ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
Course Options and Possible Infusions
I.
At Community College of Philadelphia, where I teach, the following courses are offered
which offer the possibilities of infusion of South Asian subject matter.
A. Interdisciplinary Humanities
1.
2.
Introduction to Humanities 101 – Antiquity – Early Modern Period
Introduction to Humanities 102 – Enlightenment – Contemporary Times
Curricular Mandates:



Use of Primary Texts
A third of the topics and materials have to be Non-Western
Incorporation of topics on women and minorities, if possible by women
B. World Literature Survey Courses – Sophomore level
1. World Literature 245 -- Ancient to Renaissance/Early Modern
2. World Literature 246 – Enlightenment – Current Times
C. Reading Prose Literature – English 208
D. Introduction to Literature – English 190
E. English Composition – English 101
F. Research Paper – English 102
In the Pipe-line
G. Humanities 140: South Asian History and Culture/ South Asian Studies
II. Topics from the Institute that fit into our courses:
1. Care Ethics, re: Bhagavad-Gita (English COMP, HUM 101)
2. Relational Virtuosity, re: Chan Buddhism and Nagarjuna’s
Madhaymika Philosophy (COMP & ENGL 101)
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ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
3. Approaching Ecological Issues from South Asian Perspectives, Re: Vandana
Shiva et.al (ENGLISH 101, 102 & HUM 102)
4. Orthodoxy and heterodoxy in Indian intellectual and Cultural Traditions
(HUM 101)
5. The Dalit Question (ENGL 102; HUM 102) in conjunction with the Race
question in United States
6. A City as a microcosm of studying aspects of India
(HUM 102 & ENGL 102)
7. Tagore & Gandhi: two responses to issues of nationalism and globalism,
re: Amartya Sen
8. The Indian Drama: Ancient to Postmodern
Texts: Andha Yug or any of Girish karnad’s Plays
9. The aesthetics of RASA
***
Please go to next page for my Module on infusing the instruction of RASA theory
into the unit on Classical Drama in my World Literature 1 course.
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ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
III. Module in English 245: World Literature 1
The course is a survey of world Literatures covering ancient through early modern period. I
organize my course into the following units of study: Unit 1: Myths across cultures - 2 weeks;
Unit 2: Epic Literature - 3 weeks; Unit 3: Classical drama – 3 weeks; Unit 4: Poetry: lyric,
ballad, sonnet – 2 weeks ; Unit 5: Prose Literature – 3 weeks
Unit III: The Poetics of Classical Drama
Primary Texts: Oedipus Rex, Medea, Sakuntala, Andha Yug
Secondary Source Readings:
1. Excerpts from Aristotle’s Poetics [Any accessible e-texts or published in an anthology—to be
located.
2. An encyclopedia essay on rasa theory, a chapter from Bharata’s Natya Sastra-- Pp. 492-494
authored by Kathleen Marie Higgins from A Companion to Aesthetics, 2nd Edition. Stephen
Davies (Editor), Kathleen Marie Higgins (Editor), Robert Hopkins (Editor), Robert Stecker
(Editor), David E. Cooper (Editor). ISBN: 978-1-4051-6922-6. May 2009, Wiley-Blackwell ( a
comprehensive and highly readable essay that helps students capture the main aspects of the rasa
theory
Topics of study:
1.
What aspects of a drama define tragic and comedic aspects of life as
portrayed in a play? (all four plays)
2.
Female heroes in classical drama, an exception to the rule and why do
they exist? (Medea and sakuntala)
3.
What are the canonical qualities of a hero? Are all plays character-driven
or theme-driven or by both? (Oedipus and Yudhistira)
4.
The aesthetics of drama: the triangular connection between the artist-artaudience vis-à-vis catharsis, and rasa theory
Each class hour will be dedicated to the discussion of each of the listed topic going from last to
first.
DAY 1 - Pre-reading:
Focus:
Students get a handout on RASA Aesthetics and a Worksheet.
Introduction to South Asian Aesthetics: A Case Study of Delhi 6
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ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
Reading/Viewing:
Watch Delhi 6 in class. They will be required to make notes on the
enactment of various emotions (bhavas) and the events and
characters that portray them.
Students will write their responses to their experience of the movie
watching from the framework of rasa aesthetics
Day 2 – discussion:
Identifying and creating a trajectory of the bhava-dhwani-rasa
flow through a guided discussion of the artist’s aesthetic
intentions, dramatized portrayals of character and theme and the
evolving and composite emotional responses of the audience.
