This much-needed sourcebook in classical Indian aesthetics covers the period from roughly the early part of the Common Era to 1700, with a focus on emotion in art and the famous theory of rasa (a polysemous word that Sheldon Pollock correctly translates in the aesthetic context as “taste”). This is the first volume in the Murty Classical Library's welcome new series on historical sourcebooks in classical Indian thought. Word limits entail being necessarily selective in what follows, but my genuine and immense admiration for this superlative reader should not be doubted at any stage.
Pollock begins with a comprehensive and clear introduction to the entire volume, which gives readers a superb sense of the historical developments of Indian aesthetics as an unfolding narrative. Besides this introduction, the volume also contains a useful list of English translations of Sanskrit titles, a list of abbreviations, an English-Sanskrit glossary, critical endnotes, a bibliography, and an index. In addition, each historical selection is prefaced by its own short editorial introduction (or headnotes), giving a brief summary of what is coming the reader's way, why it is important, how it relates to what (if anything) has come before and also what comes afterwards historically, as well as searching examinations of the central philosophical and aesthetic ideas put forth by the different writers covered.
Once past Pollock's introduction to the entire volume, readers are in for a feast of intellectual history featuring many courses. Beginning with selections from Bharata's seminal treatise on drama, going back to at least the third century CE, Pollock proceeds in the first chapter to selections from texts by Bhamaha and Dandin, commentaries on the latter by Ratnashrijnana and Vadijanghala, then extracts from works by Udbhata, Pratihenduraja, Tilaka, Bhatta Lollata, Shri Shankuka, Rudrata, Namisadhu, the very important Anandavardhana (who dates to about 875 CE) and his claims about implicature, Kuntaka, and Mahima Bhatta. The second chapter features selections from early and later works by the eleventh-century king Bhoja and commentary by Bhatta Narasimha. In the third chapter, Pollock turns his attention to texts by Bhatta Nayaka (c. 900 CE) as well as Dhananjaya, Dhanika, Bahurupa Mishra, and Bhatta Narasimha. Chapter 4 goes on to deal with Abhinavagupta (c. 1000 CE) and those in his school, such as Mammata and Ruyyaka, among others. The next chapter focuses on developments outside Kashmir, featuring the Jains Ramachandra and Gunachandra and other writers like Mallinatha and Singabhupala. Finally, the sixth and last chapter deals with developments up to 1650 CE, and those such as Arjunvarmadeva, Bhanudatta, Hemadri, the Bengali brothers Rupa and Jiva Gosvamin, Vishvanathadeva, and Jagannatha.
A serious reviewer must try to raise at least some constructive concerns, and in that spirit I now offer the following. First, I wish that the extensive (about eighty-five pages, in fact) and very erudite endnotes to this volume were footnotes instead, saving readers the trouble of having to go back and forth repeatedly between the main text and the endnotes, as many of the best publishers realize. Perhaps this can be remedied in the next edition if not in the paperback. Second, while there is rightly a lot on theatre (“the stage”) and literature (“the page”) in this reader, the volume could also have had something on the other arts, such as, for example, something from Sarangadeva's Sangita Ratnakara in the case of music (or “sound”). Third, and most importantly, while it is clear that the selections in this reader are of great historical interest, one might wonder if every selection reveals many philosophical insights about the arts and the emotions, as indeed I have heard some distinguished scholars of Indian philosophy doubt; perhaps this is where philosophy and philosophical aesthetics take over from intellectual history. Pollock's approach takes selections from a pretty comprehensive list of figures treated chronologically; alternatively, one might instead only focus selectively on and translate entire texts by some central figures in Indian aesthetics (such as Bharata, Anandavardhana, Bhoja, Bhatta Nayaka, Abhinavagupta, and so on) and leave the others aside for the most part, though of course both approaches have their own place and value.
A Rasa Reader is nevertheless most appropriate for interested general readers and comparativists as well as scholars and those interested in Asian studies. I can easily see this reader being used in all sorts of classes offered by various college and university departments, from Asian Studies to Philosophy, to Art History, to Theatre, to Literature, and so on. The classes and seminars it might be used for range from Asian Aesthetics to Emotion and the Arts, to a History of Indian Aesthetics, and the like.
We should be grateful to Pollock for many years of honest, hard, scholarly work resulting in this excellent, magisterial reader, not the least because, as Pollock puts it, “no discipline of classical India has suffered greater losses than aesthetics” (p. 35). He rightly points out that there has been an “affective turn” of late in literary theory, philosophical aesthetics, social theory, and elsewhere, and here “rasa theory and its history may have some role to play” (p. 45). To give Pollock the last word, “it may even help us … better understand what it means to experience art and hence to be a full human being” (p. 45).
