History of Sanskrit Poetics c6.62

c6.62

We shall now turn to the analysis Bharata and his followers make about the effect produced on the minds of the spectators when they see a drama. It should be remembered that they had only a limited objective before them and were not concerned with any perfect or all-round system of psychology concerning man from his primitive stage or from childhood onwards. They knew that the representation of a drama appealed only to two senses, viz. the eye and the ear (क्रीडनीयकमिच्छामो दृश्यं श्रव्यं च यद्भवेत् । नाट्य. I. 11). This was the physiological basis. Among those arts that appeal through the eye are included dancing (नृत्य) and acting, ornaments, painting; the arts of hearing include oratory and repetition of poetic stanzas (पाठ्य), singing and music in general. They knew that a dramatic representation gave delight to the audience even when in the drama presented there were some sad episodes. In ordinary life pity and fear do not give rise to pleasure or repose but the pity and fear felt by the representation on the stage of a tragic event differ in their effects. They therefore described and analysed the nature of the aesthetic pleasure derived and relished by appreciative men and women. Aesthetic pleasure or delight is one (*rasa* is really one)¹; but as in the case of speech, where senses are derived from sentences and sentences are split up into words and letters, so they held that the pleasurable feeling, experience (संवेदन or अनुभूति) or effect could be distinguished as of eight sorts viz. relating to sex (śṛṅgāra), hāsya² &c. It would not be proper to say that the *rasa* theorists held that all men had only eight or nine instincts and that, as compared to the findings of modern psychologists, they were wrong in recognizing शोक and one or two others as fundamental, innate or basic propensities. Their theory was that as the effect of the representation of a drama the audience went through an experience that was packed full of delight, that there was no question of pain in that experience, that the experience appeared various owing to the impressions of love, sorrow and other propensities lying dormant in the mind, which were roused by the several kinds of abhinaya. The अ. भा. says ‘अस्मन्मते तु संवेदनमेवानन्दघनमास्वाद्यते तत्र का दुःखशङ्का केवलं तस्यैव चित्रताकरणे रतिशोकादिवासनाव्यापारस्तदुद्बोधने चाभिनयादिव्यापारः ।’ (vol. I. p. 293 on VI. 37).³ The poetic theory at its best was that nothing was ugly in the world and that everything was beautiful when the dramatist or poet by his imaginative creation and the spectator or reader by imaginative centemplation expresses or visualises to himself the idealised circumstances delineated in the drama or poem. This is explicitly stated by the नाट्यशास्त्र 21. 122 in the words न तज्ज्ञानं &c quoted in note 2 on p. 35 and by भामह in V. 4.