Students’ journals will serve as starting points for the discussion
For Day 3
Follow-up Assignment:
Read Oedipus and Andha Yug and write a journal entry on each
play tracing the trajectory of STHAYI BHAVAS that you notice
portrayed in the play. Identify the dominant bhava and the
accompanying vyabhicahri/complementary bhavas. Jot down the
textual evidence (descriptions of moods, stage props, dialogue,
tone, figurative usages, etc.) from the text that bears evidence to
your interpretation. Also, explore which character/s embodies the
dominant emotion/bhava. Could we consider the dominant bhava
the primary theme of the play? Does that make the question of
hero a matter of an idealized persona, or an all-too-familiar human
being or both? How effective are the plays in accomplishing the
embedded thematic and aesthetic ideals?
DAY 3 & 4 Discuss Oedipus Rex and Andha Yug for the exposition of the trio of bahavadhwani-rasa through the plot, dialogue/character development, and thematic of
the play; to identify the canonical qualities of a hero in the two plays; and to
discuss if a play can be both primarily character-driven or theme-driven or
equally by both? (Oedipus and Yudhistira)
Assignment: a two page paper on the bhava-dhwani-rasa trajectory in one of the plays.
Reading assignment for day 5: Medea and Sakuntala
Day 5 & 6 the aesthetics of female-centered plays
Female heroes in classical drama are an exception to the rule. Why do
they exist? How are they similar to or different from the male heroes? (Medea
and Sakuntala)
Day 7
What aspects of a drama define tragic and comedic aspects of life as portrayed
in a play? (all four plays)
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ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
Day 8 & 9 Wrap-up discussion
Day 10
In-Class exam
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ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
Prof. Gudopati
ENGL 245-Unit 3 Handout 2: Classical Indian Aesthetics
Triangling the Circle: The World of the Play
“Each art-work, if it is successful as a work of art, is a world. It is a place of concentrated
meaning and value.” (Eliot Deutsch)
RASA/Aesthetic rapture: Also known as taste/essence
A cognitive construct manifested through its various psycho-physiological
coordinates called BHAVA (feelings/emotions). Borrowed from the language of
cuisine and metaphysics, the term is used by Bharata, the father of Indian Poetics,
to connote the meanings of ‘essence’, ‘taste’, and soul. In fact he designates
RASA the primary seat among the various creative tools that artists have at their
disposal. He writes, “ RASA is the soul of the play, without RASA there is no
drama.” It is a product of coming together of various discrete elements but one’s
composed together make the whole more than the sum of its parts, especially in
its transmissional, receptional, and experiential spheres.
In Bharata’s Poetics, RASA
 renders the elements[in a work of art] meaningful (SARTHAKA) and thereby illumines
the meanings of a literary work;
 fulfills the pedagogic purpose by pointing out the elements worthy of emulation and
those that are worthy of avoidance.
 through its appeal to the four-fold cognition: mana (mind/heart), buddhi
(intellect/wisdom), chitta (Psyche) anta:karana (conscience).
 creates the ultimate experience of ananda (bliss) in the rasika/aesthete/audience.
(K Kapoor (104)
Hence, RASA may be defined as an abstract sensation that cannot be directly expressed through
the means available for sensory perception; therefore, words, gestures, movements, and facial
expressions have to be used to convey the essential import of the work in an aesthetically
creative and spiritually visionary manner. Bharata in his Natya Sasra resolves this problem: He
reports that human behavior is resplendent with numerous coordinates to the essential emotional
and psychological states of being/feeling. He called them BHAVA, which may be expressed
through words, gestures, facial expressions, musical notes, and foot and body movements;
conversely, the import of these BHAVA would be easily accessible to a true RASIKA/
connoisseur of the arts who would commune with artistic text and its enactment by summoning
of one’s prior experiential knowledge and empathic participation in the enactment of the work of
art.
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ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
BHAVA
innate emotions that are perceived through the four cognitive organs that humans possess.
There is a hierarchy of emotions categorized by their nature. Primary emotions: 8+1 in number.
See the Table below for the list. Each of these emotions has its correspondent RASA .
These BHAVA cannot be perceived by senses but can be inferred. They set the mood of the artwork and the stage for its experience; they remain constant or persist throughout the artistic
expression and experience. There are eight potential states or sthayibhava/ samskara or vasana.
Each of these states, in turn, is recognizable by everyone for they are derived from human
[nature interacting with] life-experience.
STHAYIBHAVA/SAMSKARA
(permanent emotions/essential psychological
states)
1. RATI /pleasure or delight
Correspondent RASA
2. HASA/laughter or humor
HASYA/the comic
3. SOKA/sorrow or pain
KARUNA/the pathetic or the compassionate
4. KRODHA/anger
RAUDRA/the furious
5. UTSAHA/heroism or courage
VIRA/the heroic or valorous
6. BHAYA/fear
BHAYANAKA/the terrible
7. JUGUPSA/disgust
BHIBHATSA/the odious
8. VISMAYA/wonder
ADBHUTA/the marvelous
9. ANANDA-/Bliss
SANTA/the peaceful
SRINGARA/erotic
Transitory/fleeting emotions: Each primary emotion is manifested through a number of
secondary emotions. Without these manifestations, the primary emotions cannot be expressed.
