Rasa

Rasa (Sanskrit, “juice”, “sap”, “flavour”, “essence”) is the central concept of classical Indian aesthetics: the aesthetic emotion, or “relish”, that a work of art evokes in a sensitive spectator. Its theory begins in the The Nāṭyaśāstra attributed to Bharata (c. 200 BCE–200 CE), a treatise on theatre, and culminates in the philosophy of Abhinavagupta (c. 1000 CE), for whom rasa is the self’s tasting of its own consciousness, freed from personal limitation, as bliss. Rasa theory governs Indian drama, poetry, dance and music to this day.

Bharata’s theory

The sixth chapter of the Nāṭyaśāstra asks what rasa is, and answers with an analogy from cooking: as various spices, vegetables and other ingredients combine to produce a flavour that is more than any of them, so various emotional ingredients combine to produce rasa. Its famous formula: “Rasa arises from the combination of determinants (vibhāva), consequents (anubhāva) and transitory states (vyabhicāri-bhāva).”

• Determinants (vibhāvas) are the causes of an emotion: the characters, the setting — a beloved, a garden in spring, the moon.
• Consequents (anubhāvas) are its outward signs: glances, smiles, tears, trembling.
• Transitory states (vyabhicāri-bhāvas), thirty-three in number, are passing feelings — anxiety, joy, weariness, doubt, envy — that accompany the main emotion.

Together they bring to relish a stable emotion (sthāyi-bhāva). Bharata lists eight rasas and their stable emotions:

Rasa	Stable emotion
Śṛṅgāra — the erotic	rati — love
Hāsya — the comic	hāsa — mirth
Karuṇa — the pathetic	śoka — sorrow
Raudra — the furious	krodha — anger
Vīra — the heroic	utsāha — energy
Bhayānaka — the terrible	bhaya — fear
Bībhatsa — the odious	jugupsā — disgust
Adbhuta — the marvellous	vismaya — wonder

A ninth, śānta (peace), with the stable emotion of tranquillity or knowledge of truth, was added later and defended by Abhinavagupta. Devotional theorists later added bhakti (devotion), and others vātsalya (parental love).

Where is rasa?

Bharata’s formula raised a question that occupied commentators for a thousand years: who experiences rasa, and how? Bhaṭṭa Lollaṭa said rasa exists in the original character (Rāma) and is intensified in the actor. Śaṅkuka said the audience infers it from the actor’s performance, as one infers a horse from a painted horse. Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka (10th century) argued that poetry has a special power of “generalisation” (bhāvakatva) that frees the emotions from particular persons, so that the audience enjoys them in a state of serene, sattvic consciousness. Abhinavagupta completed the theory: rasa exists in the spectator, whose own latent emotional impressions (vāsanās), awakened by the play, are universalised — freed from “mine” and “his”, from practical interest, fear and desire — and savoured. What is savoured is ultimately the spectator’s own consciousness, as bliss. Only the sensitive spectator, the sahṛdaya (“one with a matching heart”), whose heart is like a clear mirror, fully experiences rasa.

This explains the paradox of tragedy: why do we enjoy watching sorrow? Because in art, sorrow is not my sorrow, threatening my interests; it is sorrow as such, contemplated and tasted. The The Rāmāyaṇa itself, tradition says, was born when Vālmīki’s grief (śoka) at the killing of a bird became verse (śloka) — the first example of karuṇa rasa.

Rasa beyond theatre

Through Ānandavardhana’s theory of dhvani (“suggestion”), rasa became the soul of poetry: rasa can never be stated directly, only suggested. In music, the rāgas were associated with rasas and times of day; in dance, the navarasa expressions are part of every classical training; in painting, rāgamālā pictures depict the moods of musical modes. In the devotional theology of Rūpa Gosvāmī (16th century), bhakti itself became the supreme rasa, and the love of Kṛṣṇa’s devotees the model for all aesthetic emotion.

Comparisons

Rasa theory has been compared with Aristotle’s catharsis (the purgation of pity and fear through tragedy), with Kant’s disinterested pleasure, and with Schopenhauer’s will-less contemplation in art. Its distinctive features are its focus on the audience, its catalogue of emotions, and — in Abhinavagupta — its link between aesthetic and spiritual experience.

In conversation

The best answer anyone has given to “why do we enjoy sad stories?” is Abhinavagupta’s: in art, sorrow stops being mine, and what we taste is our own consciousness, at peace.