Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c82.s1.45

v2.c82.s1.45

feeling. Śaṅkuka, on the other hand, thinks that the *rasa* is not produced as an effect, but inferred by the spectator, and the inferred feeling is relished by him as *rasa*. The permanent mood of the hero is inferred to exist in the actor (though not actually existing in him) by means of the *vibhāvas* etc., cleverly exhibited by him in acting, so as to produce an illusion of identity with the feelings of the hero²⁴; and the mood thus inferred, being sensed by the spectator through its exquisite beauty, adds to itself a peculiar charm²⁵, and thus develops into a relishable condition of his own mind which is called the *rasa*. The realisation of *rasa*, therefore, is a process of logical inference, and the *niṣpatti* of Bharata's *sūtra* is explained as *anumiti*, the *vibhāvas* standing to *rasa* in the relation of *anumāpaka* or *gamaka* to *anumāpya* or *gamya*. But the mood itself, though inferred in this way from the relation of logical major and middle terms, is yet cognised as different from the objects of ordinary inference, being inferred, as it were, by force of its connexion with the *vibhāvas*, which factors, though artificial in themselves, are not recognised as such. This cognition or knowledge is characterised as being based on what is called *citra-turaga-nyāya* (or the analogy by which a horse in a picture is called a horse), and should be differentiated from the true ('he is Rāma’), the false (‘he is Rāma’ with a following negation ‘he is not Rāma’), the doubtful (‘he may or may not be Rāma’) knowledge, as well as from the knowledge of similarity (‘he is like Rāma’)²⁶. The theory, however, has been discredited by later schools on the ground (as Govinda concisely puts it²⁷) that it disregards the well-recognised fact that the inference of a thing can never produce the same charm as direct cognition. It has also been pointed out that the *rasa* is not capable of being cognised by the ordinary means of arriving at knowledge, for the feeling of a hero like Rāma, being past, cannot be cognised directly by the organs of sense belonging to the present²⁸. The *anumāna*-theory is criticised elaborately in connexion with the theory of ‘suggestion’, coming topically within the province of the suggestion of *rasa* (*rasa-dhvani*). We shall have occasion to deal with this aspect of the theory in its proper place; but the general argument with which it is sought to be discarded is that the *vibhāvas* cannot be taken as the middle term in proving the *sthāyin*, because the former do not stand in the same relation to the latter as the middle term (*sādhana*) does to the major term (*sādhya*), but are simply its suggestors (*vyañjaka*).