Art and Culture with Devdutt Pattanaik | How rasa, India’s aesthetic theory, explains flavours of emotions across arts

Ancient Indians analysed the experience of beauty (aesthetics) using the rasa theory. Rasa means juice. Just as the mere thought of food makes the mouth water, the experience of art generates a flow of aesthetic juices (rasa) in the audience – be it the performing arts (music, song, dance, story, theatre) or the plastic arts (painting, sculpture, architecture).

The rasa theory explains how art evokes emotions in a spectator. It begins with Bharata’s idea that drama, dance and poetry use situations, gestures and movements of the mind to create distilled feelings. These feelings are not personal emotions. They are universal moods that arise when the spectator forgets the self and slips into a shared emotional space.

Bharata’s classical text lists eight rasas: love (shringara), sorrow (karuna), rage (raudra), humour (hasya), fear (bhayanaka), disgust (vibhatsa), courage (vira), and wonder (adbhuta). Later thinkers such as Abhinavagupta say this aesthetic experience is similar to tasting bliss (shant) because it momentarily dissolves the ego.

Aristotle’s approach is different. In Poetics, he focuses on plot, character, and structure. His aim is to explain why a well-made story produces catharsis – release of pity and fear through watching tragedy. The emphasis is not on a universalised mood but on the emotional purification caused by a specific narrative outcome. Greek thought is more concerned with action, causality, and moral consequence.

Indian thought is more concerned with inner experience and the flavour of emotion. It treats art as a psychological journey where the self dissolves — as against the Aristotelian approach, which treats art as a moral narrative where actions lead to recognition and resolution.

The idea of rasa in Indian aesthetics did not appear fully formed in Bharata’s Natya Shastra. It unfolds in stages, from Vedic ritual evenings to Tamil poetics, then through Kashmiri philosophy and Deccan musicology, finally entering the world of Carnatic tradition. Each phase keeps the core intuition of aesthetic relish, but shifts its focus, language and application.

Early hints of rasa theory appear in Vedic ritual Brahmana texts, where ritual emotions like joy, fear, awe and serenity are linked to gods and sacrifices. Bharata gives the first systematic theory around 200 AD. He connects rasa to bhava. Rasa emerges when a spectator experiences a distilled form of emotion created by vibhava, anubhava and vyabhichari bhava. This becomes the foundation of Indian aesthetics. Works like Nandikesvara’s Bharata Bhasya and other early writers between 500 AD and 900 AD expand technical details. The emphasis stays on performance arts: drama, dance, and music.

In the Tamil region, the next major shift happens through grammar rather than a dance manual. Tolkappiyam has corresponding expressions to Bharata’s emotional theory. The eight rasas, the logic of bhava and anubhava, and the concern with suggestion rather than direct statement all reappear, but are now tied to the categories of akam and puram. Akam poetry focuses on inner states, especially sringara. Puram focuses on outer life, war, kingship and sacrifice.

Tamil genius then anchors rasa to landscape. Love in union, love in separation, waiting, quarrel, reconciliation, all are mapped onto ecological zones like mountains, forests, fields, coasts and deserts. The performer, standing on a marked sector of the stage, evokes not just a feeling but a world. The Tamil epic Silappadikaram completes this phase: a dramatic poem structured for performance, moving through landscapes and emotions, ending with the deification of Kannagi, all in line with Bharata’s aesthetics and Agamic temple ritual.

Then, in 1000 AD, comes the turning point with Abhinavagupta. In his Abhinavabharati, he reinterprets rasa as an experience of universalised emotion, free from personal ego. He links it to Kashmiri Shaiva philosophy and strengthens the idea of rasasvada as a glimpse of brahmic bliss.

Abhinavagupta adds shanta as the ninth rasa with detailed arguments. In other words, a secular work becomes religious, or spiritual – Vedic.

From Kashmir, the tradition flows south again in a more technical form. A descendant of Abhinavagupta’s line is associated with Devagiri, where Sangeeta Ratnakara is composed. This text simplifies and updates the earlier tradition nearly fifteen centuries after Bharata, translating the aesthetic and musical ideas into a form usable in the Deccan.

During the Chola, Vijayanagara and Sultanate periods, poeticians like Anandavardhana, Mammata, Bhoja and Jagannatha applies the rasa theory to poetry, not just drama. Anandavardhana introduces dhvani (suggestion) as the key to rasa. Mammata’s Kavyaprakasha becomes the standard manual linking rasa to literary art.

During the Mughal period, the rasa theory enters dance and music traditions across India: Odissi and Bharatanatyam abhinaya manuals, Kathakali’s elaborate bhava–rasa system, North Indian music linking raga, time and emotional mood, and regional retellings of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata embed rasa logic in poetry.

Colonial scholars treated rasa as aesthetics similar to Aristotle. However, Indian scholars reframed it as a unique psychological theory of emotion. Rasa theory became central to Indian classical arts, film studies, performance theory, and comparative aesthetics.

Explain the concept of rasa in Indian aesthetics. How does Bharata Muni’s formulation distinguish aesthetic experience from personal emotion?

Indian thought treats art as a psychological journey where the self dissolves — as against the Aristotelian approach, which treats art as a moral narrative where actions lead to recognition and resolution. Comment.

Examine Abhinavagupta’s reinterpretation of Rasa theory and its link to Kashmiri Shaiva philosophy. How did this reinterpretation shape the nature and purpose of Indian aesthetic experience?

Examine the expansion of Rasa theory from drama to poetry during the medieval period. How did concepts such as dhvani and texts like Kavyaprakasha contribute to Indian literary aesthetics?

Trace the diffusion and reinterpretation of Rasa theory from the medieval to the colonial period in India. How did its application across performing arts and its modern scholarly reinterpretation shape contemporary Indian aesthetic thought?

(Devdutt Pattanaik is a renowned mythologist who writes on art, culture and heritage.)

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