vyakti

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World Sanskrit ConferenceSpecial

Vol. 6 Year 2012

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Rashtriya Sanskrit SansthanDeemed University

Under M/O Human Resource DevelopmentGovt. of India, New Delhi

Sa sk tavimara

Journal Of Rashtriya Sankrit Sansthan

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VyaktiVyaktiVyaktiVyaktiand the History of Rasaand the History of Rasaand the History of Rasaand the History of Rasa

Sheldon PollockSheldon PollockSheldon PollockSheldon Pollock

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A small but significant chapter in the intellectual history ofrasa is opened by the philological history of the word vyakti(andits virtual synonyms vyajan and abhivyakti). The fact that this

term underwent fundamental redefinition afternandavardhanas time, for whose new linguistics of literature itwas a keyword, seems to have been as invisible to the premodernIndian thinkers who wrote on aesthetic theory as it has been tothe modern scholars who have studied them. And while Indianthinkers may actually have been more aware of some crucialcomponents of the intellectual history of rasa than most modernscholars of the subject, their awareness was incomplete without asense of the historically contingent semantics of vyakti.

A case in point is Jaganntha Paitarja. In an earlierpublication I argued that when, in reviewing the history of rasa

theory in his Rasagagdhara, Jaganntha claims Bhaa Nyakasnotion of experience (bhoga) to be no different fromAbhinavaguptas idea of vyakti, and his experientialization

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Vyakti and the History of Rasa 233

(bhogakttva [sic]) no different from Abhinavas vyajan,1 the

great seventeenth-century poetician was seriously mistaken. Myreasoning was that, from the moment Bhaa Nyaka redirectedattention away from the internal production of emotion in thetext to the external reception of rasa in the reader,nandavardhanas conception of vyakti/vyajan was renderedirrelevant for the understanding of rasa and hence ceased to havethe pivotal role in literariness that had been claimed for it. AsBhaa Nyaka famously put it, As for the other process calledimplicature (dhvani), which is essentially the process ofmanifestation (vyajantmaka), even were it proven to bedifferent from the other two [verbal modalities, i.e., literal and

figurative meaning (abhidh and laka)], it would only be acomponent of literature, not its essential form.2

My account was correct, I believe, but only up to a point, forI failed to make clear the radical difference between what

Jaganntha meant by vyakti/vyajan and what Bhaa Nyakahimself meant (though Jaganntha should of course haveregistered it himself, in view of the citation I gave above). It isthis difference, its origins, and its significance for the history ofrasawhich I think can be considered (and which at all events Iwill consider) separately from the history of the term in broaderphilosophical and linguistic thoughtthat I want to try to

delineate here.IIII

To the degree that we can reconstruct his views from thepitifully few fragments surviving from his masterpiece, theHdayadarpaa, Bhaa Nyaka was concerned to rethink thenotion of rasa in part by refuting the doctrine propounded bynandavardhana. In fact, Ruyyaka in the mid-twelfth century

1. matasyaitasya prvasmn [sc., abhinavaguptasya] matdbhvakatvavyprntarasvkra eva viea. bhogas tu vyakti.

bhogakttva tu vyajand aviiam(Rasagagdharap. 30 l. 2).2. See Pollock 2010: 147, the note there, and appendix #9. See also the

fragment of Bhaa Nyaka cited in Dhvanylokalocanap. 88: [Sinceimplicature is supposed to be found everywhere in discourse] wewould be forced to say that all discourse can be called literature,and his downgrading of dhvani,ibid.pp. 171-172.

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called the Hdayadarpaa a book meant to overthrow the

concept of implicature (dhvanidhvasagrantha), though it wasundoubtedly far more than a mere polemic.1As we can see fromthe fragment quoted above, in Bhaa Nyakas usage vyajanwas synonymous with dhvani. And, unsurprisingly, that isprecisely how nandavardhana himself uses the term throughoutthe Dhvanyloka. There, the verbal root vyajand its derivativesvyakti, abhivyakti, vyajakatva(curiously he nowhere employs theterm vyajan itself) refers exclusively to a abdavtti, the newverbal modality nanda postulates and designates dhvani.2 Itrepresents exclusively a linguistic, specifically a semantic,dimension of the literary text; what is vyaktais an artha, a layer of

textual signification.

3

As in narrative or rhetorical implicature(vastudhvani, alakradhvani) and no doubt analogized from thosecases, rasa is held to be communicated by implicature as well(rasadhvani): the emotional content of a literary work issomething that cannot be signified by metaphor or metonymy letalone directly expressed; it can only be implied (dhvanyate), thatis, manifested ([abhi]vyajyate).4

All of this is in complete harmony with nandavardhanasoverall aesthetic theory. His striking critical innovation in thearea of literary meaning notwithstanding, nanda belonged tothe traditional school of rasa analysis, which was entirely

formalistic. His attention is directed almost exclusively to thetext-centric problems of rasa: how it is related to languagequalities or figures of sound or sense (chapter 2), or to texture(e.g., degree of compounding) (chapter 3.5); by what processes it

1. Ruyyakas comment on Vyaktivivekap. 5.2. vyajakatvasmyd dhvanir ity ukta (Dhvanyloka p. 135); abdo

vyajakat bibhrad dhvanyukter viaybhavet(1.15), etc.3. so rthas tadvyaktismarthyayog abda ca kacana (Dhvanyloka1.8).4. ttyas tu rasdilakaa prabhedo vcyasmarthykipta prakate, na

tu skc chabdavypraviaya iti vcyd vibhinna eva(Dhvanyloka pp.

