Vada in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c10.s6.11

c10.s6.11

This variety and multifarious nature of *rasa* embraces not only whatever that is supposed to be apparently beautiful, sweet or attractive, it equally subsists on whatever that is terrorizing, hideous or ugly, and tends to encounter the issues that disturbs us that lead to abhorrence and detestation. This is very much true in case of *Mahābhārata* or the plays like *Ūrūbhaṅga* and *Veṇīsaṁhāra*, which are based on the Mahābhārata war. The masters of *rasa* theory say that *Mahābhārata* has an ending which is completely devoid of *rasa* (*virasāvasāna*), leaving its readers in the state of *vimanaskatā* (a mind uprooted from everywhere, dismay). It is a state where we stand in aversion; repulsed by our own repulsion. But then, quite emphatically the masters also say that an ending which is completely devoid of *rasa*, leads to the fountains of real *rasa*. This leads us to the other side of *rasa* discourse, where the concept of ugly, how so ever disturbing and complicated it may be, is taken up for making an aesthetic theory. Bharata Muni therefore counts Bībhatsa (repulsive) and Raudra (terror) as fundamental *rasas* (*mūla rasas*), juxtaposing them with an equal weight with the other two — Śṛṅgāra and Vīra. Bībhatsa is said to be of two kinds — *kṣobhaja* (born out of anguish) and *udvegī* (generated by uneasiness). The former would lead to disillusionment and ultimately to liberation (*mokṣa*).²³ Unfortunately the twist and turn given to this discourse by the non-dualistic Śaivite or Vedāntic philosophers got so much propagandized when the history of our knowledge systems was being written with a colonial bias, that the line of reasoning with dualist approach to the aesthetic concepts was overlooked. In the aesthetics based on absolutist philosophy, *rasa* is treated as a singular, isolated and unique experience. This is however a one-sided picture. Actually the *rasa* discourse did not run in a single stream.