Rūpa Gosvāmī’s Dūta-kāvyas: (6) Rasa: From aesthetic to sacred rapture
6. Rasa: From aesthetic to
sacred rapture
Positive aspects of Sanskrit poetry that were the measuring sticks used by the connoisseurs of old and which can still be enjoyed by the modern reader are manifold: we can point to its meter, its sonority, or its love for multiple layers of meaning. Both Nathan and Ingalls precede their translations with excellent summaries of these aspects for the uninitiated and I heartily recommend the reader to study these essays.
As noted earlier, each verse stands on its own like “a well-cut diamond,” each
word and trope carrying its own panoply of suggestions until the final overall
mood, or rasa, is created. Thus, though skill in meters and alliteration
are regarded as virtues (guṇa) in poetry, just as the skillful use of
figures is considered an ornament (alaṅkāra), these are not the soul of
poetry. That honor belongs to rasa.[2]
In Sanskrit poetry, the goal is to create rasa, described as “a blissful state, liberated from the impurities of personal involvement” (Nathan, 10) or “a revelation of the essential meanings of things, specifying only that those meanings must fit within pre-established conventions.” (Ingalls, 22). Though the starting point for experiencing this universal mood is one's personal emotion, that limited personal feeling is transcended in the aesthetic experience of rasa. Thus Ingalls points out the impersonal character of most traditional Sanskrit verse, i.e., its lack of reference to specific individuals.[3]
The classical work on poetics Sāhitya-darpaṇa by the 14th century Orissan scholar Viśvanātha Kavirāja defines rasa and the process for experiencing it as follows:
"A few special persons possessed of the critical faculty (pramātṛ or sahṛdaya), from a condition of mental clarity born of freedom from the pulls of desire and distress (sattva), are able to relish the mood produced by poetry, which is (1) akhaṇḍa-sva-prakāšananda-cinmayaḥ: “a state of pure consciousness, uninterrupted, self-revealing and joyful”; (2) vedyāntara-sparśa-śūnya, “void of any external sensation”: (3) brahmāsvāda-sahodaraḥ, “the twin sibling of the experience of Brahman” and (4) lokottara-camatkāra-prāṇa, “possessing transcendental astonishment as its life-essence.”[4]
Quoted in Sāhitya-darpaṇa is Dharmadatta's verse: “The essence of rasa
is everywhere perceived as being astonishment. Because of this, the basic
attitude of all aesthetic rapture is wonder.” [5]
The affinity between the spiritual experience of Brahman and the aesthetic rapture of rasa is noteworthy: both require sādhana. The poeticians of ancient India recognized that the quasi-divine mood or rasa that is experienced at the reading of poetry is not simply the result of a poet's talent or kāvya-śakti, but that of both his own and his audience's present-day culture. Kavi Karṇapūra describes the superior poet in his Alaṅkāra-kaustubha as one who “through combining his learning in all the poetic arts with his god-given talent is able to produce rasa.”[6] The same applies to the sympathetic audience, or sahṛdaya: the relishing of rasa is the purview of a few souls who have the prāktana-saṁskāra, i.e., who have been born with the talent and appropriate good fortune, as well as an ādhunika-saṁkāra, or present-day culture. Thus the Vaiṣṇava poet Rasikottaṁsa writes:
A superior poet's verse is like a blossoming, sweet-scented lotus:
Its words are its petals, their meaning its whorl,
and the suggested meaning its fragrance.
Two or three are the rasika bumblebees that tastethe honey sweetness of the poem lotus. [7]
Out of the rather radical insight that personal religious experience is not dissimilar to the aesthetic effects of poetry, Rūpa Gosvāmī developed his theory of bhakti-rasa. For Rūpa Gosvāmī the problem of the divine aesthetic experience is double, for one must be both a bhakta and a sahṛdaya to experience “sacred rapture.” Thus, not only is there a general problem for modern Western man or woman to enter the world created by Sanskrit literature in order to experience “aesthetic rapture” as a sahṛdaya, but he or she must also take another step to understand how it is sacred rapture for the devotee.
