The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c20.s5.18

c20.s5.18

An effort is made to describe the precise nature of the mental activity involved in the enjoyment of sentiment, and to base upon it a division of the sentiments. The four sentiments of love, heroism, horror, and fury are taken as primary, and brought into connexion with mental conditions described as the unfolding (*vikāsa*), expansion (*vistara*), agitation (*kṣobha*), and movement to and fro (*vikṣepa*) of the mind.² These are evidently mental conditions, believed to be reached by introspection, and they have the merit of giving a quasi-psychological rationale for the doctrine of four primary and four secondary sentiments found in the *Nāṭyaśāstra*.³ But there was no early agreement on this piece of psychology; Abhinavagupta,⁴ with Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, accepts only three aspects of mental condition as involved, the melting (*druti*), expansion, and unfolding, a division which is applied also in the theory of poetics to justify the doctrine of the existence of three qualities only of words.¹ On Dhanaṃjaya’s view the sentiment of calm which he denies for drama,² if it exists at all, must be regarded as combining all the four mental aspects above distinguished.