78-80). The terms vyaktiand abhivyaktiare used synonymously:upanibadhyamno lakro rasbhivyakti- hetu(p. 233);rasavyaktinimittam ida cparam... (p. 342);rasavyaktyanuguatayaiva (p. 354);gtdiabdebhyo pi rasbhivyaktirasti(p. 405), etc. So too in Vyaktiviveka, e.g., vyaktilakaa- abhivyaktir iti tal lakaam(p. 80).

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is produced at the level of the literary work as a whole (3.10-14);

what obstructs or contradicts it (3.18-20), and so on. In short,what nandavardhana wants to understand is the basicmechanism immanent in the text by which rasa is made manifestin the character, and why this mechanism cannot be comprisedunder the normal verbal modalities of literal or figurativesignification (abhidh, laka). Like all his predecessors he showsno interest whatever in rasa as an epistemological problem letalone in the subjective aspect of rasa, that is, the question of howthe viewer/reader experiences it, though of course it is theviewer/reader who is always the one making the judgmentsabout the successful or unsuccessful manifestation of rasa on the

basis of his antecedent reactions.It is this vyakti (vyajan/abhivyakti), in the technical sense

of the verbal modality thought to explain how rasa can becommunicated, that in the following generation formed theprincipal target of Bhaa Nyakas critique of nandas theory ingeneral. We shall see that it may well have been Bhaa Nyakahimself who already recoded the sense of vyakti, but, as thecitations adduced above suffice to show, the principal sense ofthe term for him was undoubtedly the linguistic.1

We are able to get a firmer grasp of Bhaa Nyakas actualcritique thanks to the Avaloka of Dhanika (c. 975), which offersthe fullest exposition available of the ideas of the Hdayadarpaa.2That critique was partly derived from a reassertion (againstdhvani) of the older theory of the process by which the finalpurport of a sentence is produced (ttparya), to which BhaaNyaka as a Mmsaka was committed (I cannot detail the

1. In a brief excursus at the end of this article I consider one complexpassage that has confused scholars on this point. I am not entirelysure what to make of the few earlier uses of (abhi-)vyaj in rasadiscourse, namely in the Nyastra (the sthyibhvas arennbhvbhinayavyajta-, N 6.31+, GOS 4th ed. p. 283; the bhvas

are kvyarasbhivyaktihetava, N 7.6+, GOS 4th ed. p. 342).Assuming these passages are old (which is not a given), it is mostunlikely they are referencing the abdavtti; perhaps they aresimply playing on the metaphor of the nnvyajanasasktamannam(p. 282).

2. As argued in Pollock 2010passim.

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complexities of that discussion here). But it certainly also seems

to have been partly tied up with the hermeneutical shift itselfthat Bhaa Nyaka effected, from his redirecting the analyticalfocus of aesthetics away from its long-standing concern with thetextuality of the production of rasa to the psychology of itsreception. That the theory of implicature was rendered irrelevantby this new hermeneutics is indicated by Dhanika:

All this being the case, the view that rasa can bemanifested (rasdnvyagyatvam) stands refuted. For anentity can only be manifested by something after it has beenbrought into being by something else: a pot, for example, canonly be manifested by a light when it has already been

produced by the clay.1

It is certainly not possible for anentity to be brought into existence by the very things thatare supposed to manifest it, and this at one and the samemoment. But that rasa can be reproduced (bhvyante) bymeans of the factors and the rest in the spectators issomething that has already been cogently argued.2

To understand this passage we must first understand whatAll this being the case (eva ca sati) refers to. It would seem tosignal the conclusion of Dhanajayas core argument on whichDhanika is commenting, that is, the argument concerning thelocation of rasa (and hence its real nature). To quote the kriksof the Daarpakaat issue:

Rasa belongs to the spectator experiencing the rasa, and tohim alone, because he is alive and present. It does not belongto the character, because (1) he is no longer alive andpresent; (2) the ultimate aim of literature cannot pertain tothe character; (3) we would otherwise have the absurdsituation of the spectator being overcome with shame,

jealousy, passion, or hatredjust as if he had seen a man in

1. One of four types of manifestation, see Vyaktiviveka p. 80; andcompare Pramavarttika below, p. 250 n 3 (cited by Ruyyaka andVivantha).

