Indian Aesthetics

The study aims to address the existing research gap through a thematic comparison between the aesthetics of Kant and Abhinavagupta. This paper explores Kant's notion of aesthetic judgment based on disinterestedness with Abhinavagupta's analysis of sādhāraṇīkaraṇa. We argue that the notions of "disinterested judgment" in Kant and sādhāraṇīkaraṇa in Abhinavagupta points towards the impersonal nature of aesthetic delight which makes the universality of aesthetic experience possible. Hence, aesthetics in both Kant and Abhinavgupta are not the personal and subjective experience but a kind of universality based on the ability to experience the impersonal joy. However, the notion of aesthetic delight in Kant is confined to the agreeable mental states only while in Abhinavgupta the notion of rasa includes both positive as well as the negative mental states like fear, disgust, etc. In this regard, the paper will also analyze the affinity between notion of sensus communius in Kant and sahṛdaya in Abhinavagupta which highlights the importance of aesthetic community and the impersonal nature of aesthetic delight.

Raniero Gnoli, 'L’estetica indiana. La scuola di Abhinavagupta'. Traduzione di Alberto Anrò. Carocci Editore, Roma. ISBN 9788829019953

Ed. originale R. Gnoli, 'The Aesthetic Experience according to Abhinavagupta', The Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office; 1968 (2 nd edition revised).

Presentazione di Raffaele Torella
Prologo all’edizione italiana
Prefazione alla seconda edizione inglese
Abbreviazioni
Introduzione
Abhinavabhāratī, I, pp. 274-88. Traduzione
Abhinavabhāratī, I,  pp. 274-88. Testo
Appendice 1. Abhinavabhāratī, I, pp. 35-8. Traduzione
Appendice 2. Locana a DhĀ, I, 18. Traduzione
Appendice 3. Locana a DhĀ, II, 4. Traduzione
Note
Indice dei nomi e delle opere
Indice analitico

Totem occupies a central position in varied cultures. With the change in social situations there has been a shift in the metaphoric representation of the Totem in the social and cultural space. The cause of the changing beliefs in the modern age can be studied through the metaphoric representation of the Totem in Mahesh Dattani's work Dance Like a Man.

Beauty is the manifestation of God. It develops an impulse of love, and to love beauty is to love God, the Creator of
the universe. Beauty is comprehended through senses, and sensuous values develop spiritual consciousness. The
awareness of Beauty is acquisition of Truth that is Beneficial or the cause for Welfare. Keats was a worshiper of
beauty. “He loved the principle of beauty in all things.” Primarily he was considered a poet of sensuous beauty but a
thorough study of his poetry and letters reveals that his conception of beauty was holistic and transcendental, being
closer to the Indian concept summed up in the expression- Satyam Shivam Sundaram. The present paper is a critical
study of Keats’ mysticism of beauty in the lines of Indian views. The attempt has been made to go through some of
the relevant Indian religious texts to prop up Keats’ belief and present the veracity of Keats which has remained
dormant in the oblivion of time.

This thesis proposes that the stepwell or Vav of Gujarat was a regional innovation driven by environmental and geological conditions, but also by the aesthetic sophistication supported by its patrons. The distinguishing factos of the Vav set it apart from other water buildings in India.

Ashoka's legacy is carreid through the sandstone pillars that were erected during his rule in various parts of northern India. These pillars were inscrbed upon with edicts revealing Ashoka's intended policy framework of Dhamma for his subjects and neighbours. However, there are pillars that have been discovered without either capitals or inscriptions, and in some cases neither Ashokan evidence exists. Therefore, there has been further reason to explore the origins of these pillars. although the initial exploration was driven more by the aesthetic beauty of these pillars. This essay tries to shed light on both perspectives - historical and aesthetic - that make these pillars and their animal capitals powerful symbols in Indian culture.