For example, Fear is a primary emotion. Someone who is undergoing fear exhibit some of these
physical behaviors: trembling, standing still, becoming pale-faced, experiencing a loss or a
change in the pitch of the voice, etc. Since the primary emotions such as fear and anger cannot be
observed by our senses, we need the secondary emotions in order to communicate and exhibit
our feelings to our fellow men and women. Thirty-three such emotions are identified by
Bharata. Thye are
discouragement
weakness
apprehension
envy intoxication
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ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
weariness
contentment
despair
dissimulation
deliberation
indolence
shame
impatience
cruelty
depression
anxiety
distraction
recollection
inconstancy joy
agitation
stupor arrogance
sleep epilepsy
dreaming
awakening
indignation
assurance
sickness
insanity
death fright
Four Cognitive Organs of perception: mana: (inner sense), buddhi (intellect); chitta (mind),
and anta:karana (internal organ)
Whether we use all of these organs in unison in our everyday activities or not, all four organs
are stimulated and act in unison in following the rising and falling fortunes of characters and
their communities.
Rasanubhuti or aesthetic experience: For the audience, the journey begins with the
recognition of the emotional tone that the play sets up and compels them to closely follow the
character’s and their actions. Rasanubhuti emerges in the imagination of the audience as they
begin empathizing with the characters’ rising and falling fortunes. As they move along the
course of the events in the play and begin to empathize with their literary cohorts, the experience
attains a transformational stature in the consciousness of the audience. The making of the leap
from the realm of reality to that of the art-world, and to the attainment of the emotional
alignment with the artistic one instantiated on the stage, according to Bharata is the aesthetic
rapture the equivalent of the attainment of bliss in metaphysics.
Aesthetic Rapture: A transformative or transcendental experience that enables the audience to
experience a noble feeling through their aesthetic engagement with a work of art without truly
experiencing the rising and falling fortunes of the characters on stage. Along with the characters
on stage, the audience below comes out of their poetic world into the everyday world feeling
ennobled, purified, or existentially blissful. The noble feeling that the play instantiates on stage
and the audience experiences is named RASA by Bharata.
The world of Rasa/aesthetics: An artist’s creation of a world created at a higher plane than that
of every-day world with use of all standard literary tropes, figures, to address issues of existential
concern. Through a concentrated and embellished use of literary and dramatic tropes, figures,
and gestures and the weaving of sustained, imaginative, and coherent narrative, the creative
composer and the dramatic performer draw the audience and together make a leap into the
artistic world and embark on a journey into the world of potentials and possibilities. In this
artistic world the external obstacles are pared down and the inner realities are embellished thus
clearing the path for a clearer and sharper vision. At the end of the journey, the audience,
including the performer comes out with a tranquil spirit. By this token, art is a refinement of the
ordinary but primal emotions tied to the existential dilemmas and quandaries in a fast-paced,
lively, action-filled, linguistically vigorous drama that the audience sit through the performance
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ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
in heightened sense of consciousness than they would under normal circumstances caught in the
dreary demands of the day. The RASA Aesthetics, in a nutshell, describe and sometimes
prescribe the poetics of this emotional and cognitive refinement.
A Case in Point:
When reading or viewing Sophocles’ Oedipus REX, we, as spectators being so far removed from
the temporal and spatial contexts of the play, can only attain the fullest aesthetic appreciation
when we approach the play with a willingness to be transported into the universe of the play by
leaving behind our ego and its concomitant limitations. Once we enter the universe of the play
with all defenses down, the sentiments of the chorus, the confidence of Oedipus, and the power
of the chance events or seemingly righteous and innocuous decisions that characters make in the
play in the undoing of life itself become luminous and transparent to us just as Sophocles’
contemporary audience might have experienced them; and since we all agree that Sophocles is a
master dramatist and a classic artist, we might even posit that witnessing the performance of the
play when performed by talented actors would transport us back into the mythical/legendary lore
of Oedipus’s timeless world. In addition to looking at the play to evaluate if Oedipus’ hubris or
destiny were the causes of his downfall, we might experience the KARUNA RASA that his life
exemplifies and arrive at a deeper appreciation of his predicament.
Triangling the Circle: The World of the Play
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ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
One way to represent the place and function of the rasa aesthetics in the consciousness of the
South Asians is the graphic above. Imagine the circle as the world where real life events happen
in the backdrop of its social, religious, political, and ethical institutions. Within the world exist
the artist, the performer and the audience that share and partake of collective knowledge. Now
imagine that they come together in the world of theatre, at three corners of the triangle. The
sharpened edges of the triangle represent the sharply projected emotions, values and the
behaviors embellished in the realm of dramatic aesthetics. Feelings, conflicts, actions and
language are embellished through the use of refined and intensified movements, figures, tropes,
dialogue, music and dance. The honed representation spontaneously and quickly brings together
the artist’s imagination, the performer’s enactment and the audience engagement into a unified
experience. Each one involved in the enactment of life’s realities and potentials transcend their
individual concerns and attain an objective yet unified state of consciousness and feel one with
the humanity and the universe in the microcosmic world of the play and its performance.