In the innumerable works on
aesthetics
the arts of love are described
to such an extent that the mundane
dilettante
cannot conceive of even an atomic
particle of them.
Even so, those arts in their entirely
seem as nothing
in the love sports ocean of the
Divine Couple:
Rādhā and the undefeated Kṛṣṇa. [8]
The crux is faith. It must be remembered that for the Vaiṣṇava who reads a poem about Kṛṣṇa's loves, awareness of the underlying theme of his supreme Godhead is never far away. Without siddhānta (theology), bhakti-rasa, the divine goal of Kṛṣṇa-conscious poetry, is never achieved. Indeed, these poems are meant to bring about not a literary, but a devotional sentiment, which though analogous is not at all the same entity. The former, because recalling mundane emotion, is material and defective, the latter transcendental and liberating, just as the analogous experience of Brahman is considered limited and defective by the Vaiṣṇava because of its impersonality.
Though in its highest form, devotional sentiment feigns ignorance of Kṛṣṇa's
divine status, ultimately this knowledge runs like an undercurrent through all Kṛṣṇa-conscious
writing. The relation of Kṛṣṇa's “god-ness” (aišvarya) to his “sweetness”
(mādhurya) or “human-ness” is, to use Jīva's example, that of the Sarasvatī
to the Ganges at Triveṇī: it cannot be seen but its currents are known to flow
there outside the range of vision.[9]
Put another way, God's mādhurya makes loving intimacy with him possible, but this great prize would have no meaning without his aiśvarya, for he would then be reduced to mere humanity. Nevertheless, it is matters related to Kṛṣṇa's mādhurya, because of their greater potential for the emotional response or rasa, i.e., devotional response or bhakti-rasa, that are far more important to the Vaiṣṇavas, and this concern must be borne in mind whenever reading their literature.
For Rūpa and his followers, the Sanskrit language and its poetic conventions are tools to be used in the service of kṛṣṇa-bhakti; indeed this is their ultimate purpose and the fulfillment of all the extraordinary potential of the language of the gods. For this reason, poetry in relation to Kṛṣṇa must never be criticized as defective for its stylistic or grammatical insufficiencies. Such a view naturally opened the doors to the creative use of the vernaculars in the same spirit, which was indeed one of the principal effects of the bhakti movement.
Caitanya Mahāprabhu himself is said to have told his guru Īśvara Purī: “Anyone who finds any fault with a devotee's description of Kṛṣṇa is a sinner. If a devotee writes a poem, no matter how poorly he does it, it will certainly reflect his love for Kṛṣṇa. A fool says viṣṇāya while a scholar knows the correct form is viṣṇave, but Kṛṣṇa accepts the sentiment in either case. If anyone sees a fault in such mistakes, the fault is his for Kṛṣṇa is pleased with anything the pure devotee says. You too describe the Lord with words of love, so what arrogant person would dare criticize anything you have written?” [10]
Thus, for the devotees, the process for achieving the rapturous state is somewhat different from that described in Sāhitya-darpaṇa above. Rūpa Gosvāmī describes the preparation of the bhakta-sahṛdaya in his Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu:
For those whose faults have been entirely removed by the performance of devotional practices and whose minds are peaceful (making them suitable for the appearance of pure goodness's special features) and effulgent (and thus equipped with full knowledge), who are attached to hearing the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and who find happiness in the association of devotees, for whom the joy of service to Govinda has become the raison d'être of their existence, and who are always engaged in the most confidential process of developing love for Kṛṣṇa, namely hearing and chanting about his qualities and pastimes, have a love (rati)[11] for Kṛṣṇa which is effulgently manifest due to the conditioning of both the past and previous lives. This love, which is an embodiment of the divine joy, becomes experienced as rasa. (BRS 2.1.6-10)
What is more, this experience is had without exclusive dependence on the quality of the poetry or dramatic performance being witnessed as is the case in material aesthetic experiences, but simply due to the different inspirators, etc., connected with the person of Kṛṣṇa. It might be said that there are three levels of poetic appreciation for a devotee. The first calls for him to relish poetry directly related to Kṛṣṇa. In the second, exemplified by Mahāprabhu and the verse from Kāvya-prakāśa, love poetry of any kind reflects Kṛṣṇa's loves as he is the archetypal lover.[12] This attitude is reflected in Rūpa's own Padyāvalī where many verses from Amaru and other sources of traditional love poetry have been brought into relation with Kṛṣṇa, just as he did with his priyaḥ so'yam verse. Since Sanskrit poetry seeks universalization of the theme, this is not such a distant jump. At the highest level of devotional achievement, however, poetry is no longer necessary at all as the sthāyi-bhāvas, etc., have been interiorized to such an extent that the whole creation becomes an uddīpana for tasting rasa. Mahāprabhu is, of course, the exemplar of this. He saw every hillock as Govardhana, every flower garden as Vṛndāvana, and every body of water as the Yamunā.