This is a brief review of the Rasa theory of Indian aesthetics and the works I have done on the same. A major source of the Indian system of classification of emotional states comes from the ‘Natyasastra’, the ancient Indian treatise on the performing arts, which dates back to the 2nd Century AD (or much earlier, pg. LXXXVI:  Natyasastra, Ghosh, 1951). The ‘Natyasastra’ speaks about ‘sentiments’ or ‘Rasas’ (pg.102:  Natyasastra, Ghosh, 1951) which are produced when certain ‘dominant states’ (sthayi Bhava), ‘transitory states’ (vyabhicari Bhava) and ‘temperamental states’ (sattvika Bhava) of emotions come together (pgs.102, 105:  Natyasastra, Ghosh, 1951).  This Rasa theory, which is still widely followed in classical Indian performing arts, classifies eight Rasas or sentiments which are: Sringara (erotic), Hasya (comic), Karuna (pathetic), Raudra (furious), Vira (heroic), Bhayanaka (terrible), Bibhatsa (odious) and Adbhuta (marvellous). There was a later addition of the ninth sentiment or Rasa called Santa (peace) in later Sanskrit poetics (pg.102:  Natyasastra, Ghosh, 1951). According to ancient Indian aesthetics (especially in the context of Bharatas’ ‘Natyasastra’, Anandavardhana’s ‘Dhvanyaloka’ and Abhinavagupta’s ‘Abhinavabharati’), ‘Rasa’ is the relishable state of elemental human emotions called ‘Bhavas’. Bharata’s ‘Natyasastra’ originally spoke of eight Rasas. The concept of the 9th Rasa was a later interpolation by the Kashmiri Shaivist Abhinavagupta (10th Century AD) and also his predecessor Anandavardhana (9th Century AD). Abhinavagupta extends the eight Rasas by adding the concept of the Santa Rasa which he regards as the essence of all Rasas. It is this 9th Rasa which according to Abhinavagupta lets the Rasika attain the aesthetic detachment and savour the essences of all other Rasas and therefore the true aesthetic delight. The introduction of 9th Rasa integrates the concepts of Bharata’s Rasasutra and Patanjali’s Yoga theory – the detachment necessary to introspect inwards into the inherent state of freedom and bliss (aesthetic consciousness).

• Debunk validity, coherence, universal promise of rasa-aesthetics by pitting Hindu theorists against each other (Nāyaka & Ānanda against Abhinava) • Section of 70-page article on " Abhinava's Rasa-aesthetics & Bharata's sacrificial theater: humor & its semblance in the Mṛcchakaṭikā " (IGNCA) • Sādhāraṇīkaraṇa: basic yet misunderstood concept; implications beyond (secularized) aesthetics to embrace theater as sacrifice (yajña)

The paper aims at critical reconsideration of a motif popular in Indian literary, ritual, and pictorial traditions – a tree goddess (yakṣī, vṛkṣakā) or a woman embracing a tree (śālabhañjīkā, dohada), which points to a close and intimate bond between women and trees. At the outset, I present the most important phases of the evolution of this popular motif from the ancient times to present days. Then two essential characteristics of nature recognized in Indian visual arts, literature, religions and philosophy will be distinguished: (1) a dynamic, creative, self-sufficient and inexhaustible power, and (2) a passive, merely reproductive or vegetative, and dependent field of potentiality. The paper is to demonstrate the interdependence of the popular concepts of nature identified with femininity, and their iconic representations circulating for centuries in Indian culture, with a specific line of argument repeatedly used in social practices and public debates. While doing so, I consider the semiotic function of a cultural topos which proves to be an effective instrument for construing and supporting the gender roles and gender identities. As a modern example illustrating vitality and persuasive power of the motif of yakṣī and śālabhañjīkā, I refer to the Chipko Movement, a group of rural women based in the Garhwal Himalayas (state Uttarakhand), who fought against the mass cut of trees in the 1970s. They were involved in the wide-spread environmental campaign which significantly affected the ecological policy of the local and state authorities. Thus, a traditional motif of the visual arts has been revived and re-elaborated by the activists of this ecofeminist movement through converting the symbolic potential of yakṣī/śālabhañjīkā into social and political power.

What is Dance? What is Theatre? What is the boundary between enacting a character and narrating a story? When does movement become tinted with meaning? And when does beauty shine alone as if with no object? These universal aesthetic questions find a theoretically vibrant and historically informed set of replies in the oeuvre of the eleventh-century Kashmirian author Abhinavagupta. The present book offers the first critical edition, translation, and study of a crucial and lesser known passage of his commentary on the Nāṭyaśāstra, the seminal work of Sanskrit dramaturgy. The nature of dramatic acting and the mimetic power of dance, emotions, and beauty all play a role in Abhinavagupta’s thorough investigation of performance aesthetics, now presented to the modern reader.