Delhi 6: A Case Study of RASA Aesthetics
Opening scene sets the stage of the conflict and the dominant mood of the play.
Religious, cultural and generational conflicts within the microcosm of the family, friends, and
community. The state of equilibrium is threatened and accommodative responses are made,
albeit temporarily. They are forward moving.
The Location is Delhi 6
The actors in the foreground arrive on the scene through relocation and dislocation (Grand
mother and Grandson). This trope serves as a way of creating a distance from the self which
would help gain a sense depersonalization (sadharanikarana) from the self, the first step in
moving closer to the ‘I’ in the ‘Other’ and the ‘Other’ (the blackmonkey) in the ‘I’.
The destination is to acknowledge the Other as the Kindred Soul through the experience of
aesthetic rapture/RASANUBHUTI.
For this journey to happen, an artistic confluence of emotions/BHAVA, dhwani/ dialogue,
performance, inference and the evocation of corresponding RASA in the audience has to occur.
In other words, the arousal of familiar emotions happens through the concentrated and intensified
enactment of the accompanying transient BHAVAS through the four-fold artistic dramatic
elements: dialogue, gestures and expressions, dance and music, and actions and events. Delhi six
has a good admixture of all the four elements.
Through the course of the action and the narrative, individual characters go through ups and
downs, encounter challenges to the ego, and experience individual epiphanies.
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ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
However, that is not a sufficient condition for the completion of the journey to reach its aesthetic
ripeness. The major players in the scene become instrumental in escalating the crises to the
wider community. Everyone gets swept away in the flood of chaos. When the storm subsides,
the damages are accounted for, a certain calm envelopes the community by quickly drawing
them back into the spirit of harmony and coexistence.
Theme: A crisis can bring either good or bad, but no one who gets caught in it cannot but feel
purified.
Dominant rasa: Santa/tranquility, harmony through the achievement of transcendence and
transformation
The protagonist/hero: an outsider who becomes an insider by virtue of his engagement with
his new environment not just as a curious by-stander but at humanistic, socially conscious, and
emotional levels.
Also, another way to look at the theme is to not look at it through the lens of the hero for he is
not the sole focus of the aesthetic experience. He/she may be seen as an instrument in bringing
about the resolution that brings the needed transformation by being the first one to undergo it.
His/her changed presence, in turn, becomes the catalyst in effecting the universal transformation.
Thus agency and the locus of agency becomes a shared space, the self and the other coalesce into
a single entity resembling that of the sublime.
A Sample Worksheet: Students may be guided through the notation with a complete example
and be moved on to a guided group work, and then finally to do the notation independently.
Opening
Scene
Characters
Sets the mood
Sets the stage
A microcosm
of any urban
neighborhood
mostly
untouched by
the new money
coming in; not
cosmopolitan
Conflicts: religious, cultural, generational
Kinship: grandson and grandmother together embark on a
journey
Delhi 6: a multi- religious, middleclass community
Enter two outsiders:
GM-relocation
GS: dislocation
Facilitates the needed creation of distance from the self to look at
the world as it is.
i.e., depersonalization/ sadharanikarana
At First, GS barely notices people as persons but as Indians,
exotic, curious and indistinguishable.
GM readily embraces and fits right back into the everyday life
with no reflection of what she had learned from being away.
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ASDP Summer Institute on Infusing South Asian Studies into the Undergraduate Curriculum, July 12-30,
2010
Lakshmi Gudipati
Community College of Philadelphia
Plot
Rising
action
Falling
action
Resolution
Conclusion
Conflict
between
individuals
Theme and
character
merge
Individual
epiphanies
Group tensions
Protagonists
larger than life
rise
Tensions fade
or resolve, the
state of
equilibrium is
restored
Happy ending
2 brother vs brother, East vs. West; untouchable vs. Caste;
tradition vs modernity
Conflict escalates to groups
The major players act, react and step back as they are pushed out
of their comfort zones; experience personal epiphanies
Tensions mount and become both self-and-other destructive
The character’s transformation from being the Other to the Self
in the social fabric becomes complete.
The triangle dissolves into the circle and everyone comes out of
the experience with sense of awe, quiet, and respect for the
sanctity of conflict free life.
A new beginning
Element of
the play
Sthahyibahava/
primary emition
Complementary/secondary rasa
emotions/anubhava
Heroe’s first
encounter with
class
mistreatment
Jugupsa/disgust
Contempt, fury, aggression,
pity
bhibatsa
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