'The Natyasastra'

Somewhere between the 2nd century B.C.E. and the 2nd century C.E., what are now The Natyasastra’s 37 chapters were likely assembled in India.  (Some editions have 36 chapters, including Manomohan Ghosh’s 1951 version, and some have 38.  I used Ghosh’s 1967 37-chapter rendering of The Natyasastra.).  The oldest known “how-to” book on Asian theater, predating Zeami Motokiyo’s (c. 1363-c. 1443) treatises on Japanese Noh drama (written between 1402 and 1430) by some 16 centuries, it’s attributed to the sage Bharata-muni (dates unknown; may have lived about 500 C.E.) but was probably compiled by several contributors over many years.  (The compilation and publication is likewise uncertain and estimates range between 500 B.C.E. and 500 C.E.) 

The book’s title is variously rendered as Natyasastra, Natyashastra, Natya Sastra, or Natya Shastra, often with diacritical marks.  The word(s) mean, loosely, ‘theater treatise’ or ‘performance manual.’  The Sanskrit word natya is usually translated as drama but it can refer to other expressive performance forms, such as dance (one of the Hindu god Shiva’s avatars is Nataraja, “the lord of dance”), and sastra (which is pronounced ‘shastra’) means ‘treatise,’ ‘manual,’ ‘book.’ ‘rules,’ or other term of similar meaning.  Because I based my reading of The Natyasastra on Ghosh’s translation, I’ll be using his version of the book’s title. 

Our primary source of information about ancient Sanskrit performance and a guide to understanding many of the living performance traditions in India today, the treatise is still used by classical Indian performers such as actors of Sanskrit dramas by the likes of Kalidasa, Sudraka, Bhasa, and Asvaghosa; Kathakali dancer-actors; Kutiyattam storytellers; and Bharata Natyam and Orissi dancers, as well as classical musicians and singers.  Unlike Aristotle’s (384-322 B.C.E.) Poetics (c. 335 B.C.E.), The Natyasastra was written for theater practitioners, not analysts.  A complete handbook of theater production, it covers all elements of playwriting, theater construction, costume, make-up, acting, dance, music, and aesthetics (including Rasa theory, on which I posted on 13 January 2010) in the minutest detail. 

(The root of natya is the Sanskrit work nat, which means ‘act’ or ‘represent,’ so natya can even be rendered as ‘acting.’  Like many Asian performance forms, classical Indian theater doesn’t make the same distinction we Westerners make among ballet, drama, and opera.  What we call Chinese or Beijing Opera is the progenitor of Japanese Kabuki, which many Western critics categorize as dance drama.  But Kabuki performers don’t consider themselves “dancers.”  Ask them, and they’ll insist they are Kabuki “actors.”  The form they work in, like Kathakali in India, Indonesian Wayang Topeng and Wayang Orang, and many other Asian performing arts, combine acting, singing, dancing, and what we’d recognize as mime into one synthesized art form.  The Natyasastra reflects this totality: performance, according to Bharata, is a combination of all the arts: speech, dance, singing, music, gesture and mime, decor and costumes.)

The Natyasastra is partly a religious text, the “fifth Veda,” revealing to the people the rules of dramaturgy and stagecraft as handed down to Bharata (muni is a term of honor meaning ‘sage’ or ‘saint’) by the god Brahma.  The production of a play is an offering to the gods, and performing is a Vedic ritual act.  Composed in verse (with some prose passages in a few chapters), The Natyasastra (like Konstantin Stanislavsky’s “ABC’s”) is conveyed as a sort of dialogue between Bharata and his disciples.   Bharata (whose name is also the Sanskrit word for both ‘actor’ and ‘India’) had 100 sons, who all became actors.  (Bharata Natyam simply means ‘Indian dance,’ for instance.)

In addition to the presentation of ancient theology, principally of the Vedic tradition of pre-Buddhist and pre-Hindu India (though, because it was compiled during a period of religious transition on the Subcontinent, its religious philosophy is something of a hybrid), The Natyasastra also discusses what we’d call performance theory, aesthetic philosophy, mythological history, and practical theater craft. 

