The Sanskrit drama : $b in its origin, development, theory and practiceKeith, Arthur Berriedale
History
The Sanskrit drama : $b in its origin, development, theory and practice
Keith, Arthur Berriedale
Sanskrit drama -- History and criticism
In Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka [665] we find yet a different point of view, which
denies either the production (utpatti) of sentiment, its perception or
apprehension (pratīti) or its revelation (abhivyakti). If sentiment is
perceived as appertaining to another, then it cannot personally affect
oneself. But it cannot be perceived as present in oneself as a result
of study of a work about Rāma; there are no factors present in the self
to produce any such result; it is impossible to hold that an emotion
dormant in oneself is called to life by seeing or reading the story of
Rāma; experience shows that one’s own beloved does not come up to one’s
mind to raise love, nor could a tale of a goddess evoke the picture of
a mortal amour; again, such marvellous deeds as Rāma’s have nothing
common to mortal efforts so as to be able to awake conceptions of acts
of our own. Thus sentiment cannot be apprehended. Nor is it a case of
production; if so, no one would go twice to a play of a pathetic type,
since one would experience actual misery as the result, in lieu of a
pleasant melancholy; again the sight of lovers united does not in real
life produce sentiment. Nor is a case of the revelation of something
existing potentially (çaktirūpa). If this were so, then, when the
potential emotions were let loose, they would occupy their field of
action in diverse degrees—thus contradicting the nature of sentiment as
one; moreover there would be the same difficulties as in the case of
apprehension as to whether revelation applied to the hero or oneself.
The true solution, therefore, is to ascribe to a poem a peculiar
threefold potency of its own, the power of denotation (abhidhā), which
deals with what is expressed, the power of realization (bhāvakatva),
which relates to the sentiment, and the power of enjoyment
(bhojakatva), which has regard to the audience. If denotation were all,
there would be no difference between poetic figures and manuals, there
would be absence of the distinctions produced by divergence of literal
and metaphorical sense, and the avoidance of harsh sounds would be
needless. As it is, we have the second function of realization of
sentiment, which causes the expressed sense to serve as the basis of
the sentiment, and confers on the determinants, &c., the essential
feature of being appropriated by the audience as universal. From this
comes the appreciation by the audience of the sentiment, an
appreciation consisting in a mental condition made up entirely of the
element of goodness or truth (sattva), uninfluenced by the other
elements of passion (rajas) and dullness (tamas), that is, entirely
free from desire, comparable with meditation on the absolute. This
condition is the vital element; the enjoyment ranks above the aesthetic
equipment [666] which renders it possible. To this theory which is
sometimes ascribed to the Sāṁkhya, [667] and called the Bhuktivāda,
doctrine of the enjoyment of sentiment, the objection is made that the
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