In the Rg Veda it is written- तव॒ त्ये पि॑तो॒ रसा॒ रजां॒स्यनु॒ विष्ठि॑ताः । दि॒वि वाता॑ इव श्रि॒ताः ॥-tava tye pito rasā rajāṃsy anu viṣṭhitāḥ | divi vātā iva śritāḥ || (1.187.4)
“Your flavours, Pitā, are diffused through the regions, as the winds are spread through the sky.”
The meaning is that the flavors (rasas) are not found in one and the same food but are distributed among foods. Yet, wonderful to relate!, they belong together. The reference is to the Soma ritual which, we would take figuratively, as 'food for the soul', or intoxication with the Divine. Hindus often trace the evolution of their aesthetic and linguistic philosophy back to the following passage in the Aitareya Brahmana- which is the oldest priestly text associated with the Rg Veda.
The All Pervader glorifies the arts,
the Arts refine the Self (atma-samskrti).
With these the worshipper recreates his self,
that is made of rhythms, meters.
— Aitareya Brahmana 6.27 (trans. Arindam Chakrabarti)
The notion of refinement or 'samskriti' involved improving one's taste as a connoisseur or, equivalently, better extracting an essence of a pleasing type by removing displeasing alloys or contaminants. Thus 'rasa'- taste, or the extracting of essence or removal of impurities- was seen as part and parcel of Vedic religion and soteriology.
It may be that this point had not been made clearly enough by European Indologists or that the great Aesthetic philosophers of Europe had not highlighted something obvious enough about 'self-cultivation' or the pursuit of culture and refinement.
In 2005, back when India was ruled by a nice Italian lady, the great Umberto Eco gave a lecture in Pondicherry which featured a lengthy digression on the Indic concept of 'rasa' or the taste or savour of an aesthetic work.
Eco impugns the authenticity of Western translations- e.g. those of Abhinavagupta by Count Gnoli- even though it seemed an Italian could better rule India than her Indian sister-in-law, precisely because the former was less urbanized and Western. The villagers would vote for the 'respectful', widow of a maryada-purush (one known for keeping the bounds of decent behavior), who better incarnated the Hindu ideal of the faithful, self-effacing, 'pativrata' spouse than her younger, more urbane and aristocratic, English speaking, Indian sister-in-law.
During the fifties, more or less after my doctoral dissertation on Medieval aesthetics, I was stimulated by some English translation of Indian aestheticians of the same period, like Anandavardhana (the Dhvanyaloka of is from the IXth century) and Abhinavagupta, who lived at the beginning of the XIth century and was a contemporary of many Arab and Christian philosophers.
Abhinavagupta is revered by the Kauls- i.e. the Kashmiri Brahmins from whom the Dynasty descends.
I was also interested by Baratha who was indeed more ancient, but his Natya Shastra influenced the thought of both Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta.
Bharata's manual was a practical text encoding 'Vigyaan' or empirical praxis. Abhinavagupta was religious saint and savant from a particular esoteric sect. Thus we have to go back to the Vedas and Brahmanas, to see what influenced his thought.
I was interested by the concept of rasa, in so far as I found it translated as taste, relish, flavour (but also as sap or juice). The discovery was exciting because the concept of taste was absolutely absent in the Western Medieval theory of art.
Aquinas considered the good as that which was pleasing to appetite- i.e. was to the taste of the person concerned- while the beautiful related to cognition. One could say that rasa was both 'taste' as experiential but also a Platonic participation in an essence. The difference between the ancient Indians in the Tantric tradition and the Medieval Catholics lay in the latter's more ascetic or puritanical distrust of what was pleasing to the senses.
As an ability to judge of beauty, it appears in a non technical sense in the Italian Renaissance (as gusto). Filarete wrote in 1464: “I also used to like the Moderns; but, as soon as I began tasting the Ancients, I came to hate the Moderns....” Gusto is used in connection with beauty by Michelangelo, by Ariosto in 1532, by Cellini and others. But it is only in the XVIIth century and then in the XVIIIth century that it becomes a dominant aesthetic category.
Gusto, in English, relates to an enthusiasm for the sensual aspects of life. There was a tension between the 'nagarik'- or man of the world- who might be the 'rasika' or connoisseur of fine foods, fine wines, talented courtesans, bewitching singers and dancers etc.- and the 'sadhak' who sought spiritual and moral truth. Perhaps there was a higher type of beauty or appetite where essences of a spiritual or soteriological sort could be accessed. Music may be pleasing to the ears. Might it also take us to 'shanti rasa'- a place of peace and transcendence? But if so, might not the path of orthopraxy and conventional morality be abandoned? For the Kaulas, there was some complicated Tantric practice which reconciled the two. However, this was an esoteric doctrine. One may indulge in the 'Panchamakara' or 'Five M's' (eating meat, drinking mead, having sex etc) in secret rites behind closed doors. But it might be wiser to appear to your neighbors as a pious and puritanical Vaishnavite.
Taste, gusto or gout are words endowed with many senses in the European languages, so that we can speak of the good taste of a food, of our taste for good wines, of the taste of an art connoisseur, but also of the special flavour of a work of art.
This may be true of Italian. In English we might say that particular works of art are to our taste while others leave us cold. We would however agree that some artists have more 'gusto'- more enthusiasm for aspects of life some might find unseemly.
Thus I did not feel troubled when recently, surfing through Internet, I find advertised a Rasa Malaysian & South Indian Restaurant – in the same way I could find advertised a French restaurant called Au bon gout.
Malay took the word Rasa from Sanskrit. Their food is indeed very tasty.
When in the fifties I started reading the great Indian aestheticians I found myself immediately in hot waters because every time I identified a possible definition of rasa I immediately came across a contrasting definition,
An Indian might feel they were complimentary rather than competing.
It must be clear that I did not read and I still not read Sanskrit and that I was obliged to rely on my Western translations. Thus I was in the same situation as Saint Agustin, who developed a critical attitude toward the various translations of the Bible but suffered of an embarrassing handicap: he did not know Hebrew and moreover had a poor knowledge of Greek.
To be in the same situation as St. Augustine is quite a feather in one's cap.
Without surrendering, he decided to discover the very sense of the Biblical texts by comparing different Latin translation.
Augustine explains that his Greek teacher had been so brutal, he rebelled and didn't master the language. However, unlike Jerome who learnt Hebrew before publishing his Vulgate, Augustine thought the Greek Septuagint was divinely inspired. Moreover, his shaky Greek allowed him some 'creative misprisons'- e.g. declaring that all sinned in Adam rather than that, because of Adam's sin, death came into the world.
Since Augustine did not follow the modern criteria of a scientific philological approach, I did not dare to imitate him and that is the reason why, except a short essay written under the form of a review in the late fifties, I gave up with Indian aesthetics and I did not attempt to play the role of a scholar in such a discombobulating matter.
Eco could have quickly mastered Sanskrit. He was fearsomely bright. But then lots of Italians are.
But I like to return to that experience because, except the rare cases of full fledged scholars, the kind of acquaintance we commonly have with the thoughts of an exotic culture is the same of Augustine with the Bible.