Between 1865 and 1898, a number of studies, articles and partial translations of The Natyasastra and other Sanskrit treatises were published in several European languages, including French, English, and German, though none seems to have been a complete rendering of the text.  In modern times, particularly after 1950, there have been many translations of The Natyasastra, all or in part, into English and other languages, as well as many more critical studies of the treatise.  (An Internet search indicated that few are currently in print or available even to special order from stores like Barnes and Noble or Amazon.)  

Because of its status as a Vedic text, The Natyasastra views theater not as an entertainment, but as a way of getting spectators to another state of mind (rasa).  (This is what Rasa-Bhava is intended to accomplish, as you’ll see.)  In theory, because attending a performance is supposed to be a spiritual experience, the viewer is supposed to be transported to a more transcendent plane, but today Indian performers see the effect in a more secular frame.  (There is at least a superficial resemblance between this precept and Aristotle’s notion of catharsis as mentioned in his definition of tragedy in chapter 6 of the Poetics.)

A complete run-down of all the topics touched on in The Natyasastra would be impossibly lengthy, and I really mean this post to be a general introduction to the treatise.  (There are various translations in libraries, especially university libraries, and used copies can be found on line and in antiquarian bookstores.)  I’ll compile a précis of the chapters (which will vary slightly depending on whether you compare mine with a 36- or 38-chapter version) and comment at more length when I feel it’s warranted.  (Note that my original study of The Natyasastra was in pursuit of its discussion of acting and Bharata’s instructions in comparison to the Konstantin Stanislavsky system, the basis of my acting training.  I developed this comparison into “The Natyasastra and Stanislavsky: Points of Contact,” published in  Theatre Studies, volume 36 [1991].)

The first chapter of The Natyasastra recounts the mythical “Origin of Drama” (chapter titles will vary depending on the translation).  Bharata tells his disciples that Brahma, the Creator, handed down The Natyasastra to all the castes as the Natyaveda.  The sage describes the first production of a play at a festival for Indra, the guardian god, but Vighnas, evil spirits, try to ruin the production.  Indra destroys the Vighnas. 

Chapter II is the “Description of the Playhouse,” detailing how the theaters are to be constructed.  Bharata describes the rites and rituals associated with the theater construction.  “Puja to the Gods of the Stage,” the third chapter, lays out the hierarchy of gods of the theater and which one presides over which areas of the theater building.  (Puja is a devotional prayer ritual.  Even today, when dramatic performances are no longer considered worship rituals, a prasad, a food offering, is placed at the edge of the stage.)  The gods have to be pacified and the building purified to avoid terrible consequences of offending the gods.

In Chapter IV, “Description of the Class Dance,” Bharata says that he’s written a play to be performed for the gods.  The deities are pleased and instruct another sage, Tandu, to teach Bharata the Tandava dance (literally ‘Tandu’s creation’ but commonly known as the “class dance”) and there’s a detailed, gesture-by-gesture, body part-by-body part description of the dance.  Bharata explains when dance is appropriate to a play and when it’s not.

“Preliminaries of a Play,” the fifth chapter, describes the rituals associated with the prelude to a dramatic performance (Utthapana ceremony).  Following the set-up, there’s a song in praise of gods, Brahmins, and kings (“Benediction”); an entrance song (“Walking Around”); and the introduction of the play (“Laudation”) by the Director (literally, ‘the expert,’ not a prototypical, pre-Saxe-Meiningen stage director but the company manager).

Chapter VI (“The Sentiments”) and VII (“The Emotional and Other States”) cover Rasa-Bhava.  This is the section of the book that makes it possible for the actors to transport the spectators to a different frame of mind, not unlike what we in the West mean when we speak of “the willing suspension of disbelief” (a term coined in 1817 by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834)—we freely enter into the fictional world of the play.  The Natyasastra is very precise in its discussion and description of this process—but if you can cut through the Sanskrit terms and stilted English translation, the basic principles of the theory are not more alien than that which Stanislavsky, Uta Hagen, Lee Strasberg, or most 20th-century acting teachers inculcate.

