The production of unpleasurable rasas in the Sanskrit dramas of Arya Ksemisvara.

• Author: Sathaye, Adheesh

Writing at the Kannauj court sometime around 915 c.e., the dramatist Arya Ksemisvara would have found himself at a remarkable moment in the history of Sanskrit literature. It was a time of great innovation in literary theory, not least of which was a "paradigm shift" from alamkara (figuration) to rasa (emotional flavor) as the fundamental unit of poetic analysis. This was part of a larger unification of poetics (alamkara-sastra) with dramaturgy (natya-sastra)--long-independent intellectual pursuits that would be definitively brought under one umbrella a little more than a century after Ksemisvara's time. At the very heart of these changes lay Anandavardhana's (c. 850) proposal of a new type of signification--suggestion (dhvani)--which, unlike denotation (abhidha) or indication (laksana), was not an isol-able feature of the poetic text, but a phenomenon involving the sensibilities of the literary connoisseur. (1)

Anandavardhana's Dhvanyaloka proved to be a landmark text, forcing practically every theorist after him to confront what we, following Roland Barthes, might call the "writerly" nature of rasa. In SIZ (1970) Barthes approached the question of textual interpretation by describing the "writerly" (scriptible) text as one in which the reader must act as a kind of "writer" in order to produce meaning. He distinguished this from the traditional idea of the static, "readerly" (lisible) text, in which the reader may only be a passive receiver of a meaning prefigured by the original (and authoritative) author. In the French intellectual and political context of the 1960s and 70s, the writerly text represented for Barthes and other newly "poststructural" theorists the means through which literature might achieve an emancipatory goal, "to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text" (Barthes 1974: 4). (2)

In the middle of the ninth century Anandavardhana produced an equally liberative moment for Sanskrit poetics, opening up the field to a new, overarching goal: the experience of rasa (McCrea 2008). Rasa, of course, was nothing new; before the advent of dhvani, however, most critics regarded it to be an intrinsic feature of a poem or play to be appreciated during performance. Thus, for Lollata (early ninth century), this aesthetic flavor (rasa) was an augmented or enhanced stable emotion (sthayibhava) of a character and shared by the actor playing the part; for Saiikuka (late ninth century), rasa was also located in the character but only imitated by the actor (Warder 1972-2004, vol. 1: 36-37; Kane 1971: 370-71). Intrinsic to these models was the proposition that rasa, like any other figure, belonged to the "readerly" text and not to the spectator, who only consumed it. Anandavardhana's approach, in contrast, treated rasa as an affective response of the connoisseur (sahrdaya), generated through the suggestive power (dhvani) of a literary text (Pollock 1998: 124-25). Accordingly, the rasa experience required an active, "writerly" participation on the part of sahrdayas, who were to be "perceptive of the underlying principles of the aims of poetry" (kavyarthatattvajna) (Dhvanyaloka 1.7).

This writerly concept of rasa-dhvani allowed later Kashmiri theoreticians to challenge some basic assumptions about aesthetics. Using Mimamsa concepts, Bhatta Nayaka (tenth century) solidly rejected both Lollata's and Sankuka's models of rasa production, arguing instead for the existence of an underlying process of bhavana ('production') located in the mind of the spectator and through which rasa is experienced (Pollock 2010: 154-55). Abhinavagupta (c. 1000) further specified rasa to be a clarification of a spectator's own latent emotional propensities, resulting in a momentary manifestation of an inner brahmasvada--the tasting of ultimate bliss (Gerow 1977: 267-68). To be precise, he suggested that "the enjoyment of rasa was a semblance of only a particle of that bliss" (tadanandaviprunmatravabhaso hi rasasvadah) (Locana commentary to Dhvanyaloka 3.43). Literary experience thereby produced an epiphany, a "magical break in the web of relationships of which everyday life, Samsara is woven" (Gnoli 1970: 79). This focus on bhavana or brahmasvada became the basis for what Pollock has described as a "new mentality," in which "literature for the first time came to be seen as a model or even kind of religious experience" (Pollock 2001: 198). It is thus hard to dispute Anandavardhana's impact upon literary theory at the end of the first millennium; but how did it affect literary practice? That is, to what extent did the "dhvani revolution" of this Kashmiri critic really change the working methods of those Sanskrit poets and playwrights, like Ksemls'vara, who lived in and wrote for elite courtly communities across the subcontinent? How did they reconcile the writerly concept of dhvani, not to mention the new focus on rasa as the ultimate goal of poetic expression, with their professional interests in the older, readerly notions of alamkara (figure), guna (quality), and rlti (style)? And how did Sanskrit theater, in which rasa had always been of primary interest, react to this growing fusion of dramaturgical and poetic theory?