[1] Nathan, Transport of Love, 7.
[2] Which is precisely the point that Mammaṭa
is making when he quotes the yaḥ kaumāra-haraḥ verse. Cf. Kāvya-prakāśa
(example 1.1), where it is used to illustrate the very principle of poetry
itself (vākyaṁ rasātmakaṁ kāvyam) as primarily being a conveyor of rasa
or "mood," rather than speech decorated with the various rhetorical
flourishes.
[3] An interesting comparison between Amaru's
collection of love poems and Śaṅkarācārya’s religious poetry is found in Lee
Siegel's Fires of Love, Waters of Peace: Passion and Renunciation in Indian
Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawau Press, 1983).
[4] sattvodrekād akhaṇḍa-svaprakāśānanda-cinmayaḥ
/ vedyāntara-sparśa-śūnyo brahmāsvāda-sahodaraḥ // lokottara-camatkāraprāṇaḥ
kaiścit pramātṛbhiḥ / svākāravad abhinnatvenāyam āsvādyate rasaḥ // SD
3.2-3. There are numerous editions of this work. The numbering is not always
consistent. I am using Satyavrat Singh, ed. Sāhitya-darpaṇa, by
Viśvanātha Kavirāja (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Vidyabhawan 1969).
[5] Jīva Gosvāmī also quotes this verse in his
commentary to BRS 4 2.12 and the idea in the beginning of Bhakti-rasāmṛta-śeṣa.
Camatkāra is explained by Masson as “an onomatopoeic word associated
with drawing in one's breath in marvel or of smacking one's lips in
pleasure."
[6] Alaṅkāra-kaustubha 3.
[7] Prema-pattana. Quoted in Ananta Dāsa,
Rasa-darśana (Radha Kund: Caitanya Śāstra Mandira, 1976), 22.
[8] Jīva Gosvāmī, Gopāla-campū 1.24.45.
[9] PrītiS, para. 112.
[10] Caitanya-bhāgavata (Ādi
11.105-110). At the beginning of Bhakti-rasāmṛta-śeṣa, attributed to Śrī
Jīva, four verses from the Bhāgavata are quoted to support this precise
point: 1.5.10, 3.32.19, 10.60.45 and 10.1.4.
[11] The term rati is synonymous here
with sthāyi-bhāva. Rati is being described as the raw material
for rasa, or sacred rapture.
[12] Padyāvalī 382. yaḥ kaumāra-haraḥ, etc. See Caitanya-caritāmr̥ta
2.1.6, 2.136, 3.1.7 for its significance in establishing Rūpa Gosvāmī’s authority
in understanding Caitanya’s overall mood.
Rūpa Gosvāmī’s Dūta-kāvyas:
(1) The sources of Rupa Goswami’s Authority
(2) Dating Haṁsadūta and Uddhava-sandeśa
(4) Separation in Rūpa Gosvāmī's writings
(5) Modern and Classical Literary Tastes
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