Chapters VI and VII together identify and describe the bhavas, the “Psychological States” or “Modes of Being” of the performers, and the corresponding rasas, the “Sentiments” felt by the spectators.  The bhava, the emotion felt by the actors, results from a “Determinant” (vibhava), or determining circumstance.  The vibhava affects the characters so that they feel sorrow, fear, wrath, or some such emotion (bhava).  The “Consequent” (anubhava) of a particular bhava is a specific behavior such as weeping, fainting, blushing, or the like.  The anubhava, if properly executed, will cause the audience to feel a specific rasa corresponding to the bhava felt by the actor. 

Chapter VII goes into great detail about the bhavas, which are broken down into three categories.  The third category of bhavas are the eight sattvas, or “Spirited” modes.  There’s no adequate translation of sattva, but this allows the actor to convince himself the circumstances are real to the character, even though, as the actor, he knows they’re not.  (This is a very simplistic reduction of Rasa-Bhava.  I’ve tried to be brief here; however, I refer the reader once again to my post on Rick On Theater “Rasa-Bhava & The Audience,” 13 January 2010, for a more detailed examination of this complex and fascinating acting theory.)

Chapters VIII, IX, and X (“The Gestures of Minor Limbs,” “The Gestures of Hands,” and “The Gestures of Other Limbs”) cover in great detail all the codified movements of the parts of the actor’s body.  Indian classical theater, like many other Asian performance forms, uses highly stylized and long-established gestural expressions and The Natyasastra naturally stresses the expressiveness of the body, since it is vital that “the audience . . . follow the meaning of the play visually, through the codified system of hand gestures and facial expressions.”  These chapters and others that describe the movements, gestures, and expressions of the actors, which in Indian classical theater are closely related to Rasa-Bhava, are very technical and extremely detailed.

Chapters XI, XII, and XIII (“The Cari Movements,” “The Mandela Gaits,” and “The Different Gaits”) cover walking and foot movements the same way the previous three chapters did gestures.  (A cari is the movement of a single foot.  There are movements of two feet called karana and a combination of karanas is called a khanda.  Three or four khandas make up a mandala.  That may give readers an idea how precise The Natyasastra is in codifying movements and gestures.)

“Zones and Local Usages,” the fourteenth chapter of The Natyasastra, designates the different "zones” of the stage and explains the significance of each one to the play and the characters that appear there.  “Local usage” (pravrtti), just as the phrase suggests, applies to the costumes, languages, manners, and professions of different countries in the world as they appear in plays.  (The “world” to which Bharata refers, of course, is largely the Indian subcontinent of South Asia and the countries are the ancient kingdoms.)  Even this is codified as The Natyasastra designates only four regions for this differentiation: Daksinatya Local Usage (southern countries), Avanti (central and western), Odgra-Migadhi (eastern), and Pancala-Madhyama (northern/Himalayan).

Chapters XV through XXII cover playwriting and dramaturgy.  “Rules of Prosody” (Chapter XV) defines, describes, and classifies the poetic meters used in classic Indian drama.  Since Sanskrit drama is written mostly in verse, it also details the proper way an actor must recite each kind of poetry.  It’s a lesson on elocution, voice, speech, and articulation—a voice and speech lesson with specific instructions in the proper pronunciation of the sounds of the Sanskrit and Prakrit languages.  “Metrical Patterns” (Chapter XVI) lists all the different types of poetic meters and how they are employed in plays, with examples of various dramatic situations in which each pattern would apply.  Different meters correspond to specific rasas.  Chapter XVII, “Diction of a Play,” names the 36 “marks of excellence” of a well-written play, such as Ornateness, Compactness, Simile, Metaphor, and 32 more.  (In this usage, “diction” doesn’t refer to speech articulation or enunciation, but the effectiveness and clarity of the poet’s word choice and expression.) 