This essay hopes to investigate these questions through a study of specific writerly moments within Arya Ksemlsvara's two extant theatrical works: the Candakausika ("Fierce Kaugika"), an adaptation of the legend of Harigcandra from the Markandeya Purana (7-8), and the Naisadhananda ("The Bliss of the Nisadha King"), a version of the Mahabharata's Nala story (3.50-78). (3) In the first play Ksemisvara explores the pleasurability of horror (bibhatsa) and terror (bhayanaka) through a rather ghastly description of the Varanasi cemetery. In the second play the protagonist Nala (in disguise as a driver named Bahuka) joins the king of Ayodhya in watching a play-within-a-play (garbhanka) depicting Damayanti's suffering while separated from her husband in the forest. Here, the aesthetized experience of misery (karuza) comes with a slight twist. Rasa, Ksemihvara explains, is not simply a product of the author's genius, nor is it entirely the spectator's affective response; rather, an unmediated experience of rasa requires what he calls a "transparent" performance (sphutabhinaya). The evidence will suggest that Ksemisvara, writing on the cusp of the dhvani revolution, sought a median position between "readerly" and "writerly" models of rasa production by highlighting what we might call the "performerly" nature of this process.

Ksemisvara's views are best understood within his immediate historical context. He dedicates both plays to "Mahipaladeva," and, according to the prevailing scholarly opinion, this would have been the Gurjara-Pratihara king Mahipala I, who ruled from Kannauj beginning sometime around 912 c.e. Kannauj at this time was a coveted prize for three regional powers locked in perennial conflict--the Rastrakutas in the south, the Pratiharas in the west, and the Palm in the east. The Arab writers Sulaiman al-Tajir (851) and al-Mas'udi (944) found the city to be an epicenter of military and economic activity, and from the accounts of Xuanzang (seventh century) and other Chinese travellers we learn of its importance for Buddhist learning and practice. Furthermore, for at least three centuries, the Kannauj court had been home to some of history's most celebrated Sanskrit poets: Bana, Harsa, Mayura, and, in all probability, Bhavabhuti. Kannauj thus would have been a key hub in the "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" (Pollock 1996), and Ksemisvara's date makes him a junior colleague, successor, or perhaps even student of one of its most prominent architects, Rajasekhara Yayavariya. (4)

It is difficult to overstate Rajasekhara's stature in Sanskrit literary history. Few poets were cited by medieval anthologists and critics as often as Rajasekhara, and he seemed to have gained quite a level of celebrity even in his own time. He called himself a "king of poets" (kaviraja) (Karpuramanjari 1.9) and, with more audacity, the reincarnation of Valmiki, Bhartrmentha, and Bhavabhuti (Balaramayana 1.16). His prolific writings offer a rich and whimsical snapshot of courtly life in Kannauj at the turn of the tenth century, a cosmopolitan and "transregional" mosaic of regional languages, fashions, and material pleasures (Pollock 2006: 200-204). His Ketvyamimamset remains one of the earliest available discussions of Sanskrit poetry as a profession, providing valuable details about the practical side of the art (Shulman 2008: 483-84). Aware of Anandavardhana but seemingly unaffected by his new theories, Rajasekhara's writings present a grand, pre-dhvani vision of Sanskrit kavya. (5)

Ksemisvara's plays never explicitly mention Rajasekhara, but he would undoubtedly have felt the influence of his senior colleague. His use of puranic references to Visvamitra's exploits in the Candakautika, for example, is reminiscent of Rajagekhara's portrayal of the sage in the Balaramayana. (6) His lavish use of Prakrit in both plays likewise points towards one of the most striking qualities of Rajasekhara's writings (Konow 1901: 199-204). Even his near-plagiaristic imitation of Bhavabhuti might have been emboldened by the Kavyamimamsa's lengthy treatment of intellectual theft (sabda- and arthaharana). But here is really where the influences end, for even if he were a colleague, student, or replacement for Rajasekhara in Mahlpala's court, Ksemisvara infuses his dramas with a certain gravitas barely present in Rajasekhara's light-hearted works.

I will more rigorously explore this difference by comparing how each poet approached the question of the so-called "unpleasurable" rasas. Beginning with Bharata's Natyasastra dramaturgists posited the existence of (at least) eight major rasas corresponding to eight sthayibhavas or stable emotional states, which became classified as either "pleasant" or "unpleasant" (Kulkarni 1995: 281; Nagendra...