Rasa and the Sthāyī-bhāva: Rūpa Gosvāmī's Innovation

Reading the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu against Abhinavagupta

Dr. B. Rūpānuga

Published 11 December 2024 · DOI 10.00000/igs.2024.0011

Rūpa Gosvāmī's account of bhakti-rasa is often described as an adaptation of Abhinavagupta's aesthetic theory. This essay argues that the relation is closer to inversion than adaptation: where Abhinavagupta universalizes the spectator, Rūpa particularizes the devotee.

Rūpa's appropriation of the rasa-theoretic vocabulary is exact in its terminology and inverted in its commitments.¹ Where Abhinavagupta requires the universalization (sādhāraṇīkaraṇa) of emotion as the condition of aesthetic experience, Rūpa requires its particularization through sambandha with Kṛṣṇa.²

The fivefold sthāyī

Śānta, dāsya, sakhya, vātsalya, and mādhurya are not five aesthetic modes but five ontologically distinct relations.

Footnotes

1.Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu 2.5.131.
2.Abhinavabhāratī on Nāṭyaśāstra 6.31.

References

Gosvāmī, Rūpa. Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu. Translated by David Haberman, 2003.