Chapter XVIII, “Rules of the Use of Languages” instructs poets on the distinction of Sanskrit, the largely literary tongue which on stage is used for the speech of noble, heroic, and refined characters, and Prakrit, the vernacular language, with its many regional, local, and class dialects, of lower-caste, mad, or drunken characters, as well as women and children.  (Prakrit is also often more appropriate for songs in a play.  Most of a classical Indian play is written in Sanskrit.)  “Modes of Address and Intonation” (Chapter XIX) explains how characters of different types and social status speak to one another.  It also specifies how the verses are to be recited in terms of vocal quality, with certain inflections corresponding once again to certain rasas.  (This is that other kind of “diction,” how words are pronounced.) 

In Chapter XX, Bharata describes the “Ten Kinds of Play” that make up classic Sanskrit drama.  He lays out their structure, the rules for their composition, and what is appropriate or not to represent on stage.  Chapter XXI, “The Limbs of the Juncture,” is a detailed analysis of the plot structure of a play.  (“Joints” and “Limbs” are the terms The Natyasastra uses for what Michael Chekhov, the acting teacher, theorist, and director who was a nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov, called the play’s “Main Climaxes,” the points in the play’s action when the character’s pursuit of his major goal changes direction.  

The Natyasastra divides the action of a play into five stages: Beginning, Effort, Possibility of Attainment, Certainty of Attainment and Attainment of the Object.  Roughly, these stages agree with the Stanislavskian identification and pursuit of the objective (Beginning and Effort), encountering obstacles (Effort and Possibility of Attainment), and overcoming the obstacles and achieving the objective (Certainty of Attainment and Attainment of the Object).  Sanskrit drama did not have unhappy endings so there were no plays in which the main characters’ objectives were not accomplished.

In “The Styles,” the twenty-second chapter, Bharata relates the mythological origins of the performance styles of Sanskrit dramas, which is both a matter of the way the plays are written (that is, the writing style) and the way they are performed (the acting style).  As with most other categorizations in The Natyasastra, these are very specifically defined and described, and, once again, each style corresponds to certain rasas generated in the audience. 

Chapter XXIII covers “The Costumes and Make-up” of a classical Indian play.  It covers props (including fake animals) as well.  Bharata describes both how these are made and how they’re used on stage.

Chapters XXIV through XXVI deal with acting, portraying specific characters, and what we’d call acting technique (the practical methods of making viewers believe a fiction: that it’s cold and rainy, that the knife you’re playing with is really sharp, that you have a headache).  Chapter XXIV, “The Basic Representation,” focuses on speech, the movement of the body, and physical grace.  It also instructs aspiring actors on portraying emotions and feelings and various psychological and emotional states, and how to respond to different circumstances and situations that occur in Sanskrit drama.  Successfully representing these states is key to creating the correct rasa in the spectator.

“Dealing with Courtezans [sic]” (Chapter XXV) actually explains how to portray men and women in various types of courtship, romantic, and sexual relationships (for example, a woman overcome with love, winning a woman’s heart, and a courtesan’s mercenary treatment of men).  Most Sanskrit plays are some sort of love story.  “Special Representation,” the twenty-sixth chapter of The Natyasastra, is instruction on how to enact physically what Uta Hagen called the “given circumstances” of a scene: the time of day, the season of the year, the weather, bright sun, dust, and so on. 

Chapter XXVII describes “Success in Dramatic Production,” which Bharata separates into two kinds.  One is human success, which is simply signs of appreciation from the audience for the performance—applause, laughter, praise, gifts.  The other kind is divine success, which is the approval of the gods.  This is manifested by the lack of disturbance from the audience, errors in the performance such as accidents or actors forgetting lines, fire or an animal getting loose in the theater, and so on.  If all goes well, the gods are signaling their approval. 