Augustine was a passionate believer in the divine origin of that Holy Scripture. We tend not to hold 'exotic cultures' in such high regard. However, if we experience an intense identification with an 'exotic' figure- e.g. Lord Buddha- we might suddenly find the Scriptures of a faraway land wholly entrancing and pregnant with meaning for ourselves.
I think that my experience means something because usually intercultural contacts take place through translations,
No. One may 'transcreate' what one thinks one is observing or that which one has heard at second hand. Translations begin to find a place after some such initial transcreation. Thus, first there was the pseudo-Celtic Ossian and only after a market was created for that type of literature, did scholarly translations from genuine Celtic texts begin to circulate. Voltaire was fooled by a Jesuit forgery of an Indic purana- the Ezourveda. Since there was a market for such forgeries, the real thing soon became available.
and when dealing with translations one does not know what the original text really said.
Only if the translators are unreliable or inept.
In this sense I am not here to explain how rasa can be translated or defined, but to show how embarrassing can be any intercultural confrontation.
Eco is far from making a fool of himself. His Indian audience understands what he is getting at. Sadly, it was stupid shit.
Naturally I could trust Indian scholars who, knowing perfectly their culture, and being pretty well versed with the Western one (since they wrote in English) did probably their best to explain to a Western reader what rasa is.
They may have neglected to mention embarrassing details- e.g. the 'Tantric' aspects of Abhinavagupta or the belief that certain types of music could have super-natural effects.
But when we approach a different culture, we travel bringing with us some "background books", and the influence of these "background books" is such that everything the traveller discovers and sees, will be interpreted and explained in the terms of them.
This is the root of Eco's error. Some of our 'background information' may indeed be encoded in certain texts, but a lot isn't. Our sense of magic and mystery and occult processes is an example.
It is not indispensable that we bring them with us physically; I mean that we travel having a previous notion of the world, received by our cultural tradition. We are tempted to travel as we already knew what we are on the verge of discovering, because some previous books told us what we were supposed to discover.
This is like St. Anselm's Fides quaerens intellectum, meaning "faith seeking understanding" or the more general notion that learning always involving some previous preparation or expectation.
The influence of these "background books" is such that, irrespectively of what the travellers discovers and sees, everything will be interpreted and explained in the terms of them.
Not everything. Eco wants semiotics to be a deterministic discipline. Ideally, it should be translated into Venn diagrams and algebraic topology. The problem here is the 'intensional fallacy' which arises when 'epistemic' or impredicative objects are involved. As your knowledge base changes, they change. But expectation too is a type of knowledge, or, if you are a Bayesian, the reverse is the case.
The whole of the medieval tradition convinced Europeans that there existed unicorns, that is, animals that looked as gentle and slender white horses, with a horn on their muse.
This isn't really true. The bloke in the tavern who complained that a Unicorn tried to get gay with him was considered a liar.
According to an old tradition unicorns were living in exotic countries, like the kingdom of Prester John which was placed in India – even though at that time India was a pretty vague geographical notion sometimes meaning Asia in general.
Indeed. At a later point, the Portuguese, with some justification, saw Prester John as the Negus of the Ethiopians. But there was some confusion between Ethiopians and Indians in ancient Greece.
When Marco Polo travelled to China, he was obviously looking for unicorns. Marco Polo was a merchant, not an intellectual, and moreover he was to young, when he started travelling, to have read too many books. But he certainly knew all the legends that at his time were circulating about exotic countries, so that he was prepared to meet unicorns, and he looked for them.
The Chinese unicorn can only be discovered if you don't know you are discovering it.
Thus, in his way back, probably in Java, he saw certain animals that looked as unicorns, because they had a single horn upon their muse. Since an entire tradition prepared him to see unicorns, he identified them with unicorns. But since he was honest, he could not refrain from telling the truth. And the truth was that the unicorns he saw were very different from those represented by a millenary tradition. They were not white, but black. They had the hair of a buffalo, and their hoof was as big as that of an elephant, their tongue was thorny, their head looked as that of a wild boar. As a matter of fact what Marco Polo saw were rhinoceroses. We cannot say that Marco Polo lied. He told the bare truth, that is, that unicorns were not so gentle as people believed before. But he was unable to say that he had met new and uncommon animals: he tried instinctively to identify them with a well known image.
The result was that the folks back home thought he was a liar.
In cognitive sciences we would say today that he was determined by a cognitive model.
He was a guy describing his travels for people back home like himself. It is natural to say- in Japan they have something which looks like our cheesecake. But it isn't cheesecake. It is not sweet. Indeed, it scarcely tastes of anything at all. People may still suggest that you've never been to Japan, but you added a bit of verisimilitude to your account by recording your subjective experience.
He was unable to speak about the Unknown without making references to what he already knew and expected to meet.
No. There are novel things he describes well enough. But, he might have got them out of books or from the accounts of travelers he met. He added a touch of verisimilitude by injecting himself into the narrative.
He was a victim of his background books.
We should all be such victims! Nobody wants to read my account of my travels in medieval Japan accompanied by my old drinking buddy St. Augustine.
It is psychologically impossible to travel without background books.
We do so all the time for specific purposes. What matters is getting to your destination and completing the transaction that brought you there. If unicorns appear, ignore them.
But what is culturally, methodologically possible, is to compare our reciprocal background books and to see what they have in common and what cannot be exactly translated from book to book and requires some form of negotiation.
Sadly, this will only lead to stupidity or Grievance Studies. Did you know Marco Polo was white? Moreover he had a dick. Thus he imposed Orientalism and Colonial epistemology on darkies. At that time many transgender activists in India were also rhinos. Marco said mean things about them and so they just shriveled up died- thus creating space for Neo-Liberal expansion.
Otherwise – and I speak of a typical Western misprision – we can commit the sin of exoticism, or Orientalism, by which a given culture invents an ideal image of a different culture by misinterpretation and aesthetic bricolage, such as it happened in the past with European chinoisieries, Gauguin's Polynesia – not to speak of the Siddhartha syndrome and of the Indian mysticism translated in terms of New Age.
What great sin is involved in any of this? The Chinese really did have superb porcelain and silks and so forth. Polynesia genuinely is a lovely place to live. Being a Buddhist or a Yogi isn't a sin even if you have a pony-tail and wear tie-dyed kurtas.
I think that the same happen to Western scholars approaching the Indian wisdom but it also happens to Indian scholars trying to read the whole course of the Western aesthetics on the light of their Sanskrit background books.
There are no such 'Indian scholars'.
Not to mention Ananda Coomaraswamy,
whose Mother was British and who went to school and college in England. He had no Sanskrit background books. He did learn some Hindi and Sanskrit during his visit to India. Tamils are miffed that he doesn't seem to have had much knowledge of his father's ancestral tongue.
who did his best to translate the Indian philosophy not only in terms of Christian mysticism but also in terms of Western occultism, in 1965 I came across a book by Krishna Chaitanya, Sanskrit Poetics (London: Asia Publishing House 1965) and I found that the concept of rasa is similar to the aesthetic conceptions of Diderot, Wordsworth, Keats, Baumgarten, Goethe, Tolstoj, Baudelaire, Poe, Lipp's theory of empathy, Valery, Rilke, Odilon Redon, Pierre Reverdy, T.S. Eliot, Suzanne Langer, Crowe Ransom, and some other that I don't remember.