The paper aspires to examine the role played by the aesthetic theory of Rasa on one hand, and the meditative theory of Yoga on the other, in the artistic expression of the adi-rasa, Sringara.
From Vatsayana’s Kamasutra to the theory of Mahasukhavada in Mahayana and subsequently Vajrayana Buddhism; the ideals of Love in the Bhakti movement or in the understanding of Shakti; the first half probes into the historical traditions of theological doctrines, at the very base of aesthetic theories.
Further, it focuses on Vaishnavism with its erotic dogma, in perceiving the cosmic yet earthly love of Radha and Krishna.  The post-Chaitanya age in Sahajiya Vaishnava philosophy becomes a critical area of enquiry here. The profound realization of Sringara, we see manifested in miniature paintings from Rajasthan, Basholi, Kangra, so on and so forth.
At the wake of cultural re-awakening in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, painters from the Bengal School looked back to this Vaishnavite theme for artistic inspiration. The emerging identity of the individual Indian artist as well as its contemporary historiography is thus closely associated to the theory of Rasa- the imager and the rasika.
Into the bargain, a marked difference in Freudian and Jungian analyses makes an interesting reading of Sringara, the Maharasa in Indian aesthetics.

This chapter explores the ways Abhinavagupta, an eleventh-century Kashmirian polymath, establishes the experience of serenity (śānta) as one of the appraised emotions called rasa. Beyond the issue of whether serenity can be the savoring of rasa, this chapter explores various models from classical Hindu and Buddhist philosophies that establish serenity in order to contextualize the phenomenology of experiencing serenity. For Abhinava, this experience is not a mere negation of emotions but a positive experience. And to establish his argument, Abhinava explores the ways absence is analyzed in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. One of the central problems of aesthetics that overlaps metaphysics is whether the
experience of serenity is identical to the experience of liberation. Abhinava
paves his path through the middle, without collapsing this experience to the
mystical experience of the Brahman or to common everyday experiences. By rejecting the argument that serenity is a product of cessation or that dispassion evolves into serenity, Abhinava argues that serenity emerges from self-awareness.

BHARTIYA MANYAPRAD is a call to bring closer all Indians at one mental meadow irrespective of them being Indian residents, NRIs or PIOs. Certain issues touch all of them with same concern. BHARTIYA MANYAPRAD is a new International Journal of Indian Studies aiming to bring the best of cultural studies to a diverse academic and non-academic audience. We feature research articles and features practices and conditions specific to contemporary popular culture, traditions, norms and societies etc. BHARTIYA MANYAPRAD shall include scholarly articles pertaining to the issues which are faced by Indians in any part of the world including India. It also invites books for review. It's a platform for all those who want to share the issues which need an attention and get the things changed for betterment. In fact it shall culminate into a dialogue bringing in a silent revolution amongst the people who are connected to India in any manner. Though it is a research journal still it shall include the restlessness of an Indian as s/he faces in the society around the world. It is a multicultural journal inviting articles from all sectors of life. BHARTIYA MANYAPRAD shall contain sociocultural-psycho issues as faced by Indians throughout the world including India. Articles should borrow from semiotics, psychoanalysis, queer theory, and other academic disciplines associated with cultural studies and critical theory, while remaining accessible to a general audience. Ideally, articles should surprise and entertain, presenting smart, pithy analysis of familiar subject matter. Articles are liable to be published after peer review. Each Volume shall have one issue in a year.

When Uday Shankar and his company launched their inaugural world tour in Paris in 1931, European and American audiences received the ensemble enthusiastically. How could this group of foreigners have been so successful on Western stages? Bringing together numerous reviews on Shankar and early ethnographic writings, Diana Brenscheidt gen. Jost examines the distinct, often spiritually-biased, image dance and music from India held at the beginning of the 20th century in the West, an image which would also crucially affect the perception of native dance and music traditions in India itself.

This essay is an attempt to build a critique of the controversial paintings of M. F. Husain from the perspective of the aesthetic concept of aucitya. Since aucitya is considered necessary for derivation of rasa, the critique also involves a rasa based analysis of these paintings of Husain. Finally this essay also explores the aptness of classical Indian aesthetic concepts like rasa, dhvani and aucitya in evaluating artworks deeply-rooted in modernity.

