Viçvanātha insists very strongly on the necessity of the identification of the spectator with the personages depicted, a process which enables him to accept without any difficulty such episodes of extraordinary character as Hanumant’s leap over the ocean.[81] He must not treat the emotion of love as his own, for in that case it would never become a sentiment; it would remain a feeling, and in the case of fear, for instance, it would cause pain, not joy. Nor must he regard it as belonging solely to the hero, for then it would remain his feeling, and in no wise affect the spectator or become a sentiment. Similarly, the determinants, &c., are not to be treated as pertaining to the hero alone; they must be felt as generic. This generic action (sādhāraṇī kṛti) is the essential feature, replacing the generic power which Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka attributes to poetry. We can now [[322]]see clearly the position of the actor; the Nāṭyaçāstra[82] bids him as far as possible to assume the emotions of the person whom he represents, and to depict them by costume, speech, movements, and gestures as his own, but Viçvanātha[83] is more anxious to insist that the sentiment is not necessarily to be found in the actor, who often merely performs mechanically his part according to rote and rule; if he actually does experience the feelings he portrays, then he becomes in so far a spectator.[84] Further, he points out the simultaneous presence of all the factors is by no means essential, for the existence of one will revive the others by force of the association of ideas. He insists also on the necessity of experience and cultivation of the power of imagination in one who seeks to enjoy sentiment; as we are by virtue of the doctrine of transmigration—or if we prefer to modernize, by heredity—endowed with the germs of the capacity of appreciation, we can normally by study of poetical works develop the capacity, but, if we devote ourselves to the study of grammar or philosophy, we shall certainly deaden our susceptibilities. The difficult problem, why much study of poetry leaves some still unable to relish the sentiment, is explained by the convenient hypothesis that demerit in a previous birth intervenes to frustrate present effort. He refutes at length the effort of Mahiman Bhaṭṭa[85] to destroy the whole doctrine of suggestion in poetry by the doctrine of inference; doubtless by inference we could arrive at a belief in the existence of an emotion in the hero’s mind but that inference would not produce any effect in us or arouse sentiment; a logician might make the inference and draw the correct conclusion, but would remain cold and unmoved. Suggestiveness, he shows, is absolutely essential as a function of words and as the characteristic of poetry, giving it power to create sentiment. What is expressed may be understood by every one; the man of taste alone appreciates the suggestion and enjoys the flavour resulting.
Now sentiment is one, it is a single, ineffable, transcendental joy, but it can be subdivided, not according to its own nature, [[323]]but according to the emotions which evoke it. Thus the Nāṭyaçāstra recognizes the existence of eight emotions or dominant feelings; love (rati), mirth (hāsa), anger (krodha), sorrow (çoka), energy (utsāha), terror (bhaya), disgust (jugupsā), and astonishment (vismaya), and corresponding to these eight emotions we have eight forms of sentiment. The erotic sentiment (çṛn̄gārarasa) is of two kinds, the union (sambhoga) or sundering (vipralambha) of two lovers, according to the Çāstra and the great mass of theorists, but the Daçarūpa[86] distinguishes three cases, privation (ayoga), sundering (viprayoga), and union. Privation denotes the inability of two young hearts to secure union, because of obstacles to their marriage; such love passes through ten stages,[87] longing, anxiety, recollection, enumeration of the loved one’s merits, distress, raving, insanity, fever, stupor, and death. Sundering may be due to absence or resentment, and this in its turn may be caused by a quarrel between two determined lovers, or indignation at finding out, by sight, hearing or inference, that one’s lover is devoted to another. The hero may counteract anger by conciliation, by winning over her friends, by gifts, by humility, by indifference, and by distracting her attention. Absence again may be due to business, to accident, or a curse; if the reason is death the love sentiment cannot, in Dhanaṁjaya’s view, be present, though others allow of a pathetic variety of this sentiment.[88] In union the lover should avoid vulgarity or annoyance.
The heroic (vīra) sentiment corresponds to the emotion of energy; it may take the three forms of courage in battle as in Rāma; compassion as in Jīmūtavāhana; and liberality as in Paraçurāma. Assurance, contentment, arrogance, and joy are the transitory states connected with it. The sentiment of fury (raudra) is based on anger; its transitory states are indignation, intoxication, recollection, inconstancy, envy, cruelty, agitation, and the like. The comic (hāsya) sentiment depends on mirth, which is caused by one’s own or another’s strange appearance, speech, or attire.[89] The transitory states in connexion with it are [[324]]sleeping, indolence, weariness, weakness, and stupor. The sentiment of wonder (adbhuta) is based on astonishment; the transitory states are usually joy, agitation, and contentment. The sentiment of terror (bhayānaka) is based on terror; the states associated with it are depression, agitation, distraction, fright, and the like. The pathetic (karuṇa) sentiment is based on sorrow; its associated states are sleeping, epilepsy, depression, sickness, death, indolence, agitation, despair, stupor, insanity, anxiety, and so forth. The sentiment of horror or odium (bībhatsa) is based on disgust; its associated states are agitation, sickness, apprehension, and the like. In each case the theorists give in full the determinants and the consequents of each emotion, which becomes a sentiment, and a special colour is ascribed to each; it is not surprising to find that red is associated with fury, black with fear; whiteness may, in association with the comic sentiment, be explained by the flashing teeth of a laughing maiden, and the dark (çyāma) colour of the erotic sentiment is a reflex of the favoured hue of the beloved; grey accords with pathos, but the connexion of yellow with wonder, dark blue with horror, and orange with heroism is not obvious. It is also artificial to find four primary and four secondary sentiments laid down; the erotic, the furious, the heroic, and that of horror, whence in order are supposed to develop the comic, the pathetic, that of wonder and that of terror. The Nāṭyaçāstra recognizes these eight only,[90] but later authorities add the sentiment of calm (çānta) based on indifference to worldly things (nirveda), although this is in the Çāstra merely a transitory feeling. Those who follow the Çāstra contend that there is no such sentiment, for it is impossible to destroy utterly love, hatred, and other feelings, which have been operative from time without beginning; others admit the existence of the sentiment, as does Mammaṭa, but not in drama, on the ground that indifference to all worldly things is incapable of being represented. But this also is erroneous; the actor’s power of representing indifference is not in point, as it is the spectator who is to feel the sentiment, and the fact that the Çāstra places it first in the list of transitory states, though that would normally be an inauspicious beginning, indicates that it was meant to serve both as an emotion and a transitory feeling, [[325]]and it is fully recognized by Vidyādhara, Viçvanātha, and Jagannātha, though Dhanaṁjaya barely admits it.[91] The interrelations of the sentiments, their possible combinations, their harmonies and conflicts, are detailed at length.