Aesthetic conceptions are going to be much of a muchness. In some cases- e.g. Eliot- the influence of rasa theory could be direct. Eliot had a good knowledge of Sanskrit and Pali.
Recently I found on Internet that Pryadashi Patnaik has published a study on the application of Rasa Theory to Modern Western Literature, referring to Majakovskij, Kafka, Camus, Conrad, Hemingway, Faulkner, Marquez, Eliot, Ionesco, Beckett, Lorca, Neruda and so on. Obviously, if all these people were saying the same thing or had the same idea of art, nobody in the West could write any longer a study in the history of aesthetics because there would be nothing more to say.
Having nothing to say is an excellent reason to publish lots and lots of books- at least in India. Italy may be different.
Happily for those that must publish in order to get a professorship in aesthetics, the history of Western aesthetics is a continuous struggle between different theories of art and beauty, and frankly I cannot see any connection or even any family resemblance between the psychological theory of empathy and Eliot's theory of the objective correlative,
This is strange. Objective correlative means 'a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion'- e.g getting horny when you see a beautiful naked woman who gazes at you invitingly. You feel empathy with the guy telling you about this till you realize he is talking about your wife. Then you thump him. The 'objective correlative' here is your wife displaying her charms to this oaf.
no parenthood between the theories of art as feeling and emotion and Eliot's theory of poetry as an escape from emotion,
You may have a wank so as to stop feeling horny. Equally, if you feel your life is boring, you may watch a movie about James Bond shooting villains and having sex with exotic beauties. When the movie ends you can go back to your life without feeling it is wholly without joy or excitement.
no links between Diderot and Keats – if not some accidental use of similar words in order to designate different phenomena.
one might say there are similar political ideologies or tendencies in the two.
Raniero Gnoli, in his introduction to the Italian translation of Abhinavagupta's Tantrashara writes that "Those who want understand Indian philosophy in the light of Western philosophy risk to understand very little if not nothing".
In the Western academy, we don't really think of any particular Philosopher or Philosophy as having some soteriological or supernatural quality such that, by studying them, we might gain magical powers or rise to a position of omniscience and indifference to the material world. Still, a particular Professor might explain that there were periods when some such magical belief was involved. Perhaps, the cult of Wittgenstein had something of this quality.
One can say that even in the history of Indian aesthetics we can find a series of competing and different definition of rasa – and I think to have understood at least this point – but in such a case the duty of a scholar is to isolate the differences not to sell meat as vegetables or vice versa.
there is now a 'plant-based meat' industry. At some point, it will be difficult to say whether the raw-material was a plant or an animal.
What does it mean to translate rasa as “taste” when in the history of Western aesthetics taste meant, for different authors or schools, and in different times, a different phenomenon?
A translator may add footnotes to clarify matters for Western or Eastern or plant-based readers.
Let us try to make a short survey of this unfortunate category. 1. Taste is relative to time and place.
Unless it isn't. One may have no taste for things even when times are joyous and in places dedicated to pleasure.
Malebranche in La Recherche de la vérité (1674) regards taste as pertaining to sensory things (beautez sensibles), an inferior, sensitive kind of beauty, and holds it as relative.
But his is an occassionalist universe. God is the only efficient cause. Anything can be anything if God wants it that way.
Ogier (XVIIIth century) said that "The taste of nations is different. Spaniards imagine and prefer a type of beauty quite different for that which we prize in France, so it must not be doubted that the minds of nations have preferences quite different from one another, and altogether dissimilar feelings for the beauty of intellectual things, such as poetry".
Tastes certainly are affected by what is fashionable or in vogue. 'Cultivated taste' may prize what is otherwise abhorrent- e.g. larks' tongues or candied dormice.
2. Taste has universal standards. For other thinkers there were standards of taste which required precise and universal structures both of human minds and of the tasted objects, so that the same aesthetic appraisal can and must be shared by different persons in different circumstances, epochs and nations.
If human beings are alike, there must be some likes or dislikes which are universal. The trouble here is that there can be strategic reasons for deceptive behavior or the species may gain an evolutionary advantage through greater phenotypal plasticity.
As such, taste at certain times was considered as depending on objective features displayed by the enjoyed objects and at other times it was considered as the power of evaluating the response of the mind to objects, so that beauty is no longer an objective characteristic of things in themselves, but consists in a relationship between the mind and its objects.
This is still the case. In any given industry serving a global market, there will be User Experience mavens seeking to find objective parameters to ensure the widest uptake.
Even Shaftesbury considers taste as the internal sense of a harmonic order perceived in certain objects and belonging to them and to the perceiving mind as well.
This is a tradition going back to Pythagoras. The Indian Samkhya tradition has something similar. Some particular mathematical ratio, applied to the Arts or Sciences, may liberate 'Purusha' from 'Prakriti'. An opera or ballet which meets certain objective criteria might deliver 'shanta rasa'. But what is that 'formula'? The answer, according to my researches, involves vampires doing kung fu to sexy werewolves.
It is inborn, but it needs refining; it depends on the character of a nation, but, stripped of accidental influences, it is universal. Moreover, taste is a sort of irrational and emotional response or it requires reasoning?
Equally, is there actually some objective algorithm which could mechanically generate the heart's careless raptures? You could earn a lot of money in Hollywood or Bollywood if you have that formula- or claim that you do.
Taste is a matter of subjective feeling. The first extensive use of taste as a mysterious, instinctive power enabling man to make the right choice in the different circumstances of life, as the foundation for a civilized behaviour, occurs in the works of the Balthazar Gracián, in the XVIIth century.
Gracian was praised by the even more misanthropic Schopenhauer. One might say there is a sort of natural 'distaste' which complements its rationalist analogue.
The Abbé Dubos (1719) defines taste as a matter of feeling, this feeling being a special faculty, defined as a “sixth sense”
Something had to take the place of 'synderesis' as somehow coordinating actions in conformity with God's plan.
For Montesquieu too taste is independent of reasoning and is the faculty enabling one to apply to individual cases the rules of art (Encyclopédie, 1757).
One may say utility theory too develops from a similar concern.
. Taste is based upon a conscious and cultivate intellectual ability.
Like utility. You can refine your taste by imitating smarter more successful people or peoples. Similarly you can become more useful and productive.
For La Rochefoucauld, in his essay Du goût, event though taste is variable, depending on personal inclinations and circumstances, good taste (bon goût) is an instinctive power of correct evaluation based on judgment rather than on feeling.
Indeed. Back then it seemed that there must be some non-arbitrary 'natural' method of evaluation in the law, in economics, in the arts, but also in religion and politics. Sadly, 'naturality' is far to seek. This is because we evolved, or co-evolved, on an uncertain fitness landscape. If there is no 'optimality', there can't be 'naturality' or non-arbitrariness. There are only 'uncorrelated asymmetries' dictating 'bourgeois strategies'. Sad.
The rationalist trend dominated in French aesthetics of the XVIIIth century. For the Abbé Batteux (1747), taste is knowledge of rules through a feeling which can be educated.
something similar must also exist with respect to the law and economic activity and even politics and religion. The Eighteenth Century was essentially optimistic.
One of the most complex arguments is the one of Hume.
