterns of the division and combinations of the movements of
the major limbs (anga) and the minor limbs (upanga) in dancing; and in the use of shruti
and swara (notes) in a given mode (raga) to create a particular mood in Indian music
(Vatsyayan, p. 6).

The artist, through his or her pratibha, or creative genius, endeavors to create a form
through the language of structure, arrangement, and composition. The possible choices are
often minute, the prescribed form strict. But for the greatest of them, these prescriptions lead
to enormous creative energy. A point to be remembered is that rasa necessitates the use of
symbols and the power of suggestion. Permeated with emotion, these creative works then
find a resonance in the empathetic critic. Such a sensitized spectator or reader, called
sahridaya, must be both a rasika (an emotionally mature individual)
and a rasajna (a discriminating aesthete). The act of detached contemplation of a mood is
what makes the
artistic experience delightful.
Rasa, according to traditional definition, is thus the aesthetic experience of an
artistically engendered emotion. It cannot be experienced at the level of the mundane or
empirical because it belongs to the world of art. Life provides the raw material, and actual
experiences are the springboard for the artist, whose creation is unique and unlike anything in
real life. Yet, like emotions in real life, aesthetic emotion too needs a cause. It too expresses
itself through different shades of reactions, and it is built up through different shades of the
dominant mood. There is a crucial difference, however, between actual emotion and the
aesthetic one: while the cause and effects of worldly emotions are personal, the aesthetic
mood suggests the universal through stylized depiction. An important point to be noted is that
rasasvada, or the tasting of an aesthetic mood, is always pleasurable, regardless of the
emotion portrayed. Therefore rasa is one, or ekarasa. The nine variants are based on the
human responses to a situation.
The nature of aesthetic experience has been pursued within the framework of
recognized schools of philosophic thought, leading to a view that the state of being which art
experiences evoked was a state akin to that of spiritual realization (Brahmananda
sahodarah). The experience is not a phenomenal happening or a perception induced by
cognitive processes operating in the empirical context, but one in which the mind finds full
repose. The beautiful is the experiencing of any mental process at its most intense point.
According to Abhinava Gupta, who combined the best of aesthetics and philosophy within
the Kashmir Shaivist framework, even though there is at times an objective consciousness,
there is also a state of complete self-forgetfulness, since the subject is fully merged and
absorbed in the objective factor. One who experiences this is infused with the throbbing
pulsation of a mysterious and marvelous kind of enjoyment, which is uninterrupted,
ceaseless, and replete with a feeling of satiety. This is how Abhinava describes chamatkara,
or wonder. The followers of Vedanta have described rasa in negative terms. It is not an
object of knowledge, not an effect, not permanent, not known in the present or future, and the
experience is neither direct nor indirect. The validity of its existence is its experience. This is
neither an ordinary worldly one, nor a false one, nor indefinable, nor resembling a worldly
apprehension, nor anything superimposed upon that. In other words, it is alaukika, or
otherworldly.