A glimpse into the theory of Rasa - 1:

Passionate experiences as Rasa

All thoughts of experiences are emotions, feelings or passions. With lapse of time they become embellishments of life. In antiquity in the minds of poets they were considered as elements of rasa. They exist in content whatever the form of the artistic creations they may have been, whether in the present or in the past. The difference is that, they have different names, conceptualized in many forms.

Goethe's image and Sakuntala

J.W. Von Goethe, the German Romantic poet records this idea as an experience in a lyric form referring to Kalidasa's Sakuntala as:

If you want the bloom of the youth and fruit of later years,

If you want what enchants, fulfills, and nourishes,

If you want heaven and earth contained in one name -

I say Sakuntala and all is spoken.

Sakuntala appealed to Goethe for the beauty of its imagery, the complexity of its structure, and the unity of art and religion on which it was based. This validation I believe applies not only to Sakuntala, but to all of Kalidasa's other works like Megahadutha, Raguwansa, Vikram? or Urvashi Won by Valor, and Malavika and Agnimitra. Of these extant plays of Kalidasa it is universally accepted that Sakuntala is his best for its poetic spirituality.

Kalidasa's plays as examples

In this article my intention is to examine Rasa Theory briefly through three of Kalidasa's plays, namely Sakuntala, Urvasi Won by Valor or Vikram? and Malavika and Agnimitra.

I follow the translations of Barbara Stoler Miller, David Gitomer and Edwin Gerow in the anthology of Theatre of Memory, edited by Barbara Stoler Miller.

The concept of rasa has been theorized by many scholars of Eastern literature, more particularly of its verse and prose classical literature. This includes drama in verse as well of pure poetry.

The concept of rasa is akin to Indian aesthetics and was born in India through its poetics. Rasa is a state of emotion generated by poetic experiences that a Shaurdaya, an appreciator or a participant of usurpation of rasa (the latter term for ease I will use to identify to include a reader of literature and a spectator of drama as well), imbibes in his mind and lives in it with pleasurable thoughts.

Rasa emerges in the mind of a participant via enchantment of a work of art in the form of a spiritual concurrence. It is an extra ordinary feeling that comes to existence to an attachment of an experience.

What remains as an experience is subjective and as a result of it becoming subjective it becomes detached. It is this detached subjective element that creates the feeling of rasa.

This notion is expressed as alaukika or unworldly. "No composition can proceed without rasa," in Natyasastra, Bharathamuni explains. For Abhinavaguptha "there is no poetry without rasa" as he scripts in Dhyanloka. "A composition touched with rasa is poetry" Visvanatha writes in Sahityadharpana.

The titles of the books too suggest the embracing nature of this idea as poetry. Dhyana suggests the idea of meditation mood and loka, the world, conveys the idea of a cosmos or a sphere of concentration for meditation.

Sahitya means literature. In simple terms dharpana in literature connotes high powered passionate involvement in thought as of image of the snake twirled in a spiral form having its hood unmoved protecting Buddha during his course of long meditation. Syntax synthesis of the two suggests how a participant becomes hypnotized in the mood of literature as if he is in meditation. The titles of the treatises themselves suggest the idea of poetry through their images. In other words, rasa, as Sneb Pandit says, is considered the "essence and soul of art" of the later Indian aestheticians.

Ordinary meaning of Rasa

In the ordinary usage, rasa denotes a kind of juice or sap. It's a piquancy of a pleasurable emotion, a participant from a literary experience usurps. Eliot Deutsch reports that this term has been variously translated as "flavor", "desire", "beauty", which is "tasted" in art. Sneb Pandit says that the term is derived and borrowed from Indian medical sciences, as "Aristotle had borrowed the term catharsis", from Greek medical sciences relating it to tragedy. He elaborates his literary position giving it "a metaphysical connotation", comparing it to what is stated in Upanishads as ananda. This can be translated as spiritual delight. He records this idea more in precise terms as follows:

"Generally it refers to the essence of a thing and this was the meaning that was carried over into aesthetics and art. As an aesthetic experience, rasa refers not to the mere organic pleasure derived from tasting (asvadana) but signifies a kind of impersonal and objectified pleasure. When the term rasa is used as a fact in art it refers to the much needed criteria of the beautiful as against the merely agreeable and pleasant." Abhinavaguptha considered this idea of the spiritual delight or ananda to be the highest level of an aesthetic experience which he identifies as rasa. It is this kind of experience, Kalidasa represents as spiritual delight in his works which delights a participant as rasa in the form of experiences.

Enumerations of Rasa in Natyasastra

This concept Bharathamuni epitomizes as various delights in Natyasastra. He enumerates these delights originally into eight, identifying them as varied rasas. They are rati or srungara, the delight of erotic feelings or desire; hasya, the emotion which evokes laughter or comic implications; shoka, the emotion that impinges sorrow or grief; krodha, the emotion which provokes anger or wrath; uthsaha, the emotion that creates determination or heroism; bhaya, the emotion which drives to fear or dreadfulness; jugupsa, the emotion which brings loathsomeness or disgust; and vishmaya, the emotion that emanates astonishment or wonder. It is also believed that he later introduced another, namely shantha, the emotion that imbues serenity or tranquility. This is in controversy too as to who the real author of this rasa is. Some critics deem that the ninth rasa was introduced by Abhinavaguptha.