Hume lost his faith in 'natural law' and retreated into a solipsistic empiricism.
In some of his works he said that "Some species of beauty. on their first appearance, command our affection and approbation… But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may be frequently corrected by argument and reflexion" (Enquiries)
If this was true of Beauty, how much truer must it be of that which is useful or just? Hume had woken out of not 'dogmatic slumber' but the Deist delusion of 'naturality'. Kant never did so because he didn't get that category theory is a makeshift expedient. As Socrates says, categories are like the oars which must be laboriously pulled if there is no wind to fill out the sails. If Darwin was right, then, in the social or biological realm we will not find a marvelous mathematical plan. There may be approximations but empirical regularities reflect correlation not causation.
To be fair, few mathematicians appreciated this till the Seventies of the last Century. Equally, it must be said, those few kept quiet about this scandal.
In another essay he said on the contrary that beauty, properly speaking, lies not in the poem, but in the sentiment of taste of the reader.
One may equally say 'what is useful to the reader' rather than 'what is to his taste'. The problem was that, save for some utile purpose, interpersonal comparisons of utility are mischievous even if they don't appear arbitrary.
And where a man has not such delicacy of temper, as to make him feel this sentiment, he must be ignorant of beauty (The sceptic). However in his essay “On the Standard of Taste” (1757) he tries solve this contradiction. He says again that taste is a subjective feeling, and that beauty does not belong to things in themselves
like utility
but expresses the reaction of the mind to things, but then he continues this way: ' It appears then, that, amidst all the variety and caprice of taste, there are certain general principles of approbation or blame, whose influence a careful eye may trace in all operations of the mind. Some particular forms or qualities, from the original structure of the internal fabric, are calculated to please, and others to displease; and if they fail of their effect in any particular instance, it is from some apparent defect or imperfection in the organ.
Hume was hedging his bets. After all, there did appear to be some 'natural' laws. Perhaps, if our society was sufficiently refined, there would be an externalist theory of value or beauty or justice or whatever.
(....) And not to draw our philosophy from too profound a source, we shall have recourse to a noted story in Don Quixote. It is with good reason, says Sancho to the squire with the great nose, that I pretend to have a judgment in wine: this is a quality hereditary in our family. Two of my kinsmen were once called to give their opinion of a hogshead, which was supposed to be excellent, being old and of a good vintage. (…) One of them tastes it; considers it; and after mature reflection pronounces the wine to be good, were it not for a small taste of leather, which he perceived in it. The other, after using the same precautions, gives also his verdict in favour of the wine; but with the reserve of a taste of iron, which he could easily distinguish. You cannot imagine how much they were both ridiculed for their judgment. But who laughed in the end? On emptying the hogshead, there was found at the bottom, an old key with a leathern thong tied to it. The great resemblance between mental and bodily taste will easily teach us to apply this story. Though it be certain, that beauty and deformity, more than sweet and bitter, are not qualities in objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment, internal or external; it must be allowed, that there are certain qualities in objects, which are fitted by nature to produce those particular feelings. Now as these qualities may be found in a smaller degree, or may be mixed and confounded with each other, it often happens, that the taste is not affected with such minute qualities, or is not able to distinguish all the particular flavours, amidst the disorder, in which they are presented. Where the organs are so fine, as to allow nothing to escape them; and at the same time so exact as to perceive every ingredient in the composition: This we call delicacy of taste (....)
We might say that Sancho's kinsmen were shown to have superior taste receptors because a 'Structural Causal Model' explaining how iron and leather particles may have suffused the wine, was shown to be true. There was a 'witness' to their intuition being true.
Here then the general rules of beauty are of use... To produce these general rules or avowed patterns of composition is like finding the key with the leathern thong; which justified the verdict of Sancho's kinsmen...”
What matters is that a Structural Causal Model was unexpectedly found to be in conformity with the evidence. The claim that Sancho's folk had better taste receptors was proven.
Thus it seems that with Hume we are dealing with two different but complementary notions of taste: (i) taste as taste-for (like in "he has a good taste for wines") which is a subjective attitude, and (ii) taste-of (as in "he is able to recognize the good taste of a wine") which implies the recognition of some objective qualities of the enjoyed objects, by virtue of an ability that must be educated and trained.
No. There is only the taste-receptors in the mouth. Sancho's kinfolk were indeed superior in that regard. True, they must also have tasted good wine because both confirmed it was good. Indeed, it would have been very good, save for the fact that someone had carelessly left an iron key attached to a strip of leather in the hogshead.
I do not dare to analyze today the attempt made by Kant in his Critique of Judgement (1.1.) in order to conciliate all these various notions of taste as the faculty of the aesthetic judgement.
This is because Kant had a defective theory of jurisprudence.
For Kant the aesthetic judgement (i) involves a disinterested pleasure ("The delight which determines the judgement of taste is independent of all interest….),
Not so. There may be a stipulation that the Judge must have no 'conflict of interest'. But absent such a stipulation, an aesthetic judgment may be perfectly sound even if it accords with what is beneficial to oneself.
(ii) Universality without concept ("The beautiful is that which, apart from a concept, pleases universally” and the aesthetic judgement is not that which states that all flowers are beautiful but the one which states that this flower is beautiful. The necessity that obliges us to agree on the beauty of this flower does not depends on an abstract reasoning, on the concept of a flower, on its purpose and on our personal desire but rather on our free feeling of this individual flower),
sadly no such beauty can be found with or without a concept. It is a different matter that there may be a protocol bound adjudication such that the winner of Miss Teen Tamil Nadu is deemed to be beautiful even if she looks nothing like me.
(iii) regularity without rule and (iv) the sense of a purpose without any finality ("Beauty is the form of finality in an object, so far as perceived in it apart from the representation of an end."
Kant was wrong. His Mummy was beautiful and the memory of her beauty grew more so. Perhaps in Heaven it achieved 'finality'. But maybe God preferred that it should continue to grow.
As such, the beautiful is that which, apart from a concept, is cognized as object of a necessary delight and the aesthetic judgement requires a free interplay of reason and imagination. Can these definitions of taste and beauty be identified with some Indian concepts?
Sure. The 'rasika' connoisseur may attain through the alchemy (rasavada) of allusion or dhvani a 'rasasvada' which, Abhinavagupta says, is also brahmasvāda. The orthodox position was that aesthetic consciousness was an obstacle on the path to nirvikalpa (without concepts) samadhi.
We have just seen that in Western Aesthetics usually the object of speculation is Beauty, which must be in some way defined and identified with some properties of the appreciated object.
The same is true in Indian aesthetics. This is only reason I am not winning Miss Teen Tamil Nadu though Mummy always told me that the reason girls spurned me was because they were jelly of my beauty. To be specific, the competition organizers says that the waist should be more slender than the breasts and buttocks. My belly however is much larger than my tiny chest or exiguous arse. This is totes unfair.
On the contrary it has been remarked that the aims of Indian Aesthetics are different. Max Muller said that the idea of Beautiful in Nature did not exist in Hindu mind.
Because Indians are very spiritual. They don't want to look at beautiful naturists disporting themselves by the river bank.
I know that Max Muller is (in this country) charged with racism, ad it is possible that he misunderstood the Hindu mind.
