Rasa (aesthetics)—Introduction

Nāṭya is the representation of every day life which is full of diverse activities prompted by different desires, longings and yearnings of a human being. The ordinary state of human nature is composed of passion which makes a man long for the attainment of the desired object with a consequent success or failure. This usual mental state of being depends upon the three fundamental elements of Nature (prakṛti) noted by psychologists as sattva, rajas and tamas. They are seldom found to be operating in their pure individual form. Generally, it is an admixture on any two or even at times of all the three that functions the entire machinery of human mind. These three elements in their admixed state generally behave in a compromising manner with the effect that one usually remains dominant at a particular moment and the other or others remain subservient to it. As a result of their operation, a large number of mental states are formed which become visible in the actions of mind, speech and body of a human being.

Nāṭya aims at the imitations of these varied actions of a man represented through an actor or the body of actors. Such men whose psychological state and the consequent actions are imitated in the Nāṭya are not necessarily the persons whose character is reproduced, but it is also the poet whose make-up of mind is mirrored in the dramatic composition. Thus even the characters in a Nātya, irrespective of their personal traits, move in accordance with the imprimatur of the dramatist, who is the whole and sole creator of his Universe and the monarch of all that he surveys.^[1]

Bhojarāja in this respect rightly observes,

“If the poet is aesthetic (Śṛṅgarī), the whole universe is full of rasa, and if he is devoid of that sense, the external world is indeed all dry and insipid.”^[2]

It becomes then the very vital breath of a composition to delineate the different mental attitudes characters noted above. A dramatist is, therefore, said to inuse the inner spirit in his characters which vivifies them and to present their varied states in accordance with the extraneous circumstances that make his characters real, and his composition realistic. It is only the realistic appearance of the human life through lively characters that makes the presentation charming and its enactment popular. The popularity, in fact, ensues from the sympathy which the spectators enjoy during the course of presentation made by the actors. The actors, as a matter of fact, imbibe the spirit of the original character who in himself bears the stamp of the poet’s aesthetic mental moods created in a character by a dramatist by means of so apt an imitation done by actors as to make the latter in unison with the self of the former is the height of the skill of enactment which results in producing similar feelings in the heart of the spectators. The process of transference of feelings of the dramatic characters to the spectators by means of actor’s faithful imitation is technically known as the relish or Carvana. It is an outcome of the fusion of the spirit, a total agreement of hearts, a complete harmony of minds caused by the symphonic reproduction of tones, imitation of gesticulations and modes of action and an appropriate representation of situations by like costumes, manners, outward bearing and other environments. This is what is known as Emotional Response (Hṛdaya-saṃvāda) which culminates into absorption–an absorption that transposes an individual from the mundane atmosphere to the realm of bliss, the ananda which is the source of repose (viśranti) and springs from the enjoyment of rasa.^[3]

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

“Apare Kāvya-samsare kavir ekah prajapatih|Yathasmai rocate visvam tat tathaiva pravartate” ||……. Agni purana–339-X

[2]:

“Sṛṅgari cet kavih kavye jatam rasamayam jagat | Sa eva ced aSṛṅgari nirasam sarvam eva tat.” || -S. K. A. V. 3.

[3]:

“Raso vai sah, rasam hi eva ayam labdhva anadi bhavati.” -Tait. Up. II-vii.