A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics

by Sheldon Pollock (Editor)

From the early years of the Common Era to 1700, Indian intellectuals explored with unparalleled subtlety the place of emotion in art. Their investigations led to the deconstruction of art's formal structures and broader inquiries into the pleasure of tragic tales. Rasa, or taste, was the word they chose to describe art's aesthetics, and their passionate effort to pin down these phenomena became its own remarkable act of creation.

This book is the first in any language to follow the evolution of rasa from its origins in dramaturgical thought--a concept for the stage--to its flourishing in literary thought--a concept for the page. A Rasa Reader incorporates primary texts by every significant thinker on classical Indian aesthetics, many never translated before. The arrangement of the selections captures the intellectual dynamism that has powered this debate for centuries. Headnotes explain the meaning and significance of each text, a comprehensive introduction summarizes major threads in intellectual-historical terms, and critical endnotes and an extensive bibliography add further depth to the selections. The Sanskrit theory of emotion in art is one of the most sophisticated in the ancient world, a precursor of the work being done today by critics and philosophers of aesthetics. A Rasa Reader's conceptual detail, historical precision, and clarity will appeal to any scholar interested in a full portrait of global intellectual development.

A Rasa Reader is the inaugural book in the Historical Sourcebooks in Classical Indian Thought series, edited by Sheldon Pollock. These text-based books guide readers through the most important forms of classical Indian thought, from epistemology, rhetoric, and hermeneutics to astral science, yoga, and medicine. Each volume provides fresh translations of key works, headnotes to contextualize selections, a comprehensive analysis of major lines of development within the discipline, and exegetical and text-critical endnotes, as well as a bibliography. Designed for comparativists and interested general readers, Historical Sourcebooks is also a great resource for advanced scholars seeking authoritative commentary on challenging works.

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Indian Literature, Religion

472 pages, Hardcover

First published April 19, 2016

About the author

Sheldon Pollock is the Arvind Raghunathan Professor of South Asian Studies. From 2005-2011 he served as the William B. Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Columbia, and before that as the George V. Bobrinskoy Distinguished Service Professor of Sanskrit and Indic Studies at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1989-2005. He was educated at Harvard University, receiving his undergraduate degree in Classics (Greek) magna cum laude in 1971 before earning a Masters (1973) and Ph.D. (1975) in Sanskrit and Indian Studies. His areas of specialization are Sanskrit philology, Indian intellectual and literary history, and, increasingly, comparative intellectual history.

Pollock is General Editor of the Murty Classical Library of India (Harvard U. Press). He was Associate and then General Editor of the Clay Sanskrit Library, for which he also edited and translated a number of volumes, and joint editor of "South Asia across the Disciplines," a collaborative venture of the University of California Press, University of Chicago Press, and Columbia University Press. He directed the international collaborative research project "Sanskrit Knowledge Systems on the Eve of Colonialism." He is currently principal investigator of “SARIT: Enriching Digital Collections in Indology,” supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities/Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Bilateral Digital Humanities Program.

Reviews

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is one major put-off in this book. Pollock somehow decides that it is a wise choice to translate every word - every title, every technical word, every concept is translated from the Sanskrit. And his rationale is that Sanskritists would know what these stand for and as to the rest, it doesn't matter anyways. Also, strangely enough he throws diacritic marks out of the window. The former especially makes the book a very uncomfortable read - I read this reader scratching my head.

But I still leave 5 stars because - boy o boy is Pollock a nerd. He is spectacularly erudite - he has collected some thirty poeticians from Bharatamuni all the way to Jagannadha Panditaraja in the court at Delhi in the 17th century as the tussle with such fine and elegant points on beauty. One is left standing with endless awe for the refinement and sophistication for the Sanskrit aesthetic tradition. In particular Pollock shivers with excitement in talking about Sanskrit poeticians passing the baton and responsibility of Rasa - aesthetic experience - into the hands of audiences rather than writers. We took are taken into the swiftness of tradition and its sweetness. And what is more adorable than Pollock gushing at the brilliance of the greats Udbhata, Bhatta Narayana, and obviously Abhinavagupta.

[Swetha Godavarthi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why do some performances or poems or stories move us to tears or to laughter, or any of the sensations in between? the term for this experience in Indian philosophy is Rasa. Rasa reader is an important examination of the concept of Rasa in Indian literature and dramaturgy. Spanning from Bharata's natyashastra in c. 300 to Jagannatha's views in court of Shah Jahan (c.1650), Sheldon Pollock quotes directly from works of Indian philosophers, dramaturgists and writers to examine how scholars grappled with and debated what is Rasa, where is it located, how is it acheived and how many types are there? The book spans the evolution of analysis and philosophy of Rasa from linguistic to psychological point of view and from secular to religious to vedantic point of view. A must read for students of arts, or even anyone even remotely interested in arts.

[Shreya · Rating 4 out of 5]

The reader gets a brilliant compendium of comparative aesthetic scholarship in elegant prose. What is rasa? When was it actually formulated, and in what context? How did it assume such significance in the contexts of aesthetic debates? Shelden Pollock traces the trajectory of the idea of rasa from theatre to poetics. It is a pleasure to follow the various streams of argument that Pollock traces through the classical texts. This could help us understand ourselves a little better by coming to terms with art and literature and reintegrating with the world at large.