Vivekananda praised him. Grievance Studies however has discovered Muller wasn't just White. He also had a penis. Thus he was actually very evil.
Thus I try to realize whether Indian aestheticians spoke of detectable properties of the object of aesthetic enjoyment or – on the contrary - of the feeling it produces.
There is a practical aspect to aesthetics. If the King is going to spend a lot of money building statues or organizing a dance drama, some people with empirical knowledge may be paid a little money to screen out what is ugly or unseemly. Some erudite pundits might dress up the heuristics used the empirical experts as some sort of universal aesthetic law. For example, Dr. Kavitha Krishnamurthy, of the Miss Teen Tamil Nadu pageant, claims that fat men with long white beards are considered to be too ugly to participate because of the 14 dimensional interaction of the post-Kristevan Chora as discussed by Prof. Vagina Dentata Choothopadhyaya. I disagree with her. Actually, such interaction is thirteen dimensional and thus a loophole is created in my favor. I have moved Madras High Court in this matter.
Certainly in the most venerable and ancient among the theorists of rasa, that is, Bharata, the value of a theatrical action is praised first of all for the effect it produces on the mind of the spectator.
Previously, the test was whether a particular dancer got your dick hard.
There are many studies on the analogies between Bharata's theory of rasa and Aristotle's theory of catharsis. Bharata identifies eight Permanent States of Mind (like pleasure, rage, sorrow, laughter, terror, disgust, wonder, heroism) which are determined by some Causes and produce given Effects along with Mental States which accompany them. When the Permanent Sates of Mind are represented in a drama, the Effects and the accompanying Mental States become Fundamental Determinant, Consequences (which are phenomena like fainting, sweating, crying and so on) and Transitory States of Mind (which are 33 and I cannot take into account today). In this transformation of Permanent States of Mind into a dramatic representation, eight rasa are produced: Eroic, Comic, Pathetic, Fury, Heroic, Horrible, Disgusting, Marvellous and finally Peace and Tranquillity. 1
This is quite useful. Netflix has separate sections for horror movies, comedy movies, as well as horrible and disgusting Art movies.
We realize that such an idea of rasa has nothing to do with the Western concept of taste.
It is one and the same. Comedy is based on 'rasabhasa' bad taste or inappropriate affect. However, it can contain all the other rasas in itself. We understand that there can be passages of pathos in a picaresque comedy featuring protagonists who fart so musically as to charm the mermaids from the Sea.
In has rather to do with the cathartic effect of the tragedy according to Aristotle. We know that the Aristotelian idea of catharsis comes from the medical Greek literature when speaking of the cure of an excess of enthusiasm by enthusiastic music.
We know no such thing. The term originally meant a ritual purification and entered the medical lexicon as a method of purging or inducing vomiting etc. Surely, an excess of enthusiasm would be worsened by 'enthusiastic music'?
Likewise it seems that Bharata borrowed the idea and the very term of rasa from the Indian medical tradition – where it means the physical quality of the six tastes of sweet, acid, salt, bitter, astringent and insipid.
Rasa is Rg Vedic and is connected to moisture, dew, and a mythological river. I should mention that different rivers or stretches of the same river were differentiated on the basis of the taste of the water. Some were supposed to have healing effects. We might still take 'ganga-jal' for a medical complaint or immerse ourselves in a 'paapanashi' river or tank so as to be purified of our sins.
And these six tastes stand for the bodily humours. Or, as the Ayurveda say, rasa was used to denote the vital juice that the digestive system extracts from food to be converted into blood, flesh, bones, marrow, fat, and sperm.
The 'somarasa' ritual of washing the soma plant to extract its exhilarating juice was a key feature of Shrauta Vedic rituals.
Now for Aristotle the tragedy is intended to produce in the spectator the feelings of pity and terror, and by virtue of these feelings the spectator undergoes the cathartic purification.
There is a direct connection with the purification of a sinner. The merciless Erinyes are tamed and turned into Civic minded Eumenides. We see something similar in the Saivite tradition.
However there are two ways of understanding catharsis in Aristotle’s Poetics, for there is either a homeopathic or an allopathic interpretation of catharsis. In the first case catharsis stems from the fact that the spectator of a tragedy is genuinely seized by pity and terror, even to the point of paroxysm, so much so that in suffering these two passions he is purged of them, and emerges liberated by the tragic experience. This interpretation seems more coherent with the medical origin of the term, and with the celebrations of Corybantism, the Eleusinian mysteries with their perfumes and drugs.
There were priests before there were doctors. The ritual purification of sinners, permitting them to rejoin Society, was necessary to the commonweal.
In the second case the tragic text places us at a distance from the passion that is represented, and we are liberated from passions not by experiencing them, but by appreciating the way in which they are represented.
The bad stuff can happen off stage. We don't want the groundlings shitting themselves.
Is Bharata‘s theory homeopathic or allopathic? According to some authors (for instance Richard Schechner, “Rasa aesthetics”, The Drama Review 45, 3, 2001) the tragic effect is linked to a physical experience.
In the folk tradition, people may be seized by the goddess or demon or whatever. They may also actually drive spikes through their bodies and feel no pain. But, the 'margi' tradition was aimed at a more refined audience.
Schechner quotes passages where Bharata insists too much on the analogy between rasa and sensuous experiences like mixing different condiments and sauces, and some other modern interpreters seems to identify the techniques of the actor described by Bharata with Stanislawsky's method – so presupposing a sort of complete emotional identification between actor and character and spectator and actor.
Bharata was aware that different parts of the country mixed their 'masala' differently. Indeed, when I was young, there was a discernible difference between Bengali taste and Tamil or Punjabi taste. Sadly, all the actors nowadays have bulging muscles and washboard abs while it has become impossible to tell the actresses apart. Indeed, some years ago, a Hindi producer had to bring in a Brazilian girl to play the village Punjabi girl. Actual Punjabi girls in the villages all looked like Western super-models. Come to think of it Maneka was Punjabi. Sonia was phoren. The latter, not the former, got to rule India.
If on the contrary I trust 'The aesthetic experience according to Abhinavagupta' by Raniero Gnoli and Pravas Jivan Chaudury's “The concept of catharsis in Indian aesthetics”, I feel tempted to find in Bharata (or in Bharata's interpretation provided by Abhinavagupta) something very similar to the effect of estrangement or Verfremdung such as it appears in Bertolt Brecht’s theory of drama.
There is an oneiric 'adbhut' (wondrous) quality in some works from the period. It is likely that repertoires did include portions from highly irreal verse dramas and novels of the time. We have little conception of what the grand Buddhist operas might have looked like. Perhaps, they were Strindbergian avant la lettre. Indeed, something like Noh drama may have existed in India at that time.
Abhinavagupta quotes two previous commentators of Bharata, Batta Lollata and Sankuka. Batta Lollata assumed that art is an imitation of reality and that the effect of a drama is a spiritual state of particular intensity (and it seems that his interpretation is a homeopathic one), but Sankuka said that the rasa is not an intensified spiritual state because art cannot be an imitation.