2. Daarpakap. 217.

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everyday life in the embrace of his belovedor else having a

merely indifferent apprehension.

1

First, and generally, what Dhanikas comment suggests is

that any given theoretical position on the location (or, generally,ontology) of rasawhether it exists in the text or in thereceiverwas intimately connected with a particular modality ofits cognitive genesis (or, generally, epistemology)such as herewhether manifestation or reproduction (bhvakatva) is themore appropriate explanation. If rasa is not something located inthe text it cannot be manifested; if it is something in the mindof the viewer/reader it must be experienced (or, rather, re-experienced) in the way peculiar to aesthetic objects. Second and

more specifically, this is the argument that Dhanika seems to bepresenting, however elusively, in his comment just cited. If rasa isthought to be something manifested, it can only be manifestedin the character, where it already exists, having attained itsexistence from something elsethat is, presumably, from the realevents recounted in the narrativelike a pot from clay, and isonly being brought to light, like a pot by a lamp, by the languageor representations of the literary text or drama. But since itmakes no sense for rasa to exist in the character, as Dhanajaya(following Bhaa Nyaka) so cogently argues, some otherepistemological/causal process must be involved, such as

bhvan, where rasa is actually brought into existencein theviewer/readerby the words of the author.2

IIIIIIII

It was this powerful critique, or something close to it, fromBhaa Nyaka that would seem to have prompted the recoding ofvyakti into the new meaningindeed, into something on theorder of Bhaa Nyakas bhogathat would become so blindinglypresent to Jagannthas eyes seven centuries later. The term in

1. Daarpaka4.38-39.

2 In the Vyaktiviveka (pp. 80-83) it is the causal relationship of theaesthetic elements and rasa that is adduced to refute thesimultaneity presupposed by nanda in his theory of themanifestation (Dhvanyloka p. 404, sequentiality [cause andeffect]; p. 424, simultaneity [lamp and jar]). Contrast the critique ofthe Shityadarpaa(see below).

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the context of rasa theory would no longer refer to the

manifestation of rasa through the textthe characters stableemotion enhanced by the aesthetic elements (vibhvdi)butrather to the manifestation of the viewer/readers own stableemotion; vyakti in this context would no longer refer to alinguistic process, a abdavtti, concerning the texts productionof meaning, especially affective meaning, but instead to apsychological process, a cittavtti, concerning the viewer/readers experience of rasa. As Jaganntha himself puts it, In thestatement The stable emotion, manifested by the aestheticelements, is known as rasa [Kvyapraka 4 krik28], the wordmanifested (vyakta), or being made an object of manifestation

(vyakti), refers to the consciousness [of the viewer/reader] fromwhich obscuration has been removed (bhagnvara cit).1 Andthis of course was the sense he had in mind when he equatedBhaa Nyakas bhogawith Abhinavaguptas vyakti.

What can we say, however, about the actual history of thisrecoding prior to Jaganntha? If we trace our steps back from themid-seventeenth-century, we find the new sense of the term inthe Kvyapradpa (c. 1475), where Govinda in glossing vyakta inthe same Mammaa passage declares that manifestation issynonymous with aesthetic relishing (vyakti carvaeti paryya),that is, with the experience of the viewer/reader.2 Some three

centuries before Govinda, Hemacandra (d. 1172) defines rasa asthe stable emotion existing in the form of the predispositions ofthe spectators when manifested (abhivyakta) by the aestheticelements (vibhvnubhvavyabhicribhir abhivyakta sthy bhvorasa, which he glosses: abhivyakta smjikn vsanrpea

sthita sthy ratydiko bhva).3 Hemacandras definition,however, has been borrowed from the summary ofAbhinavaguptas aesthetic doctrine in Mammaas Kvyapraka(c. 1050).4

1. Rasagagdharap. 26.2. Kvyapradpap. 116. That is to say, rasa is the stable emotion [that

exists in the form of the viewer/readers latent predisposition, p.117] when it is qualified by vyakti, or relishing (p. 118).

3. Kvynusanap. 88.4. Kvyaprakap. 92.

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The text that would seem to establish something of a

baseline in our semantic reconstruction is Mahima BhaasVyaktiviveka, which highlights our keyword in its very title. Thiswork must have been composed sometime in the first quarter ofthe eleventh century, since it cites the Dhvanyloka (c. 1000) atleast once and was itself cited by Mammaa. There is no hint inthe Vyaktiviveka that by vyakti Mahima Bhaa understoodanything but nandavardhanas dhvani, the manifestation oflinguistic meaning; it is certainly never used in the sense of therevelation of a subjective response to the aesthetic object. In fact,like nanda himself Mahima Bhaa is largely indifferent to thereception theory of rasaas he puts it explicitly, We hold rasa to

be an imitation of a stable emotion (sthyyanukaratmano hi rasiyante)and, like his fellow logician r akuka from whom heborrowed this view, he was concerned with the cognitive processby which we infer the presence of rasa in the literary text.1 Ofcourse, Mahima, writing in the wake of Abhinavaguptasreconceptualization (he had no direct knowledge of BhaaNyakas work), agrees that in the final analysis rasa is anexperience of rapture on the part of the responsiveviewer/reader (sacetanacamatkritvam),2 but the only possibleapplication of the term manifestation to that process can be afigurative one (vyagyatvopacra). We actually infer rasa from the

aesthetic elementsthese elements do not manifest rasabutthe use of manifestation in a metaphorical sense, he suggests,may be allowed as pointing toward the uniqueness of the finalexperience.

