Vada in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c10.s6.19

c10.s6.19

Many other *ācāryas* added new *rasas* to the list of eight or nine *rasas* from this point of view. Abhinavagupta himself has referred to the theory of *laulya-rasa*, with *gardha* (greed) as its *sthāyī bhāva*. Abhinavagupta does not altogether discard *laulya-rasa*. He simply rules out the possibility of its independent existence. He says that the *sthāyī bhāva* of this so-called *laulya-rasa* can be incorporated either in *hāsa* or in *rati*. The question of this empiricist view of *rasa* recurs again in the next millennium in the treatment of some of great masters of theory — Bhānudatta, Paṇḍitarāja Jagannātha and Viśveśvara Pāṇḍe. The theory of *laulya-rasa*, which some of the predecessors of Abhinavagupta had postulated, reappears with a different name. Bhānudatta in his *Rasamañjarī* has referred to the theory of *māyā-rasa* to refute it. So does Viśveśvara Pāṇḍe in the late eighteenth century. The proponent of the theory argues that if *śānta* with *nivṛtti* (renunciation) as the dominating emotion can be accepted as *rasa*, *māyā-rasa* with *pravṛtti* (empiricism) as the dominating emotion should also be accepted.