Homeopathy is the idea that the hair of the dog that bit you can cure you of rabies. The disease is treated by something like itself. Thus when Bruce Lee fights Chuck Norris on screen, our emotions are the same as if we were witnessing an actual kung fu match. But, there could be more refined representations featuring great actors who just make appropriate gestures. We are given to understand that they are summoning up 'chi' and thus can deliver powerful punches from a great distance. We may say this is 'allopathic'. The actors are doing the opposite of what actual brawlers do. But, this duel featuring only the deployment of 'chi' may be as exciting- thanks to the skill of the actors and the special effects choreography- as the spectacle of Jet Li trading punches with Jason Stratham.
He said that when one sees a horse painted one doesn't mistake it for the original horse but one sees it as the representation of the original horse and thus derives the aesthetic pleasure through this identification. Since art cannot imitate all the qualities of the original subject hence it is just an inference and not an imitation. He used also the analogy with the fire in a forest: as we can infer fire from the smoke raising from above the top of a cluster of trees, in the same way the basic mental state can be inferred by the situation presented by the actor. In this sense certainly Sankuka's reading is an allopathic one.
I suppose one could say a stylized representation is the opposite of the thing itself. A picture of a horse won't take a dump on your carpet.
According to Chaudury the rasa is clearly an allopathic experience in Abhinavagupta.
The problem here is that Art may be a path to the gaining of super-natural powers of an unheimlich or uncanny type. When I was a kid, I thought I was a muscular hero when I watched movies starring professional wrestlers. Now, watching slim ladies kung fu kick each other, I've attained the wisdom of the Tao.
It is not by chance that Abhinavagupta added to the eight rasas of Bharata a ninth one that can be translated as Peace and Tranquillity: this ninth rasa has not the same nature of the previous ones but is the final poetic effect with coincides with a state of complete detachment from the represented passions.
You have attained 'Brahmasvada'. It's good to know you don't have to meditate in a cave in the Himalayas to attain nirvikalpa samadhi. Just watching Kangana Ranaut kung fu kicking Alia's butt would have the same effect.
This ultimate rasa it at once an emotional exaltation and a state of serenity because the represented emotions have a different flavour from them aroused in everyday life. The ordinary emotion is poetically transformed into a generic emotion, a universal idea, an ideal content. A given lady on the stage shedding tears only represents a universal "Ladywood" of the type in grief, and her tears mean the ideal content "tearness".
I'm not sure what 'Ladywood' means. Is it a district in Birmingham? I suppose so.
Another author quoted by Abhinavagupta, Bhatta Nayaka (IXth century) had said that the spectators or the readers do not feel sorrow or happiness because they acquire a sort of "aesthetic distance" due to the poetic power of generalisation: on stage Rama's love for Sita, though particular, becomes the universalized experience of love in general.
The Indians came around to the view that love-in-separation was higher and the viyogini, weeping for her parted lover, attains a higher state than the Yogi.
That is why such a representation produces peace and tranquillity, because ordinary emotions are passively suffered while the generic emotions are enjoyed in a contemplative mood.
One can transmute one's own ordinary emotions in that way. I contemplate my sorrow at being excluded from the Miss Teen Tamil Nadu pageant in much the same manner that Dante turned the steep stairs and salt bread of exile into a memorious approach to Paradise.
Even though there is no reason for translating rasa with taste – at least not in the Western sense –in such a theory of the aesthetic detachment there is something similar to the Kantian theory by which the aesthetic pleasure is devoid of any interest.
it is an end in itself. This does not mean it is not interesting.
One could also find in Abhinavagupta's theory the Kantian idea that the aesthetic judgement, though not conceptual,
i.e. not a deterministic function, or a category imposed by the mind
is in some way universal, or at least common to all the spectators of a drama.
That which those who stayed awake agree they all saw is indeed something common and, perhaps, universal in the sense that there is no reason to doubt that if more were added to the audience, and they too stayed awake, they would have seen what the others saw. True, some may see more and others may come round to their way of seeing.
Gnoli says that for Abhinavagupta "artistic creation is the direct or unconventional expression of a feeling or passion 'generalized', that is, free from all distinction in time and space, and therefore from all individual relationships and practical interest by an inner force within the poet himself, the creative or artistic intuition".
Gnoli may have been influenced by Tagore's notion of 'Pratibha' or genius which, I believe, had some currency in Italy even before he was born. Perhaps, the artist, possessed by his own daemon, reduplicates the Divine lila or ludus amoris. Yet, if there is no repetition in theophany, then no such distinction genuinely exists.
I have heard that there are some hidden chapters of the Tantraloka which have not been disseminated or translated.
This state of consciousness expressed in the poem is transferred to the actor and to the spectator. "All three - poet, actor and spectator - in the serene contemplation of the work of art, form in reality a single knowing subject, merged together by the same sensation and the same purification joy".
Is there really a distinction between bimba (reflection) pratibimba (object throwing the reflection) and darpan (mirror)? Yes, says Ramanujan. No, say the followers of Sankara or Kashmiri Saivism.
But is this a genuine Indian reading,
it is a possible Indian reading. The devil is in the detail. The evidence you produce from the original text may have been given different meanings by commentators. Someone is bound to say you have missed the esoteric meaning because you are stupid and your Mum was probably a slut.
or the interpretation of the Indian thought by a Western scholar already familiar with the Kantian aesthetics? In any case Abhinavagupta is not Kant. He was a mystical thinker and for him that disinterested pleasure was similar to the joy experienced when realizing the Brahman, the identification with the Divine.
By then, the distinction between 'Samsara' and 'Nirvana' had been erased.
Both in Locana and Abhinavabharati he says that the aesthetic enjoyment is akin to the joy of tasting the supreme Brahman and that rasa is "the delectable savouring of the Self by the Self". So far it seems that in any case the rasa is concerned only with the effect of the work of art, and not with its objective properties.
But the object is itself its own subject!- or something yet more profound or meaningless
But we cannot forget two things: one is that in Bharata and in all his commentators a great attention is devoted to the special techniques that the author of a drama implements in order to produce the rasa, namely actors’ gestures, speech, tears and many other theatrical strategies – to such an extent that even Abhinavagupta insists (as many Western philosophers of taste did) on the necessity to acquire, in order to feel the rasa, a good literary competences, and to educate one's taste (in the Western sense of the word) by the constant study of poetry.
Bharata was helping consolidate a pan-Indian, classical, canon such that artists could journey to distant courts, or emporia cities, to gain a lucrative type of employment. This technical focus meant that Bharata's work could be used to 'revive' a supposedly 'purer' form of dance drama- e.g. Bharatanatyam- which diverged from the 'kathakalakshepham' which had more folk, and bhakti, elements or which, perhaps, was felt to be 'tainted' by the courtesan tradition.
The language of feelings is not a private language but a set of rules that can be understood only by those who have learned the proper literary conventions.
This meant that practitioners could pass 'screening' tests based on meticulous mastery of prescribed techniques. Later, they might make innovations of their own.
In this sense the rasa ought to be the enjoyment of some objective property of the enjoyed object. In this sense it seems that rasa is not only the taste-for but also a taste-of.
I may be willing to shell out good money to attend a concert given by a young musician who has won prizes at the best conservatoires. Initially, I want to check that the musician is showing technical mastery. Once I'm convinced of this, I can relax and enjoy the music. Indeed, at a later point, I may welcome innovations introduced by the buddying young genius.