We are finally, and not unexpectedly, brought toAbhinavagupta, where we encounter a commentator forced totransfigure the very meaning of the work he is commenting on to

1. Vyaktiviveka p. 73. When Mahima Bhaa refers to apprehendingdesire or any other stable emotion at the same time as [weapprehend] the meaning of the sentences [that convey] the

foundational factor and the other aesthetic elements (p. 62), he istalking about the stable emotion of the character in the work, notthe stable emotion of the apprehending subject, the viewer/reader.

2. Vyaktiviveka p. 59. Note that the term camatkis found only once inthe Dhvanyloka, in what is almost certainly a gloss that has creptinto the text (p. 549).

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save it; but also, and unexpectedly, perhaps to Bhaa Nyaka

himself, where we may be finding a critic turning his opponentsweapons directly against him.

What is striking about the Abhinavagupta material is that,pace Mammaa, there seems to be no explicit reformulation ofvyakti as the revelation of the viewer/readers sthyibhva. Ofcourse, it is everywhere clear in Abhinava that rasa is anexperience of the reader and an experience brought about byvyakti; indeed, the equivalence of his categories with BhaaNyakas was drawn by Abhinava himself:

bhogkaraavypra ca kvyasya rasaviayo dhvanantmaiva,nnyat kicit.1

(The process of experientialization in literature is nothingother than implicature with rasa as its object.)

But while all the components of the theory are present here andelsewherethe idea that rasa is an apprehension in the subjecthaving the rasa experience; that the subjects latentpredispositions are stimulated by the experience; that thelanguage of vyaktican continue to be usedI have been unable tolocate anywhere in the Locana or the Abhinavabhrat a passagewhere Abhinava says directly that it is the latent emotion of theviewer/reader that is manifested; the phraseology that will

become so common later (abhivyakta smjikn vsanrpeasthita sthyand the like) is not found in Abhinava, so far as I cansee, and while Abhinava is committed to the view that theviewer/readers predispositions are activated in the aestheticprocess, he does not seem to say that they are manifested.2Theclosest we come are in the following two passages from theLocana(I find nothing quite comparable in theAbhinavabhrat):

tasmt sthitam etad abhivyajyante ras prattyaiva ca rasyantaiti. (p. 190)

1. Dhvanylokalocanap. 188.2. E.g.,Abhinavabhratp. 279,

tadvibhvdisdhrayavaasaprabuddhocitanijaratydivsanvea-,etc.

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(Hence it is settled that the rasas are manifested, and are

tasted in the form of an apprehension [thereby attained].)vyagyasya ca crutva rasbhivyaktiyogyattmakam, rasasyasvtmanaiva virntidhmna nandtmakatvam. (p. 473)

(The beauty of a suggested meaning is no more than itsability to manifest rasa, and rasa, as the end product of theaesthetic process, is itself bliss.)1

The semantic transformation, whereby what ismanifested or revealed is a new form of consciousness in theviewing/ reading subject, which is implicit throughoutAbhinavas work, may in fact have begun before him, just

possibly with Bhaa Nyaka himself. Given how little we knowabout the great critic, however, it is not entirely surprising thatmaking this determination comes down to how we understand asingle, intrinsically and contextually complex verse found in the

Abhinavabhrat and the Vyaktiviveka, and what sense we are tomake of its history. Here is the verse in question:

savedankhyay vyagyaparasavittigocara /svdantmnubhavo rasa kvyrtha ucyate // 2

(The purpose of literature is rasa, which is an experienceconsisting of savoring; it may be said to be manifested only

by way of a manifestation called awareness, and its domain isthe highest consciousness.)

The reading in pdaa is that given in the second edition of theGaekwad Oriental Series edition of the Abhinavabhrat,3 whichthe editor of the fourth edition imprudently emended to accordwith the version transmitted by Mahima Bhaa:bhvasayojanvyagya-.4 In addition to the problematic variant,we are confronted with several complications in understanding

1. Trans. Ingalls et al. 1990: 611.2. Abhinavabhratp. 271.

3. Abhinavabhratp. 277 (savedankhyay, sc., vyajanay/vyakty). The spekasamsa is difficult. Kangle conjecturessavedankhyavyagyas tu(1973: 150); vyagyawould be easier. Seealso below p. 247 n 2.

