Savoring Shakuntala

What is Rasa, and How is it Produced?

Rasa the overall aesthetic-emotional taste of a play is created by a number of factors. As we have seen
previously, first among them is the type of play itself which, for Shakuntala, is the high dramanataka, and so
must have either an erotic taste (srngara-rasa) or a heroic taste (vira-rasa).[145] The arc of the storyline and
the series of acts and scenes helps to build rasa,[146] as do gestures on stage[147] and, of course, the actual
words of the play.[148] To these we may add the characters themselves,[149] the expressions of the
actors,[150] and a host of minor rasas fleeting sentiments[151] which, while subject to the main rasa, lend the
play a broader emotional variety.[152] Krishnamoorthy believes that this is especially true of Kalidasas treatment
of the natural world: Every detail relating to nature, he writes, can be shown to be full of infinite shades of
significance.[153] Indeed, all of the different factors needed to produce rasa account for drama, Gerow writes,
as a complete art form, uniting poetry, dialogue, acting, song, dance, and thus music and sculpture. [154]

Results of Rasa
Because so many of these rasa-building factors exist on the level of extreme detail, the job of the savvy
audience member is to savor each scene.[155] The reader (or spectator), G.L. Anderson writes, must seek out
the precise emotional nuance in each passage of the poets work to appreciate the variety and depth of
Kalidasas reading of the human experience. It is not the end, but the moment, that counts. [156] A true
appreciation of drama did not lie in an artfully-constructed plot or even in characters psychological
development although of course Kalidasas plays have both of those aspects. Rather, one had to appreciate
the smallest details of the emotional states that are presented in each gesture, line, or verse. [157] Whats more,
the audience must not only take notice of the variety of emotional details in the play, but they must become
aware of their own emotional pleasure: Through the interplay of all these factors [above] the emotion is
excited, corroborated, and sustained, van Buitenen writes, and when the spectator begins to be more and
more aware of his enjoyment of this emotion, he has the rasa, he has the mood.[158]

When these emotional details are properly relished, a miraculous thing happens: rasa [abolishes] the
mundane distinctions between audience, actor, and author.[159] Rasa integrates[160] the intention of the
playwright to produce a particular aestheticized emotion through the details of the play, the proper performance
of the play in all its crucial details on the part of the actors, and the audiences distanced relishing of what the
author and actors have set forth before him. All three groups work to achieve rasa.

Srngara-rasa in the Shakuntala

The eight rasas given by Bharata can be described in terms of the overarching emotions of which each is an
aestheticized experience. Van Buitenen tells us that these emotions are love, energy, disgust, fury, merriment,
wonderment, fear, and grief.[161] In other words, love is the prevailing mood of an erotic rasa play; energy is
the prevailing mood of a heroic rasa play; grief is the prevailing mood of a compassionate rasa play.

Most critics focus on Kalidasas Shakuntala as an erotic rasa srngara-rasa play. Even so, there is
immense emotional variety from the sensual to the spiritual in the plays details. [162] Theorists broke down the
erotic rasa into three types: love forbidden, love in separation, and love in union.[163] In van Buitenens

words: Love forbidden is the love of a couple that is prevented from being consummated because their
guardians will not permit it or because of the interference of fateLove in separation, perhaps the most popular
theme of Sanskrit erotic poetry, may have two main causes: absence abroad or pique; this pique itself might be
the pique of a lovers quarrel, when two lovers have made up their minds to be angry, or may be occasioned by
the lovers infidelityLove in union is just that[164] So Shakuntala, which portrays love in union overall,
really features a sort of love forbidden in the first two acts and love in separation in the fourth, fifth, and sixth
acts. In fact, the very theme of memory that runs through the play is often used in Sanskrit poetry to signify
both love in separation and love in union.[165]