Transcending psychological inhibitions caused by colonial encounter in the comprehension of the past is a daunting task in aesthetic discourses, given the fact that colonial paradigms are difficult to erase and contemporary public spaces of art like Museums, as argued by Edward Said are colonial projects. India's perceptions related to the creation, nature, and evaluation of arts has gone a sea change in the colonial period which created a sort of alienation towards the manifestation of indigenous culture among the colonial subjects. Apart from this, the nature of performance, display, patronage venue, audience and space all underwent far reaching transformations in the process. Leela Gandhi demonstrates that in its reflexive modality, post colonialism holds out the possibility of thinking our way through and out of the historical imbalances and cultural imbalances produced by the colonial encounter.1However, in the retrieval of traditional discourses, distortions are bound to happen when using modern terminology , especially as Aesthetics itself happens to be a non indigenous discipline. Despite these severe methodological constraints, the present paper proposes to explore the relationship between the aesthetic theory formulated by thinkers like Abhinavagupta and praxis related to the creation, experience and evaluation of art forms like the performance arts , painting and sculpture in Precolonial India. The paper will focus on the extant and limitations of the inter relatedness with a view to bring to the fore the tensions involved and the insights they could yield in contemporary attempt to make sense of theory and praxis.Apart from the theoretical works, the sources which are being consulted would comprise self reflexive statements of multi faceted artists like Kalidasa who have occasion to deal with art in its various manifestation in the representation of life. It is hoped that such an exercise will be of some use in the comprehension of tradition and for some sort of self reflexivity in contemporary times especially in addressing issues of identity of Indian art. Needless to say, the paper distances itself from any type of exhortations to 'return to the past' as the present writer feels that tradition in its most creative phase is always dynamic and experimental. Tradition is only one of the resources for the creative spirit.. It is indeed a daunting task to locate the conventional precolonial discourse which could be the exact counterpart of modern aesthetics which would discuss problems related to theory and praxis. Natyasastra , the seminal and iconic text of performing arts of India is virtually an encyclopedia of Indian arts in which the center piece is dramatic performance, but which incidentally discusses allied arts like music and dance. In one way, it is the edifice on which the entire aesthetic thought of India is built. Texts like 1 1 Leela Gandhi, Post Colonial Theory, p.176.

Статья посвящена концепции «раса» (эстетического переживания), одному из ключевых понятий индийской эстетики. Автор кратко прослеживает особенности трактовки этого понятия на разных этапах его существования и применительно к разным видам искусства. Начальный этап осмысления расы традиционно связывают со сферой театральной рефлексии, с трактатом «Натьяшастра». Она получает разработку и в древнеиндийской теории живописи, дошедшей до нас, в частности, в виде трактата «Читрасутра». Впоследствии, благодаря усилиям ряда теоретиков литературы, раса входит в число ключевых категорий индийской поэтики; сохраняя, однако, свое значение и для других видов искусств, в особенности-для сценических практик, в том числе музыкальных. В музыке раса становится неотъемлемой чертой характеристики раги - ладово-интонационного образования, которое может быть названо основополагающим для индийского музыкального мышления. Предполагается, что каждой раге присуща определенная раса, которая будет также связываться с определенным спектром внемузыкальных коннотаций, таких как, например, время года или суток, подобающее для исполнения той или иной раги.
Аспектом этого понятия, находящемся в фокусе данной статьи, является роль расы в сложении и бытовании феномена рагамала, особой жанровой формы, связывающей разные сферы индийского искусства. Словом «рагамала» (санскр. «гирлянда раг») в его узком смысле могут быть названы поэтические сборники и серии миниатюр XVI-XIX веков, где описывались и изображались антропоморфные образы раг. В широком смысле так может быть определена традиция существования визуальных образов музыкальных понятий (рага, свара и др.) в индийской культуре. Ее истоки обнаруживают себя в трактатах о музыке, затем она получает развитие в лирической поэзии и, наконец, в миниатюрной живописи. Концепция раса рассматривается в данной статье как один из главных факторов, обусловивших саму возможность возникновения этой уникальной традиции.