4. Vyaktiviveka p. 70 (Revealed by the conjuncture of aestheticelements).

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Sanskrit-Vimara242

the verse. First, while in the Abhinavabhratit is found at the end

of Abhinavas review of the ideas of Bhaa Nyaka, it is not self-evident that the verse is to be attributed to him. A second, closelyrelated question is posed by the context of Abhinavas quotationof the verse and his comment on it. And a third is how to explainthe fact that the verse is absent from the parallel passage inHemacandras Kvynusana: where Abhinava gives yat tktam

savedankhyay, etc., Hemacandra (and the Kalpalatvivekafollowing him) offer another verse undoubtedly to be attributedto Bhaa Nyaka but one with entirely different concerns.

Whether or not the verse is to be attributed to BhaaNyaka is complicated by the fact that Mahima Bhaa confesses

never to have had the chance to read the Hdayadarpaa(adadarpaa-, v. 4). It is of course entirely possible that a versefrom Bhaa Nyakas work could have been circulatinganonymously and found its way into the Vyaktiviveka(indeed, hemay have taken it from the Abhinavabhratitself, though I knowof no evidence that he had access to this work). More tellingly,we might wonder why Abhinava should quote the verseimmediately after citing two other verses from the work ofBhaa Nyaka if it were not by the same author.1The context ofhis citation is somewhat confusing, however, and one is easilymislead into supposing that the point of Abhinavas quotation is

the same in all three instances, i.e., to reject his prvapakin. Hereis how Abhinava introduces and explains the verse:2

[H: bhvanbhvya eo pi grdigao hi yat] iti tu yat kvyenabhvyante ras ity ucyate, tatra vibhvdijanita-carvatmaksvdarpapratyayagocaratpdanam eva yadi [H:bhaved] bhvana [sic] tad abhyupagamyata eva. yat tktam

savedankhyay[etc.] tatra vyajyamnatay vyagyo lakyate.anubhavena tadviaya iti mantavyam.3

(If in saying that Reproduction brings into being the thingswe categorize as rasas [Bhaa Nyaka] means that Rasas

1. A simple point I overlooked until C. Rajendran called it to myattention.

2. H indicates additions or variants from HemacandrasKvynusana.

3. Abhinavabhrat p. 371.

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are caused to come into being by a literary workthat is, if

he means thereby, bringing rasa within the scope of anapprehension [on the part of the viewer/reader] in the formof a savoring (i.e., relishing) produced by the aestheticelements, then that sort of bringing into being issomething we fully accept. As for what is said in thefollowing, The purpose of literature is rasa ..., here rasaitself is figuratively being referred to as manifested as [thereaders awareness itself] that is being manifested;1while bythe use of the word experience what is meant is that rasais the objectof an experience.)2

The introductory phrase yat tktam normally prompts us to

expect a refutationbut no refutation ever in fact arrives; on thecontrary, rather than introducing yet another prvapaka theverse is clearly adduced to corroborateAbhinavas interpretationof Bhaa Nyakas bhvan. This strongly suggests that originalreading was notyat tktambutyathoktam, as indeed he has said.True, this still leaves open the question of who said itand ofcourse the possibility that it was Bhaa Nyaka himself.

In interpreting the verse I am inclined to believe thatMahima Bhaa preserved its principal thrust of emphasizing theexperiential as opposed to the linguistic idea of vyaktiand henceits figurative and not literal meaning here (as Ruyyaka clearlyindicates in his commentary). Mahimas reading of pdaa, on theother hand, may be a later revision, perhaps by Mahima himself,to make the quotation fit better with his concerns in theVyaktivivekapassage regarding the normal production of rasa.

1. Translation uncertain.2. So Ruyyaka (on Vyaktiviveka p. 71): vyagyo vyaktivdin

tathtvenbhipreta iha darane tpacaritavyagyabhva anubhavoyady api tasya[sc., rasasya]grhakas tathpy abhedopacrd iyam ukti.

I do not think it makes much difference to the historical argument Iam offering whether -vyagya inpda a is read as -vyagya or asthe first member of an ubhayapadavieaasamsa, both construed asreferring to rasain pdad (so Ruyyaka), or as modifying -savitti-in pdab (which would be somewhat redundant in the presence ofsavedankhyay).

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That the Kvynusana fails to transmit the verse is less

problematical than what it substitutes. Hemacandra does nothesitate elsewhere to emend the original Abhinavabhratfor onereason or another (such as the Vedic citations rtrim sata, etc. onthe page following the verse in question). The substitute versethat he offers here, however, while it undoubtedly belongs toBhaa Nyaka, is entirely out of place in the current context, andsomeone, if not Hemacandra himself, understood it in a way that,given what we know of Nyaka and Abhinava both, seems to mesimply impossible.1

Regardless of whether or not we ascribe the verse to BhaaNyaka (though I think we should), or accept as genuine the

reading savedankhyay given in the manuscripts of theAbhinavabhrat (though I think we must), the verse would stillappear to be the first instance of the migration of the idea ofvyakti from its linguistic sense of manifestation of a latentmeaning in the text, to its psychological sense, the revelation of anew consciousness in the viewer/reader. Were the transvaluationin fact owing to Bhaa Nyaka, it would be a clever move. Vyaktidoes not work the way you think it works, he would be tellingnanda, because rasa does not work the way you think it works,from within the text. I am prepared to accept vyakti only in afigurative sense, in connection with the real nature of rasa, which

is a process unfolding in the mind of the witnessing subject.

