THEATRICS OF EMOTION: SELF-DECEPTION AND SELF- CULTIVATION IN ABHINAVAGUPTA’S AESTHETICS (original) (raw)
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2012
The mistakes we make about ourselves result in our deepest sufferings. Philosophy, meant to be a remedy for our souls’ affliction, claims to offer both a diagnosis and a cure. I look to ancient India, where Buddhists and Hindus alike grapple with this fundamental human quest for peace of mind. For Indian thinkers, a philosophical treatise about the self is meant not only to lay out the truth, but also to embed itself in a process of study and contemplation that will lead eventually to self-transformation. By combining attention to philosophical content with sensitivity to skilfully crafted literary form, I try to deepen and enrich our appreciation of some of the greatest intellectual works in history. My survey includes the Upaniṣads, the Buddha’s discourses, the epic Mahābhārata, and the philosopher Candrakīrti, whose work was later to become foundational in Tibetan Buddhism. I show how the figures of the Buddha, the sage, and the epic hero mediate the reader’s relationship with the text. I go on to reveal that many contemporary theories of selfhood are not only anticipated but developed to an extraordinary degree of sophistication in these works, and that there are other ideas about the self found here which modern philosophers have not yet begun to explore. In the Appendices, I begin to disclose some of the paths along which Indian ideas about the self have migrated throughout history to the West.
This article is an attempt at understanding the use that Abhinavagupta (950-1020?), the Kashmiri Śaiva philosopher and scholar of poetics, makes of a few concepts and theories stemming from the tradition of Vedic ritual exegesis (Pūrva-Mīmāṁ sā). Its starting point is the detailed analysis of a key passage in Abhinavagupta's commentary on the "aphorism on rasa(s)" of the Nāṭyaśāstra, where the learned commentator draws an analogy between the operation of the non-prescriptive portions of the Veda in the ritual and the "generalisation" (sādhāraṇīkaraṇa) taking place, according to him, in the appreciation of a work of art. Arguing against the tendency of modern historiography to explain this analogy exclusively in terms of Kumārila's theory of effectuation (bhāvanā) in its two modalities, the article endeavours to show how Abhinavagupta relies on a variety of other textual sources he knew extensively and presumably first-hand. Some of them belong to the great Mīmāṁ saka tradition (Śabara, possibly Maṅḋana Miśra); others, to different trends of medieval Brahmanism claiming exegetical heritage, as in the case of Jayanta Bhaṫt˙a's Nyāyamañjarī. The nature of Abhinavagupta's debt to Bhaṫṫa Nāyaka and his concept of bhāvanā is also reconsidered in light of these new findings. This investigation finally leads to identify, in the Abhinavabhāratī, an original theory of scriptural narratives and their efficacy, irreducible to any of its exegetical (or pseudoexegetical) sources. According to this theory, mythological passages of the Veda directly This article is the partial outcome of the project "Speech and action in early Brahmanical philosophy," carried out at the University of Cambridge with the generous support of the Royal Society of Great Britain (Newton International Fellowship). Special thanks are due to Daniele Cuneo and Elisa Ganser for their remarks and criticism, and for sharing with me important unpublished materials including digital images of three manuscripts of the Abhinavabhāratī. I also thank Vincenzo Vergiani for very useful comments on an earlier version of this text, and D. Cuneo for allowing me to use his hitherto unpublished PhD thesis.
If speaking is through speech, if breathing is through breath, if seeing is through the eyes, if hearing is through the ears, if touching is through the skin, if meditation is through the mind, if exhaling is through the outbreath… then who am I? Aitareya Upanisad, 3.11 "Who am I?" Ramana Maharshi This essay will attempt to trace a self psychology that developed in Indian thought from the Vedic period down through the centuries to the present day. While there were significant and even dramatic changes in the theory over time, I will try to show that there is a consistency in the questions addressed and to a large extent in the solutions offered. Beginning with the Upaniṣads and pausing at the classical Sāṃkhya/Yoga texts and the Bhagavad Gītā, we will trace these ideas through tantra into the nearcontemporary teachings of gurus such as Sri Aurobindo and Sri Atmananda. At the same time, we will compare and contrast the Indian thoughts with self theories drawn from psychoanalysis, in particularly those of (2003). The purpose will not be simply to show that Indian ideas can be interpreted in terms of psychoanalysis, or conversely that psychoanalysis drew from and recapitulated themes found in Indian thought-though I find some value in both these claims. Rather the central point will be to demonstrate that the overlap of interpretive horizons between
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Abhinavagupta compte parmi les savants les plus feconds en Inde classique, avec des travaux concernant, entre autres, l'exegese tantrique ainsi que l'esthetique du theâtre. Cette etude a pour but d'explorer dans quelle mesure les sources canoniques tantriques pouvaient inspirer cet auteur a creer des liens entre ces domaines eloignes et sous quelle forme les elements constitutifs du theâtre et de la poetique theâtrale etaient presents dans les textes tantriques connus par Abhinavagupta.
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The study of the plays of Kalidasa explicates the inward and outward expressions and impressions of the stage representations that are enacted and experienced by the characters on the stage. Their predicament under the trance of artha and kama signifies the helplessness and suffering. The analyses of the situations, emotional upheaval during crisis in context of psychological feelings in face of the classical concept of the purusarthas state the performance of one’s duty inspite of duality in life. Dramatically this condition indicates the assimilation in context of the ultimate truth of life even when the earthly circumstances cause adversities due to delusions or misfortunes.. This dichotomy is so well interplayed with the ethics and aesthetics, that the characters’ nature and emotions in face of chance and divine providence, sometimes delineates their psyche or sometimes depicts their entity or sometimes describes poetic sensibility of the dramatist. The presentation of illusion against the representation of svadharma is actually the skill of dramaturgy that makes the study of the plays inexhaustible. These plays have been since ages all over the world just like Shakespeare, Geothe, Tennessee Williams’s leave a universal appeal of classical literary creativity, undestroyed by time and space. Moreover as readers, not only we extract information on the traditional literary historiography but also enable us to explore the paradigm shift in the Rasas and Bhavas that reflect the cultural cognitive dynamics against the biological cognitive desires in the theoretical text.
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This paper is the fruit of a close and lasting collaboration between the two authors, elisa Ganser and Daniele Cuneo, the former being responsible for the first half, and the latter, the second. elisa Ganser wishes to express her gratitude to the swiss national science Foundation, whose generous contribution made the research for the paper possible within the framework of the project 'Performing arts and religious Practices in Classical and Medieval sanskrit literature' (Department of indian studies, university of Zurich). The Emotional and Aesthetic Experience of the Actor. Diderot's Paradoxe sur le comédien in Sanskrit Dramaturgy * Daniele Cuneo anD elisa Ganser (sorbonne nouvelle, university of Zurich) 'Moins on sent, plus on fait sentir' Diderot, Le paradoxe sur le comédien 'everyone at every minute of his life must feel something. only the dead have no sensations.' Konstantin stanislavski, An Actor Prepares