The article is devoted to the concept of "rasa" (aesthetic experience), one of the key concepts of Indian aesthetics. The author briefly traces the features of the interpretation of this concept at different stages of its existence, in relation to different types of art. The initial phase is traditionally associated with the sphere of theatrical reflection and the theory of painting ("Natyashastra" and "Chitrasutra" treatises respectively). Subsequently, through efforts of a number of theorists, rasa became one of the key categories of Indian poetics. However, it retained significance for other arts, firstly for stage practices, including music. Here rasa became an inherent feature of the ragas, specific modes of Indian music. It is assumed that each raga has its own particular rasa, and also can be associated with a certain range of extra-musical connotations.
This article is focused on the role of rasa in the formation and existence of the ragamala phenomenon, a special genre form that connects different spheres of Indian art. The word "ragamala" (Skt. "garland of ragas") in its narrow sense means series of poetic stanzas and miniature paintings of the XVI-XIX centuries, describing and depicting anthropomorphic images of ragas. In a broad sense, it can mean the whole tradition of existence of visual images of musical concepts (i.e. raga, svara, etc) in Indian culture. Its origins are found in treatises on music, then it was further developed in lyric poetry and, finally, in miniature painting. The concept of rasa is considered in this article as one of the main factors determining the very possibility of the emergence of this unique tradition.

This paper aims to examine the dimensions of aesthetic affect of anger in the rasa framework in Indian aesthetics. In the postmodern times, as aesthetic emotions are formulated (packaged and predetermined) and with the digital accessibility of new media, the reader/viewer's engagement as proposed in rasa framework becomes relevant and helps to contextualize the debate on what is the nature of art and the aesthetic process itself. To expound on these concerns, this paper reads Omair Ahmad's novel Jimmy the Terrorist (2010) and a particular incident in the narrative to understand the emotion of krodha (anger) and the affective process leading to the protagonist's behavioural and active response. The aesthetic framework referred to is Bharata's treatise on dramaturgy The Nāṭyaśāstra and the interpretations offered by Abhinavagupta with some references to Śankuka's views. In contemporary postmodern aesthetics, these concerns are important as they point to the need for contextualizing the psychological makeup of readers/ spectators which is an integral part of the aesthetic process itself.

Studi Linguistici e Filologici Online. Rivista Telematica del Dipartimento di Linguistica dell’Università di Pisa. Proceedings of the XII National Meeting of  National Association for Sanskrit Studies, Milan. www.humnet.unipi.it/slifo/vol5.2/Pacciolla5.2.pdf

While it is common to hear that we are living in an era of global education, academic philosophy and aesthetics continue to reflect a heavy bias toward Western philosophies, thinkers, and arts. This curriculum project has two central aims. The first aim is to support the diversification of aesthetics curricula through the inclusion of Asian philosophical perspectives. The second aim is to present reading modules in a way that highlights the rich possibilities for cross-cultural and comparative work in aesthetics. Aesthetics often succeeds in philosophizing across borders where other methods fail for a number of reasons. Aesthetics brings together a wide range of philosophical methods and considerations, including but not limited to epistemological, hermeneutical, metaphysical, political, and ethical. The fundamental role of perception in aesthetics should encourage appropriate cultural reflexivity and reflection. Additionally, the philosophical interpretation of a work of art can place demands and yield results in a manner similar to ideal cross-cultural philosophizing. Asian philosophy of art and aesthetics contributes to these aims in at least two important ways. First, the arts were often treated as philosophical practices in a number of Asian traditions. Second, aesthetics occupied a principal place in the philosophies included here, arguably on par with the preeminent role that metaphysics has played in the history of European philosophy. Complementing the first two aims of diversifying contemporary aesthetics and highlighting opportunities for comparative and cross-cultural work, this reading list is designed to also strengthen the role of aesthetics in philosophy more broadly by showcasing traditions for which aesthetics was at the center of philosophical practices and methods. This project therefore supports the importance of non-Western traditions in the discipline of aesthetics and confirms aesthetics at the center of philosophy.

The purpose of this article is to argue, prove and demonstrate that Indian Music and Dance have a crucial role to play in the overall development of the Republic of Mauritius.

Following intensive and extensive literature search, and field study, the author shows that cultural and economic values inherent in these art-forms, if soundly and systematically explored, identified and leveraged, have the potential to create and enhance human, cultural, artistic and social capitals through arts education, besides contributing to economic development by generating jobs and earnings through the establishment of Indian Music and Dance Industries in the country. The author further argues that it is incumbent upon the government to formulate and deliver informed, evidence-based cultural policies to guide thoughts and actions in the arts, culture and economic sectors. Largely, the arguments are based on the experiences of different countries, especially those of India, and the findings of researchers in the field.

Keywords. Culture, Economics, Indian Music and Dance, Value, Cultural Industries, Indian Music and Dance Industries, Development, and Cultural Policy