The music of a Sanskrit performance is discussed in Chapters XXVIII through XXXIV, covering not only the types of music to be heard, but the instruments on which it will be played (with several chapter devoted to specific types of instruments such as reeds, cymbals, and drums).  Chapter XXXII describes the songs performed in a play. 

Chapter XXXV, “Types of Characters,” is essentially the breakdown of the classical theatrical troupe.  Like Shakespeare’s Lord Chamberlain’s Men in Elizabethan England, Sanskrit acting companies had to have the actors on hand to cover all the plays in their repertory, so, like repertory companies in the West from Shakespeare’s day to the Straw Hat Circuit in the first half of the 20th century in the U.S., they categorized the characters so they could distribute them to the appropriate performers according to their abilities, special talents, age, appearance, and so on.  In other words, they engaged in “typecasting,” just like Western companies in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

(To be clear, “typecasting” isn’t what most people think it is.  Characters are divided into “types,” such as “leading man,” “leading lady,” and “character man.”  The company’s actors are also “typed” and when it comes time to assign actors to roles, actors are matched to their roles according to type—along, of course, with other considerations.  So a leading actor is cast in a leading man part, a character woman is cast as a character part, and so on.  It was a way for repertory troupes to be sure that they had enough appropriate actors on the roster to cover all the parts in their repertoire.  The classic Indian categories were different, of course, but the idea was the same.)

The Natyasastra, needless to say, describes in great detail many different characters that make up the three types that populate the Sanskrit plays and the physical and temperamental attributes of the actor best suited to play them.  In “Distribution of Roles” (Chapter XXXVI), Bharata advises the Director (this is the company manager once again) to follow the precepts for typecasting that he’s laid out.  This chapter also describes at length each of the kinds of parts that occur in a Sanskrit drama, and also non-performing member of the troupe such as the makers of garlands and headgear, the company painter, and so on.

The last chapter, XXXVII, in Ghosh’s translation of The Natyasastra, is “Descent of Drama on the Earth.”  When Bharata had finished presenting the Natyaveda to the sages, they asked him how the drama had come from heaven to the earth.  Bharata explained to them that his 100 sons had angered certain sages by caricaturing them and the sons lost their status as Brahmins, members of the highest caste, and became Sudras, the lowest caste.  The sages cursed Bharata’s sons, but the gods interceded on Bharata’s behalf.  Indra retrieved the Natyaveda and instructed Bharata to spread is over the earth.  The 100 sons of Bharata, having become actors themselves, taught the text to their sons, founding a family of actors, and the gods were pleased and redeemed Bharata’s offspring.  (This suggests that, at least in ancient India, the acting profession was prized and honored, a fate actors didn’t experience in the West, where they were often vilified and ostracized, especially among religious folk, because they make their living by lying, pretense, and deceit.  There are still members of some faiths that see acting and theater as inherently sinful.)

'Rasa-Bhava' & The Audience

Somewhere between the 2nd century BCE and the 2nd century CE, what are now The Natyasastra’s 37 chapters were assembled in India. Preceded only by The Poetics (335 BCE) of Aristotle (384-22 BCE), to which it bears some superficial resemblance, The Natyasastra is the second-oldest known “how-to” book on theater. Predating the treatises of Zeami Motokiyo (c. 1363-c. 1443) on Japanese Noh drama (1402-23) by some 15 centuries, it is attributed to the sage Bharata-muni but was probably compiled by several contributors over many years. (Bharata’s life dates are unknown--if he in fact existed at all--though they have been put anywhere between the 5th century BCE and the 2nd century CE. Bharata had 100 sons, who became actors. Bharata is the Sanskrit word for both ‘actor’ and ‘India.’ Bharata Natyam, for instance, means ‘Indian dance.’ Muni corresponds to the title ‘Sage.’) Our primary source of information about ancient Sanskrit performance and a guide to understanding the many living performance traditions in India today, the treatise is still used by classical performers such as Kathakali dancer-actors, Kutiyattam storytellers, and Bharata Natyam and Orissi dancers. Unlike Aristotle’s Poetics, The Natyasastra was written for theater practitioners, not analysts. A detailed handbook of theater production, it covers all elements of playwriting, theater construction, costume, make-up, acting, dance, and music. I’m going to look at only one aspect of acting which I find intriguing, the Theory of Rasa-Bhava.