Between Baharata and Abhinavagupta there was Anandavardhana, and his Dhvanyaloka was commented by Abhinavagupta. In the Dhvanyaloka the theory of rasa moved from the theatrical experience to the poetical experience in general. First of all, since in reading a poem we are less emotionally - I would say, less physically involved, than when watching a drama - the non-homeopathic but contemplative sense of rasa was thus reinforced.
This isn't really true. A short poem may have a powerful effect on us. A dance drama based on it may fall a bit flat. I recall loving Kipling's 'Gunga Din'. Then I saw the Hollwood version starring Sam Jaafe. It's good enough as a film but Kipling's genius in showing a low caste Kabir-panthi as the 'Saqi-e-Kausar' could not be put on the screen.
But in the Dhvanyaloka the rasa appears also to be a rhetorical and semantic phenomenon. Ananadavardhana develops the theory of dhvani, which is usually translated as sound.
reverberation or allusion
This metaphor encouraged many mystical interpretations, but on the contrary Anandavardhana says that language can conveys a literal meaning, a metaphorical meaning and a sort of suggested and implicit meaning.
It is usual to mention Bhratrhari's Vakyapadya theory at this point. Bear in mind, that Hindus believed the correct chanting of Vedic mantras to have powerful soteriological or even super-natural effects. Thus, this type of 'linguistic philosophy' is like Western Catholic theological disputes about the 'real presence' in the Eucharist.
Literal and metaphorical meanings are intended more or less in the Western sense – since there are many points in common between Indian linguistics and rhetoric and the corresponding Western theories. The implicit meaning can be understood without disregarding the literal one. For instance Anandavardhana quotes a verse from Kalidasa, that I try to translate into English from an Italian translation: “While the divine poet was speaking, Parvati, near her father, with her face reclined, was counting, as if she was playing, the petals of a lotus”. Andavardhana says that the literal action of counting the petals suggests as implicit the joy of Parvati for her weddings and her modesty.
Parvati was nice girl. She was not putting on tight jeans and waggling her buttocks. Also, she didn't drink all of Daddy's whiskey. Mind it, kindly.
It is interesting to remark that a psychoanalyst like Jacques Lacan (in Ecrits, Paris, Seuil, 1966) speaks of dhvani as the revealing word of the analyst which discloses and reveals what the patient does not say and which remains implicit (or absent) in his or her discourse.
Very true. Patients seldom say 'kindly rob me of my hard earned money, you crazy quack!'
Anandavardhana lists and examines different level of implicitness but only the kind of implicit meaning that he calls dhvani is the one communicated by a poetic work.
What he isn't saying is that the same could be said of the Vedas. You don't have to pick a side in doctrinal wars.
It is something which shines upon all the linguistic elements and that can be felt as it happens with the charm of a beautiful woman, which is something more of the mere sum of her evident beautiful properties.
till you discover she has a dick and wants to use it on you. I'm not saying that's what happened to me on my honeymoon night. Anyway, it's the sort of thing which could happen to anybody.
Anandavardhana’s dhvani is what the poetic discourse leaves as implicit (he says, like an echo) and that cannot be easily translated by words, even though Anandavardhana says that it is not completely ineffable and can always be expressed or interpreted in some way.
Sometimes, it is better to flatter the King indirectly. Don't say 'Boss, your dick is ginormous!' Say 'the moon has been poked out of its orbit. We need to raise taxes so as to buy the King a courtesan as beautiful as the moon. It so happens, I happen to know the perfect candidate. Empty the treasury and hand over the cash to me. We need to hurry lest the Sun too suffers the same fate.' What is implicit here is the notion that the King's erections are so very long and strong that the planets are imperiled.
As a matter of fact, Anandavardhana insists on conventional rhetorical manoeuvres that can elicit, with the dvhani, the feeling of rasa. Thus, I understand, the rasa can be in some way expressed or explained by analyzing its grammatical and rhetorical strategies.
Yes. There has to be some rhyme or reason to it. You can't utter random shite like- 'the cat is a hexagon' and expect to be appreciated for your wit. I tried to explain this to Oscar Wilde whom I used to buy pints for back in the Eighties.
Moreover in the Dhvanyaloka there are few cases in which Anandavardhana seems to speak of something similar to the notion of taste such as it was intended in the European XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. In I.4. and in I.6. he speaks of various possible interpretations of the dhvani, and mentions certain authors that considered it something that cannot be expressed – so, it says, that “it can be recognized only by the aesthetic taste of the very sensitive persons”. I think that he was saying that the dhvani is something like the flavour of a wine, that cannot be defined by words, but can be appreciated only by refined connoisseurs who have a special ability in detecting it.
Perfectly true. The example I was given of a certain mystic who lived just outside Delhi. He could tell if a girl was or wasn't a virgin just by observing her shadow. It seems he was a good man and saved many a village lass from unjust accusations.
Unfortunately I read the Dhvanyaloka in Italian and I do not know if the translator rendered with “gusto”, that it, “taste”, an occurrence of the word rasa or of some other word.
There are equivalent words in Sanskrit.
However I feel encouraged to read that passage this way since it seems that, according to Visvanatha (in Sahitya Darpana, 1450 A.D.) the tasting of rasa - the vision of beauty - is enjoyed "only by those who are competent thereto". If that “aesthetic taste” was a rasa, so for Anandavardhana we would have a double meaning of rasa, that is, the rasa as a subjective ability to perceive the poetic flavour (taste-for) , and rasa as the objective poetic sense of the poem (taste-of). Anandavardhana does not define rasa but he links rasa with dhvani.
Why do some people, not others, gain spiritual benefits by hearing the Ramayana? The answer is that the 'rasika' is granted Grace or else this is the fruit of good deeds in previous lives. However, equally, karma is itself a delusion. Being is non-Dual.
The implicit meaning of poetry that cannot be expressed by other words is a rasa.
It can be expressed but, generally, not as poetically.
In this sense the dhvani, which is still a rhetorical strategy,
only if it is being aimed for. But the great artist may not need to do any conscious aiming.
is the vehicle of a rasa. This point is not so clear in the Dhvanyaloka because Anandavardhana never defines rasa.
We might say it is a Tarskian primitive. Hindus might say that it is a term of Vigyaan (empirical science or art) rather than Matam (doctrine). Some schools had an atomic theory where there is 'aashrav' or entry of karma binding particles. Others may be nihilistic or monist.
Interpreting Anandavardhana, Abhinavagupta will say that the rasa is the very soul of the dhvani.
In other words, it is not an 'accident'. It is its essence.
It seems that we have here a definition of rasa as a sort of ineffable poetic effect, which is still a sort of semantic phenomenon that vanishes, so to speak, into a more or less non rational feeling.
It may not be semantic at all. It is likely that singers were using meaningless syllables to embellish or adorn their rhapsodies.
In this sense the rasa is, metaphorically speaking, a taste in the sense of a poetic flavour.
One could equally say it is an actual taste or a nourishing repast or intoxicating brew that was partaken off. The Sama Vedic udgatr's chanting were themselves the substitute for the exhilarating Soma. Music can be the actual food of love. Sadly, in my case, it tends to be junk food which is the food of my love for junk food. On the other hand I fart very melodiously after eating enough Pizza.