1. The complete verse is:sasargdir yath stra ekatvt phalayogata/vkyrthas tadvad evtra grd raso mata// (Just as in the Veda,where syntactic construal and the other linguistic operationsconstitute sentence meaningsince sentence meaning is a unitygiven that it must bear a relation to a single outcome of actionsohere in literature does the erotic and every other rasa constitute akind of sentence meaning). This is authenticated, by my lights, asthe work of Bhaa Nyaka by the arguments provided by Dhanika

(Avaloka on Daarpaka 4.37, p. 211; see Pollock 2010: 152-153). Inthe Kvynusana, however, the following citation is added: tadasmkam abhimatam eva, which makes no sense. Abhinavaguptashould not be shown accepting a view of rasa as constituting asentence meaning (vkyrtha) when that was precisely what BhaaNyaka used to refute nandas doctrine of dhvani/vyajan.

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IIIIIIIIIIII

What remains troubling in this tentative reconstruction ofmine is that the Indian tradition seems to have only rarelygestured toward, and never fully acknowledged, thetransmutation of vyakti from a linguistic into a psychologicalphenomenon. The most telling case, I believe, is that of Ruyyaka(c. 1150). In his commentary on the Vyaktiviveka he sets out to

justify precisely what Mahima Bhaa had sought to refute,namely, the applicability of vyaktito the notion of rasa. What hehas to say is valuable, and merits citing at length:

The reasoning of the advocate of manifestation1 for hisacceptance of that explanation is as follows. It would beincorrect to attempt to vindicate inference instead ofmanifestation, or to claim that manifestation can onlyhave a figurative sense [see above, p. 243], by resorting to theidea that the aesthetic factors and the stable emotions areactually factitious.2 It is relishing that actually animates(anupra) rasa and it is the sensitive viewer/reader alonewho relishes rasa; hence, when we characterize rasasessence, it must be as something that exists in theviewer/reader. Rasa does not exist in the character or theactor, because we can only apprehend rasa throughcommonization (sdhraya), which requires eliminating(avatroana) all the characters (or actors) particularities,those of space, time, social status, and literary type. It is not,of course, entirely incoherent to ascribe rasa to a charactersuch as Rma or the actor portraying him, since theyparticipate (anupravea) in rasa. But it is altogether incorrectto classify (vyavasthna) rasa as existing in them, given theauthoritative statement of the Sage himself, that The stableemotion itself is rasa.3

Since, accordingly, it is the stable emotion that is rasa, andsince those who lack rasa (nrasa) themselves cannot relish it,

1. This is actually the position of Ruyyaka himself.2. The theory of r akuka, with which Mahima Bhaa in fact

agrees.3. This makes sense only if Ruyyaka takes stable emotion as

referring to the actual feelings of the viewer/reader.

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the stable emotions really and truly exist in the form of our

predispositions, and they become rasa when they are madeaccessible to the act of relishing. Such is our position. Thereis nothing factitious here about the rasas, desire and the rest,nor indeed, even about the causes, effects, and ancillarycauses that come to be designated factors (foundationaland stimulant), reactions, and transitory emotions whenapprehended by the viewer/reader as common to him,because these actually do exist: they are called foundationalfactors and so on in the primary sense of the terms onlywhen apprehended by a sensitive viewer/reader; otherwisethey remain causes and the like. (This was intention of the

Sage in giving these things their supermundane designationsin the rasastra.) Therefore, the truly existing stable emotionin the form of a predisposition is manifested by the aestheticfactors without the interposition of any recollection of someconnection among them.1Given this, rasa is manifested ina quite literal and not figurative sense, while its beingsomething that must be inferred is refuted. The same holdsfor the emotions.

As for the four different kinds of manifestation that havebeen recognized,2 depending on whether the object ofmanifestation is real or not, that subject is quite irrelevant

here, because we accept for our theory of manifestation themodel of the lamp and the pot. It is also false to raise thespecter of the absurdity that, if the manifestation were real,the rasa would have to become visible. We do not refute ouropponents view by way of his own definition as coming tovisibility; and in fact no one has defined manifestation thisway. The term can be defined generally (according to thestatement, Manifestation produces a cognition ofsomething elseif that something is an already existingentityby the cognition of itself, as in the case of a lamp)3

1. Such as would support Mahima Bhaas rival doctrine of inference.2. Vyaktivivekap. 80.3. Pramavrttikaof Dharmakrti, krik262 (p. 137).