The Natyasastra is partly a religious text, the “fifth Veda,” revealing to the people the rules of dramaturgy and stagecraft as handed down to Bharata by the god Brahma. The production of a play is an offering to the gods (much as it was in ancient Greece), and performing is a religious act.

The Natyasastra is written in the classic Indo-European language of Sanskrit, the language of the intelligentsia and aristocracy of ancient India. Natya is the Sanskrit word for both dance and acting or theater; sastra means ‘set of rules.’ (Classical Indian performers are “dancer-actors” because the distinction we make in the West simply doesn’t exist in classical Indian theater.) English transliterations of Sanskrit words vary in their spellings (many with elaborate diacritical marks) depending on the system used, so I’ll try to avoid using them at all when I can. But note that the original words and terms have multiple English meanings, none of which may be precise, or even entirely accurate. (Some Sanskrit words are unavoidable, as you’ll see, but I won’t provide the Sanskrit term for every concept I mention as most academic studies on the subject do.) My essay covering this subject, "The Natyasastra and Stanislavsky: Points of Contact" (Theatre Studies 36 [1991]: 46-62), from which this column is partly excerpted, was a comparison of the theories of Konstantin Stanislavsky and the performance practices laid out in The Natyasastra. Towards that end, I used Stanislavsky terminology and examples to discuss the Sanskrit system. For the sake of simplicity and consistency, I’ll keep to that tactic--with the caveat that the approaches, while I determined they had overlapping features, are not precisely equivalent. In other words, what I’m going to say here is something of a simplistic approximation. Now, a word about the text of The Natyasastra: there are several English translations available, as well as many analyses and commentaries (both ancient and modern), but the terminology and quotations I’m using here have been drawn from Manomohan Ghosh’s rendering: Bharata-muni, ascribed author, The Natyasastra: A Treatise on Ancient Indian Dramaturgy and Histrionics (Calcutta: Manisha Grantalaya, 1961-67). One more note--about gender references in this column: like Greek drama, Kabuki, Elizabethan theater, and Kathakali, all actors in classical Sanskrit drama were men; all pronouns will therefore be masculine. (Some modern descendants of Sanskrit theater, such as Bharata Natyam and Orissi dance, have both male and female artists.)

Before getting down to rasa-bhava, I want to touch on a broader Sanskrit concept that in a sense governs all of performance: abhinaya. The word literally means “leading towards,” with the implication in performance of leading the audience toward an emotional response (rasa), but it is generally used to mean the actor’s art of expressing feeling. It covers everything that an actor may use on stage to communicate the play’s meaning and the character’s emotions and intentions to the audience. Abhinaya has four components: gesture and movement (anything to do with the body), speech and singing (anything accomplished with the voice), costume and make-up (anything using outside objects, including the few props or set elements that appear in Sanskrit drama), and “representation of the Sattva” or the portrayal of emotion. (I’ll touch on sattvika abhinaya a little later. It’s the heart of rasa-bhava, as you’ll see.) So, you see that abhinaya comprises the whole of an actor’s craft. Western observers of Asian performance sometimes consider that it’s all technically rendered, and if you look only at the treatises like The Natyasastra and Zeami’s Kadensho, you might well think that. But examining the performances themselves, hearing from the actors, and delving below the superficial appearances, you’d find that they are all rife with emotional content. (I discuss this in some detail in my original essay. I have also written another essay on the expression of emotions by Kabuki actors, "Kabuki: A Trip to a Land of Dreams," which I’m preparing for publication and a version of which I may eventually post on ROT.)

