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Quote by A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics Sheldon Pollock

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A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics Sheldon Pollock

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“The mid-ninth-century thinker Anandavardhana, when arguing that it is rasa that makes literature literature, explains that it was to demonstrate this fact that “the grief of the first poet…was shown to be transformed into verse. For grief is the stable emotion of the tragic rasa.”11 The idea that the literary artwork is an expression of the author’s own emotion is summarized in an oft-quoted verse of Ananda’s: “If the poet is filled with passion, the whole world of his poem will consist of rasa; if not, it will be completely devoid of it.”

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“It can also be the rasa in the author that corresponds to the seed in the simile, the author being in this identical with the audience; this is why Anandavardhana has said, “If a poet is filled with passion, the whole world of his poem will consist of rasa”;217 the literary work would then correspond to the tree, with the various actions of the actor, his registers of acting, corresponding to the flowers and the like, and the savoring of rasa on the part of the audience to the fruit. Thereby the whole world consists of rasa.218…219 Hence, the gist of this discourse is that all three positions can somehow be accommodated, depending on the particular perspective one adopts.”

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“[Consider the following verse: This used to loosen my belt and untie the knot holding up my skirt, and fondle my heavy breasts and touch my navel and thighs and mound—this very hand.369 The wife of Bhurishravas addresses these words to her husband, lying dead on the battlefield, when she catches sight of his severed hand. Here, the recollection of a former state of affairs, though a component of the erotic rasa, does not conflict with the tragic but enhances it. An example of [2]: The bites and nail wounds on your body, left by the lioness in her lust for blood [or: in her passion for you] and your hair everywhere stiffening with pleasure— even the monks observe all this with longing.370 Here, the bites and the rest on the Buddha’s body are described as being as wonderful as those on a lover’s; and just as a susceptible bystander might observe the lover and long for such an experience himself, so do the monks when they see the Buddha’s wounds. Here a comparison is intended between the two rasas.”

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