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as coming to awareness. There is accordingly no objection

whatever to the application of manifestation to rasa.

1

There are several key moves we should notice in Ruyyakas

argument. The first is to assert that the stable emotion at issuein rasa theory has, from the beginning, been the stable emotion ofthe viewer/reader, in the form of his latent predispositions: rasaonly lives when it is experienced, and it is only the viewer/readerwho does experience it (precisely the axiom, we will recall, thatled Bhaa Nyaka and Dhanika to reject vyakti). The charactermay participate in the actual events of rasa but rasa as suchcannot exist in him, since (aside from the fact that only the

sahdaya can savor rasa) we must in effect erase the specific

character if commonization is to take place. In the same way, thevibhvas and the rest actually do exist insofar as they are realapprehensions of the viewer/reader. And it is these that manifestthe predispositions, in the primary sense of the term manifest:bring into the domain of aesthetic experience. In short,according to Ruyyaka, since the theory of rasa was never aboutthe rasa of the character, and manifestation can never havemeant anything other than simply bringing to awareness, therecan never have been a transformation of the term vyakti in thefirst place.

This is quite an astonishing reassessment, and we mightexpect to have encountered somewhere some criticism of it, ademurral, or at least an acknowledgement. But in fact, the onlyslight hesitation that is registered, so far as I have been able todiscover, is in the Shityadarpaa(late fourteenth century). WhenVivantha uses the language of vyakti/vyajan,we find someonefor the first time confronting, or so it seems to me, the difficultiesinherent in the terms redirection from the semantics of rasa toits phenomenology. He starts with the imagined objector arguingthat, since what exists in the case of rasa is only a process oftastingof aesthetic consciousnessand not some actual object,how can the language of manifestation (vyajan) continue tobe applied to it? The authors answer is to concede the point, andto defend himself by saying that the use of manifestation isborrowed from the language of dhvani:

1. Vyaktivivekapp. 62-63.

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Objection: If it is indeed the case that rasa is not some thing

different from the experience of it, then one winds uparguing that rasa is not an object of knowledge. And sincemanifestation, which you accept as the mechanism forknowing rasa, is the making known of some particularobject, rasa and manifestation would wind up being one andthe same thing (since both are formsof knowledge and notobjectsof knowledge). And how then could rasa possibly besomething that is manifested, as you claim [at the beginningof the chapter: vibhvennubhvena vyakta (2.1)], when thesource of manifestation and the thing manifested must beabsolutely separate entities, like a lamp and a pot. To quote:

Manifestation produces a cognition of something else.Answer: This objection is entirely valid. And for this reason ithas been argued that Rasa must be completelydistinguished from all acts of making and knowing. It is aunique function, something we can call savoring.1And thatis why scholars use distinctive terms for it: tasting, savoring,rapture (camatkra), and so on.2 It is only because we arekeen to establish the process as such and as different from allother language functions, that we have said that rasa issomething manifested.3

The best commentary on this passage is the vacillationexpressed by Vivantha himself later, in chapter 5, where hevindicates the verbal function of vyajanin general but demurs

1. Source unknown.2. Commentators and manuscripts are in disagreement on this

passage. Anantadsa construes the whole passage from vilakaa- tobhavatti(which he reads thusly) as the direct discourse introducedby hus (whom he calls the ancient authorities). I read iti aftervypra and omit it after vyapade. The last line seems to meVivanthas defense (asmbhi) of vyajan despite its logicalirrelevance to a theory based on a hermeneutical vypra.

3. Shityadarpaapp. 79-81 (NSP). As Andrew Ollett has pointed out tome, it is possible that Vivantha is responding directly to Dhanika;at the same time, his strategyinsisting on a metaphorical use ofvyakti in order to accommodate the doctrine of subjectiveappreciation of rasa (rasacarva)seems very similar to MahimaBhaas.

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when applying it to rasa: This linguistic function [a fourth

function above and beyond abhidh, laka, and ttparya] iscalled manifestation by scholars. But when it comes to themanifestation of rasas, othersthat is, Vivantha himselfsay that the function should be called tasting.1

* * *

I have tried to show that we must distinguish bothconceptually and historically between two kinds of vyakti, one a

abdavtti, a linguistic phenomenon and an objective process, theother a cittavtti (or antakaraavtti), a psychologicalphenomenon and a subjective process. (While a linguistic fact isof course at one and the same time a cognitive fact, the two canbe analytically separated and were actually separated in India.)When nandavardhana and Bhaa Nyaka were employing thelanguage of vyakti they were doing so in the former sense. Thelatter sense arose only after Bhaa Nyakas hermeneuticaltransformation of the idea of rasaand possibly thanks to BhaaNyakas own ironical usagewhen rasa was no longer held to bethe stable emotion manifested (rather than directly orfiguratively expressed) in the character but rather (according toAbhinavaguptas reformulation of Bhaa Nyaka) the stableemotion manifested in the viewer/reader, that is to say, therevelation to himself of his own vsans.