Like many Asian forms of performance, from Noh and Kabuki to Beijing opera to Wayang Kulit and Wayang Orang to Kathakali, Sanskrit drama is codified and conventional. Just as the iconography of the costumes and make-up convey meaning to the initiated spectators, so do the movements and gestures of the actors, such as the hand or eye movements which they learn in years of training and apprenticeship. With good abhinaya, the gestural codes seem spontaneous and natural even though they have been carefully worked out and codified over centuries, like the kata of Kabuki performances. (Most of the published studies on Indian classical theater provide lists of the scores of codified movements and gestures Indian actors and dancers use. Many are depicted in temple carvings so you can get an idea how amazingly precise and detailed they are.) The whole aim of abhinaya is to depict the feelings of the character (bhavas) and convey them to the audience so that they will respond with the desired “mood” (rasa) appropriate for the play. While the Greek tragedies, according to Aristotle, were aimed at purging the spectator of pity and terror though catharsis, Indian heroic romances (there are no tragedies in classical Sanskrit theater--all the plays end happily so there’s nothing to purge) aim to provide the audience with an emotional experience they enjoy. The Greek audience was expected to achieve insight by learning something from the events of the play they witnessed, terrible and pitiful though they may have been. The Indian audience achieved insight from the emotional response they had to the feelings portrayed on stage by the heroic characters in the play they witnessed. That audience response is rasa. Everything that happens on stage, everything that went into writing the play, is designed to achieve rasa.

The transmission of the actor’s emotions to the spectator toward this achievement is the subject of the most interesting and complex discussion of The Natyasastra. Chapters VI and VII identify and describe the bhavas, the “Psychological States” or “Modes of Being” of the performers, and the corresponding rasas, the “Sentiments” felt by the spectator. Known as the Rasa Theory or the Theory of Rasa-Bhava, what I’m going to outline is The Natyasastra’s description of how the bhavas arise in the performer. (This theory is very complex and I’m not going to cover all of it. Curious readers are directed to excellent discussions of Rasa-Bhava in Pramod Kale, The Theatric Universe (A Study of the Natyasastra) [Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1974] and G. H. Tarlekar, Studies in the Natyasastra [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1975].) It is here that sattvika abhinaya has its most significant application. All of the components of abhinaya must be applied by the actor in order for him to bring the audience to the correct rasa, and thus to the enjoyment of the play, but sattva, which literally means ‘purity,’ however in dramaturgy is the pyschological ability of the actor to identify with the character and his emotions, is the hardest to master and to understand. As Bharata asserts, “Sattva . . . is [something] originating in mind. It is caused by the concentrated mind. The Sattva is accomplished by concentration of the mind. It’s nature . . . cannot be mimicked by an absent-minded man.” There is no adequate translation of sattva (the noun) or sattvika (the adjective); the The Natyasastra calls it the “Spirited” modes of abhinaya, but the best explanations link it to Stanislavsky’s “Magic ‘If’” and “Sense of Truth.” This allows the actor to convince himself the circumstances are real to the character, even though, as the actor, he knows they are not. When executed properly, sattvika abhinaya allows the actor to exhibit the physical signs of the emotions the character’s feeling, such as tears, trembling, change of color, or (and I love this one--it’s so “Indian English”) horripilation (the hair standing on end, or goosebumps). For the audience to feel the correct rasa, the actor must manifest the outward expressions of the character’s emotion with all of abhinaya, but especially sattva. The Natyasastra insists, “The Histrionic Representation”--that’s the English term Ghosh uses for performance--“with an exuberant Sattva is superior, the one with the level Sattva is middling, and that with no [exercise of] Sattva is inferior.”

