Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c83.62

v2.c83.62

This borrowing from the *rasa*-system—for the idea of *rasa*, as Ānandavardhana himself says, was already well established in the drama by Bharata and others—fills the outlines of the *dhvani*-theory with a fundamentally important aesthetic content, which was not yet fully recognised in the poetic, as it had been in the dramatic art. And, in this sense, the *dhvani*-theory has been characterised as an extension of the *rasa*-theory. But in reality it was not an extension so much as a re-arrangement; for the *dhvani*-theorists accept the *rasa* (despite the emphasis they put upon it) as only one of the aspects of the unexpressed in poetry. Neither the Dhvanikāra nor Ānandavardhana could, at least from the standpoint of theoretic consistency, explicitly make the suggestion of *rasa* the exclusive end of poetry, inasmuch as the unexpressed may in some cases be a matter or an imaginative mood, although it can be shewn that their views practically tend to such a proposition and probably inspire later theorists to work out the thesis that the *rasa* alone is the essence of poetry. The essentiality, thus implicitly, if not explicitly, ascribed to *rasa* by the formulators of the *dhvani*-theory, is, however, expressed more definitely by Abhinavagupta, who appears to have attached little weight to mere theoretical considerations. The point will be dealt with later; it will suffice here to indicate that Abhinavagupta in many places expresses himself unambiguously that the *rasa* is in fact the essence of poetry; and, admitting that the unexpressed may also take the form of *vastu* or *alaṃkāra*, he thinks that these two forms of suggestion terminate ultimately in the suggestion of *rasa*³². We shall see that this opinion probably inspired the somewhat extreme theory of Viśvanātha that the *rasa* alone constitutes the essence of poetry; but the considerations, which had wisely restrained the authors of the *Dhvanyāloka* from expressing it in clear terms, could not, as Jagannātha’s criticism of Viśvanātha’s view shews, be easily put out of the way, and recognition was refused to any further development of the theory out of itself.