The sentiments may all be employed in drama, but there are rules affecting their use. In each play there should be a dominant sentiment; in the Nāṭaka it should be the erotic or the heroic; other sentiments are merely auxiliary, but that of wonder is especially appropriate in the dénouement; indeed something in the way of supernatural intervention is often convenient to extricate the plot. An excess of sentiments is as bad as a defect; if there are too many they destroy the unity of the whole and detach it into a series of ill-connected fragments, while the excessive use of action and of rhetorical display is equally destructive to the merit of a piece.
The Çakuntalā illustrates excellently the sentiment of love as the ruling motive of the play; the heroic sentiment appears in the verses in Act II in which the hermits extol the king; the horrible in Act VI in the scene in which Mātali menaces the Vidūṣaka; terror is evoked by the description of the dusk at the close of Act III; the whole play from the arrival of Kaṇva in Act IV to the departure of Çakuntalā produces the sentiment of pathos, while that of fury is called into being by the close of Act VI from the despairing cries of the Vidūṣaka to the entry of Mātali; finally wonder is aroused by the strange incident at the close when the king picks up the bracelet fallen from the arm of the child which, unknown to him, is his own son by the wife whom he has in ignorance repudiated. The Nāṭikās afford excellent examples of the erotic sentiment; Harṣa, in complete accord with the rules of the drama, helps out his plot in both the Ratnāvalī and the Priyadarçikā by the use of incidents evoking the sentiment of wonder; the imprisonment of Sāgarikā in the former play evokes the sentiment of pathos, while terror is excited by the description in Act II of the wild confusion caused by the monkey’s escape from the royal mews. The sentiment of fury is frequently evoked in the Mahāvīracarita and the [[326]]Veṇīsaṁhāra; the Mālatīmādhava affords excellent illustrations evoking horror, while the Mahāvīracarita is permeated by the sentiment of heroism. The Nāgānanda reveals heroism in another aspect, that of the perfection of compassion and nobility, for, as we have seen, Jīmūtavāhana is not to be regarded as a hero in whom calm prevails.
There is doubtless pedantry in the theory of sentiment; the choice of eight emotions, the subordination to them of transitory states, the enumeration of determinants and consequents, are largely dominated by empiricism, and not explained or justified. But in its essentials the theory may be admitted to be a bold and by no means negligible attempt to indicate the essential character of the emotional effect of drama.
6. The Dramatic Styles and Languages
Plot, characters, and sentiment are not the only constituent elements of drama; the poet must be an adept in adopting the appropriate manner[92] or style (vṛtti), for each action of the hero; the style adds to the play the indefinable element of perfection which is present in the highest beauty of feature or dress. The manners allowed by the Nāṭyaçāstra are four, the graceful (kaiçikī), the grand (sāttvatī), the violent (ārabhaṭī), and the verbal (bhāratī), which owes its name to the fact that, unlike the others, it depends for its effect on words, not action.
The graceful manner is appropriate to the erotic sentiment; it employs song, dance, and lovely raiment, admits both male and female rôles, and depicts love, gallantry, coquetry, and jesting. It admits of four varieties. The first is pleasantry (narman), which is based on what is comic in speech, dress, or movement in the actors; the pleasantry may be purely comic, or be mingled with love, or even with fear, as when Susaṁgatā makes fun of Sāgarikā and adds that she will tell the queen of the episode of the picture.[93] When love is mingled, it may serve to evince affection, or to ask for a response, or to impute a fault on the lover’s part. A comedy of costume is seen in the Nāgānanda where the Viṭa, misled by his [[327]]garments, mistakes the Vidūṣaka for a woman; a comedy of action in the Mālavikāgnimitra where Nipunikā punished the Vidūṣaka by dropping on him a stick which he takes, naturally enough, for a snake. The second form is the outburst of affection (narmasphūrja)[94] at the first meeting of lovers, which ends in a note of fear, as in the meeting of the king and Mālavikā in Act IV of the Mālavikāgnimitra. Thirdly, there is the manifestation of a recent love by physical signs (narmasphoṭa),[95] and, fourth, the development of affection (narmagarbha), illustrated by the adoption of a disguise by the hero to attain his end, as when Vatsa in the Priyadarçikā comes on the scene in the garb of Manoramā.[96]