Why later discussions fuse (or confuse) these two senses,why, that is, the language of linguistics was retained for thelanguage of psychology, is a question we can definitively answeronly when we have a fuller understanding of when and where thetransformation took place. If we conclude, on the basis of thelittle evidence I could find, that it started with Bhaa Nyaka, thepurpose would appear to have been to turn nandavardhana onhis head, and demonstrate that the terminology he uses properlyapplies to something he never considered. If it begins withAbhinavagupta or in his lineage, the purpose might be the

desireand the sheer intellectual bravado in the face of soarduous a taskto vindicate the dhvani/vyakti concept thatBhaa Nyaka had sought to refute even while deploying the

1. Shityadarpaa 5.5., p. 271 (NSP): s ceya vyajan nma vttir ityucyate budhai/ rasavyaktau punar vtti rasankhy pare vidu//

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new hermeneutics that made this refutation essential. In the

same way, when seven centuries later Jaganntha asserted BhaaNyakas bhoga to be identical with vyakti, he was eliding thecritique that led to the terminological redefinitiona critique, hethereby implied, that the term had anticipated from the start.

Equally striking, if my analysis here is even remotelycorrect, is the internal intellectual history of the transformation:first, the very fact that the transformation was so rarelythematized by the tradition itself, and second, when it wasthematized, as by Ruyyaka, the move made to defend the newtheory by locating its justification in the founding doctrine of theaesthetic system. While the latter phenomenon is hardly novel

the growth of knowledge in the Sanskrit world often has thesatkryavda (or Platonic) character of discovery of somethingthere all along rather than invention of something entirely newthe former merits careful scholarly attention: clearly whattraditions fail to see (if this was failure) must be as much a part ofour concern as what they do see. Let me also highlight in closingthe small but consequential methodological point illustrated bythe foregoing exercise and which I will characterize by way ofanother old Skhya figure: intellectual history withoutphilology will be as blind as philology without intellectual historywill be lame.

ExcursusExcursusExcursusExcursus

Whether or not it was Bhaa Nyaka who first (and if then,ironically) redeployed the term vyaktiin the psychological senseit was to have for writers from Mammaa onward, elsewhere inthe fragments it is clear he had only the linguistic meaning inmind. That some scholars have thought otherwise is due to asuspect passage in the Locana in the course of Abhinavaguptasrestatement of Bhaa Nyakas critique. We may compare theLocanaversion with the Abhinavabhratrendering and Ruyyakaslater summary from his Saketa commentary on the

Kvyapraka:(a) Dhvanylokalocana: aktirpasya hi grasybhivyaktau

viayrjanatratamyapravtti

(b) Abhinavabhrat: aktirpatvena prva sthitasya[sc. rasasya]pacd abhivyaktau viayrjanatratamypatti

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(c) Saketa: viayrjanatratamyd api rasanyatvbhva.1

As I understand it, the idea being attributed to Bhaa Nyakahere is that if nandas manifestation were to be accepted asthe mechanism behind rasa, it could come about that, since rasaexists only in potential form2 and has to be manifested, therewould be gradations (tratamya) in the acquisition of all thepertinent objects (i.e., the aesthetic elements, vibhvdi), somuch so that (as Ruyyaka concludes) one might never have a fullexperience of the rasa.

On this interpretation the reading -pravtti in the Locanapassage would be a corruption for patti. And indeed, thereceived reading makes little sense, as the recent translation ofIngalls et al. shows: If the erotic rasa were a power [locatedwithin him] that is manifested, the spectator would make evengreater efforts to obtain those objects [which bring about themanifestation] (1990: 221). They also seem to be in error whenthey say, with reference to the use of abhivyajyate in the Locanapassage that follows, It seems unlikely that [Bhaa Nyaka] isusing abhivyaktiin Abhinavas more restricted sense, namely themanifestation of a suggestion by verbal means (1990: 227). Infact, it is Bhaa Nyaka who has the more restrictedunderstanding of the term here. The theory of abhivyakti, saysBhaa Nyaka, is subject to the same criticism as the theory ofutpatti, since rasa can be manifested neither internally, in theperceiving subject, nor externally, in the actor or the characters(tatrpi ki svagato bhivyajyate rasa paragato v). On the firstoption, the viewer/spectator would be having the exact sameexperience as the character (and so recoil from tragedy, and soon); on the second, he would have no experience at all. Thisdilemma would make no sense if it were the later, non-

1. Dhvanylokalocana p. 182; Abhinavabhrat p. 270; Kvyapraka p.

563.

2. One of the four varieties of abhivyaktireviewed by Mahima Bhaa;an example is the curd existing in potentia in milk (Vyaktivivekap.80).I thank C. Rajendran (Calicut) for his remarks on an earlier versionof this essay, and Andrew Ollett (New York) for his editorialassistance.

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restricted, psychological meaning of (abhi)vyakti that were in

play.

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