Thus many contemporary interpreters identify Abhinavagupta's rasa only with a sort of poetic intuition which eliminates every intellectual operation, in the sense of many idealistic Western aesthetics (such as the one of Benedetto Croce).
Nothing wrong with that at all. Intuitionistic logic features 'witnesses'. If singing 'Deepak raag' causes the lamp to start burning by itself- there is a 'witness' that it was done correctly even if some Pundit or purist claims otherwise.
However, Abhinavagupta turned his attention away from the linguistic procedures which interested Anandavardhana,
because 'Purva Mimamsa' had declined. People were less concerned that mantras had been chanted properly. They sought a deeper connection with the unseen.
focusing his attention on our mental and emotional response to that linguistic strategy. Thus for him rasa should to be conceived in psychological terms,
in terms of an esotericTantric psychology- sure.
and the reader becomes the central focus of literary criticism.
because books were opening upon a more orient, wholly inward, horizon.
Abhinavagupta did not speak of the rasa as a pure unspeakable intuition devoid of any intellectual content.
because had it been any such thing if could not have previously been spoken off.
Without taking seriously recent interpretations that read Abhinavagupta as a precursor of today's cognitive sciences,
Nothing wrong with that. How and at what point do Beliefs turn into Faith? When does attraction or liking become Love? These are valid questions for cognitive science as well as for those who follow the Tantrik path.
his rasa seems to be a sort of feeling mixed with intelligence. In his theory there are many interesting psychological elements. For instance he speaks of the drama as something able to elicit in our mind the removed and still unconscious memories of our past experiences, so that by recollecting them we reconsider them in a more detached and perceptive way.
What a splendid reader Eco was! Still, Hindus might speak of 'vacanas' or psycho-mental residue in this context.
It is just in transforming them in something more universal that we feel our identification with the Divine. Thus the poetic enjoyment represents a sort of higher intellectual knowledge So far, I think we have identified at least 15 different aesthetic phenomena that I list by translating them in terms of Western aesthetics. Rasa can thus be translated as Homeopathic Catharsis, Allopathic Catharsis, Pleasure for the Imitation of a Passion, Pleasure due to the Inference from a Represented Passion, Perception of the Universal, Disinterested Pleasure, Pleasure for an Objective Linguistic and Rhetoric Strategy, Mystical Identification with the Divine, Competence to be acquired by cultural training, Perception of the Implicit, Taste-for, Taste-of, Psychological Phenomenon, Unspeakable Poetic Emotion, High Intellectual Knowledge.
I suppose Eco thinks he is engaging in Punditry. The problem is that this listing is 'heteroclite' in Foucault's sense.
All of them cover in some way an aspect of the notion of rasa, without exhausting its whole semantic space.
Sadly, semantic spaces (which are configurational) are not connected or closed under any given operation.
Not only, can't they be accepted all together because if the rasa is to be identified with one of them, then it cannot be identified with the others.
Sure it can, but in an arbitrary manner. The fact that a configuration space is not closed or connected doesn't mean it can't be rendered such by an arbitrary procedure for any specific purpose.
If I had to summarize this inextricable network of family resemblances, my diagram would become very complicated –
'Family resemblances' can always be made extricable in an arbitrary manner for some particular purpose. The fact that there is no 'natural' representation of the metric doesn't mean it can't be imposed so as to achieve some useful end.
At most, the only Western expressions that could translate rasa would be either the Sense of Beauty or the Aesthetic Response.
Only in the sense that we could translate the cat's purring or the baby's gurgling in that manner.
But they are not definitions at all; on the contrary, they are exactly what an aesthetic enquiry should define.
Why? Aesthetic enquiry should let aesthetic terms remain as Tarskian primitives. It is a different matter that in any 'applied' field we might stipulate arbitrary restrictions on the term. Thus, the Miss Teen Tamil Nadu pageants arbitrarily stipulates that by 'good looking girls', young people without big bellies, long beards, or dicks are meant.
It seems to me that the same happens to rasa, It is not a definition but a phenomenon to be defined and as such in the course of the centuries and from author to author it underwent many and something conflicting definitions.
No. Indic hermeneutics is pragmatic. Artha, that is meaning, is Economic in nature- i.e. it arises as focal solutions to coordination and discoordination games. It is a different matter that some arbitrary restrictions- i.e. screening devices- are applied to cordon off correct or elegant speech which might serve as a model and thus ease communication and the exchange of ideas. One might speak of an arms-race between signaling and screening mechanisms which imperil 'separating equilibria'.
This suggests (on one side) that it is not easy to decide how many theories of rasa existed and to what an extent they are mutually compatible – and I think that a comparison with Western concepts can help not so much to find identities at any cost but rather to describe discrepancies.
The West has been slow to converge to the Pragmatic solution. Frank Ramsey was getting there. Had he not died so young perhaps we would have been spared Witlesstein.
On the other side, we should be convinced that all the Western attempts to find an analogy between the various rasa theories and Western theories are prone to failure.
In other words, the learned Count Gnoli wasted his time. Few Indians familiar with his work would agree. Had Gnoli lived in India, Indians would have treated him as a great Pundit of their own just as they treated Sonia as the 'Nation's daughter-in-law'.
If there are many Western aesthetic theories, there are also many Indian aesthetic theories.
My feeling is that the 'Vigyaan' was the same. Matams (metaphysical doctrines) may differ greatly but if they are 'observationally equivalent', what difference does this make? True, you might say 'there is no witness that singing Raag Deepak might cause the lamp to start burning by itself.' Yet, it is equally true, there is no witness to testify otherwise. My sister was forced to learn Hindustani music. A girl in her class was named Deepa. All the other girls would sing 'Deepa jalao' and hope she would burst into flame. She never did. Sad.
In any case it seems very difficult to identify the rasa with XVII and XVIII century European taste, which was either a subjective attitude or the subjective response, determined by some objective qualities of the aesthetic object – and in many case a detectable interaction between these two phenomena.
Europe was moving in a mechanistic direction leavened by Occassionalism of the Cartesian or Leibnizian type. India, however, had been going towards hypo-mechanism and hyper-mentalism. Thus it fell behind technologically.
Therefore the current translations of rasa with taste are misleading. Maybe I am wrong,
but only because Eco was wrong about Western logic and philosophy. By the early Seventies, category theory was capable of expressing the Hegelian dialectic- or so William Lawvere claimed. But this also meant the quest for 'naturality' or 'non-arbitrariness' was doomed. Co-evolved phenomena aren't about optimality. They are about bare survival. Maybe, they are Hannan consistent or regret-minimizing. If Man can become his own fitness landscape- perhaps we will have reached the 'end of mathematical time' and enter the realm of the naturality of our own Human nature. Till then, we must be content to be pragmatist in our Semiotics.
but I wanted exactly to stage the perplexities of a member of a given culture when facing concepts and words of another one.
What Eco has done is shown that if he had settled in India, he, not the idiot Tharoor, would have written the Great Indian Novel. What might have stuck in his craw was blind worship of the nice Italian lady who was conserving her son's patrimony just in case he wanted to take his Daddy's or Granny's or great-grandfather's old job.
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