The end result for a performance, rasa, is different from the feelings we have in everyday life. (Rasa literally means ‘taste’ or ‘flavor’; it’s used in aesthetics because it signifies something that can be “tasted” or “savored.”) Ordinary emotions don’t result in enjoyment or fulfillment and aren’t the consequence of representation, or abhinaya. In fact, rasa only results from drama--not literature, poetry, or even dance creates rasa. The Natyasastra names eight rasas to which drama leads its audiences: erotic, comic, pathetic, furious, heroic, terrible, odious, marvelous. (Different words are used in different translations.) These sentiments or moods, which the spectator is meant to feel from a successful performance, correspond to eight bhavas, the emotions the character feels (and which the actor must express): love, mirth, sorrow, anger, energy, terror, disgust, astonishment, each emotion matching the relevant rasa. (A later commentary added a ninth rasa and modern aestheticians have even added more, but The Natyasastra recognized only eight.) In other words, if a character is feeling anger (bhava), the actor uses all his abhinaya skills to impassion the audience with fury (rasa). Furthermore, an actor must distinguish between the way one character projects a rasa and the way a different character does it. Late Kathakali actor Padmanabhan Nair explained that while a king and a brahmin may both feel sadness at the loss of a son, for instance, the ordinary brahmin “may express his sadness very loudly. But the king’s is very much controlled.” Rasa, then, imbues the spectator with “pleasure and satisfaction,” says The Natyasastra.

To put it very briefly, the bhava, the emotion felt by the character, results from a “Determinant” (vibhava), or determining circumstance, such as the time of year, the presence of loved ones, the decor or environment, and so on, which are described in the dialogue (as noted earlier, Sanskrit plays have very little scenery, like Elizabethan theater). The vibhava affects the character so that he feels sorrow, terror, anger, or some such emotion (bhava). The “Consequent” (anubhava) of a particular bhava is a specific behavior exhibited by the actor (as he portrays the character) such as weeping, fainting, blushing, or the like. (This is where sattvika abhinaya comes most pertinently into play: the better the actor’s sattva, the more real, and therefore convincing, will be his anubhavas.) The anubhava, if properly executed, will cause the audience to feel a specific rasa corresponding to the bhava felt by the actor. A simple diagram of this process looks like this:

VIBHAVA---causes--->BHAVA---causes--->ANUBHAVA--->RASA

This is precisely the process Stanislavsky describes for his actors. A character’s feelings arise from the circumstances of the scene, both those in effect at the moment and those that occurred before. The feelings, combined with the “given circumstances,” cause her to behave in a certain way--the “stage action.” Replacing the Sanskrit terms of The Natyasastra with Stanislavskian terminology, the diagram might look like this:

GIVEN CIRCS.---cause--->EMOTION---causes--->BEHAVIOR--->AUD. RESPONSE

This is, admittedly, a simplistic reduction of Rasa-Bhava. Chapter VII of The Natyasastra goes into great detail about the bhavas, which are broken down into three categories. The major one consists of the eight “Durable,” “Permanent,” or “Constant” modes (sthayibhavas) which I listed above. These affect the character so profoundly that all other circumstances may become irrelevant. They are accompanied by thirty-three vyabhicari-bhavas, called “Complementary” or “Inconstant” modes, which may be seen as what Uta Hagen calls the “Conditioning Forces” of a scene--the changeable conditions that affect a character’s behavior, such as intoxication or exhaustion. The way famous Bharata Natyam dancer Mrinalini Sarabhai put it makes the system clear and simple: “There is an old poem that says: ‘Where the hands go the eyes follow [anubhava], where the eyes go the mind follows [sattvika abhinaya], where the mind goes the mood [bhava] follows, where the mood goes there is rasa born . . . .’”

The Theory of Rasa-Bhava also establishes a relationship between the performer and the spectator. In Indian aesthetics, the model spectator is a sahrdaya, someone ‘who empathizes with the author.’ Since the success of a performance is measured by whether or not the audience has a specific experience (rasa), the performer depends heavily on the spectator. Even more, since the goal of Rasa Theory is to create a mood in the audience, the spectator becomes a vital participant in the play. Another way to look at abhinaya is that it’s the process by which the meaning of the play is “led toward” the audience.