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
work composed before A.D. 1437, distinguishes Rāsa as natural (laukika)
and supernatural or transcendental; the former is the emotion
experienced in ordinary life—which may more conveniently be
distinguished as Bhāva,—the latter includes the emotion experienced in
dream experiences, in the building of castles in the air, and in the
appreciation of poetry, and he is careful to emphasize the totally
different nature of the natural and the transcendental emotion. [669]
The doctrine set out in Abhinavagupta is also that of the Daçarūpa,
although it is rendered more obscure there by the brevity of its
exposition. The process of transformation of an emotion to a sentiment
is formally described; ‘a dominant feeling or emotion becomes a
sentiment when it is transformed into an object of enjoyment through
the co-operation of the determinants, the consequents, including the
involuntary manifestations of feeling, and the transitory feelings’.
[670] The sense is made further precise by the assertion [671] that the
dominant emotion becomes a sentiment, because it is enjoyed by the
spectator of taste, and he is actually at present in existence; the
sentiment is not located in the hero whose actions are represented, for
he belongs to the past, nor does it appertain to the poem, for that is
not the object of the poem—its function being to set out the
determinants, &c., through which the dominant emotion is brought out
and generates the sentiment,—nor is sentiment the apprehension by the
spectator of the emotions enacted by the actor, since in that case
spectators would feel not sentiment, but an emotion varying in the
different individuals, just as in real life from seeing a pair in union
those who see them feel according to their nature shame, envy, desire,
or aversion. The position of the spectator is compared to that of the
child which, when it plays with its clay elephants—the ancient
equivalent of our tin soldiers—experiences the sensation of its own
energy as pleasant; the deeds of Arjuna arouse a like feeling in the
spectator’s mind. This experiencing sentiment is a manifestation of
that joy which is innate as the true nature of the self, and this
manifestation comes into being as the result of the pervasion of the
mind of the spectator with the dominant emotion and the determinants,
&c., in combination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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