Aesthetics in Asia

Despite the philosophical diversity within India, there is a surprising degree of consensus about the nature and importance of aesthetics and aesthetic pleasure (rasa). Like truth and goodness, rasa belongs to reason (buddhi); its relation to truth remains a major vein of speculation. Although the specific role that rasa plays in the human psyche depends on the metaphysical premises of a given philosophy—whether dualistic or nondualistic, etc.—rasa is a highly valued, central part of human experience. It encompasses sexuality, but also takes its place among the spiritual disciplines.

The second basic concept of Indian aesthetics is kama, the pursuit of love and enjoyment. Kama includes refined aesthetic pleasure, sexual pleasure, and love of the divine (the human search for transcendence). The epitome of kama is found in the love of the divine Krishna and Radha, his consort, and in their dance, called the rasa-lila (the "playful dance of the god")—a recurring theme in painting, poetry, and drama. The most famous text of the science of kama, Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra (Aphorisms of love) lists sixty-four arts and sciences in which a cultured person or courtesan was educated (Embree, p. 256).

Bharata Muni's Natya Sastra (Treatise on dramaturgy) (written sometime between the 2nd century B.C.E. and the 2nd century C.E.), the first written theory of drama, claims that when humanity began to suffer from pride and the joyful life became full of suffering, the god Brahma created drama—with its attendants music, poetry, and dance—to uplift humanity morally and spiritually by means of aesthetics (rasa) (Bharata, 2003).

From Bharata on, emotion (rasa, meaning "flavor" or "relish") is recognized as the heart of drama and all art. Rasa thus came to mean the feeling that a poet conveys to a sympathetic reader, aesthetic taste, or aesthetic rapture (Gupta). Rasa, the aesthetic rapture accompanying the appreciation of dance and drama, is mentioned in the Upanishads, and some claim that it is even comparable to "the realization of ultimate reality" (Tripurari, p. 10). The differences between aesthetic rasa and Brahman realization of the form of the Absolute became important philosophical issues. Krishna's rasa-lila (his love dance with Radha) provides one answer to these problems and leads to philosophical development of kinds of love (Tipurari, p. 37). This dance, first described in the Bhagavata Purana (tenth century?) and set in verse in the twelfth century, inspires poetry and paintings (together called ragamala); it forms the kernal for the devotional aesthetic called bhakti rasa popular in Vedanti [Tripurari].

Dating from the thirteenth century, the ragamala (garland of ragas) are painting albums, often with poems, based on ragas, the secular musical modes associated with particular feelings/flavors (rasa). The paintings depict male or female human heroes or divinities, identified by name and an emblem, in love scenes coordinated with time of day, season, and aesthetic mode, and sometimes a color, deity, planet, or animal. Although conceived within the framework of Hinduism, the rasa-lila reaches well beyond it: the Moghuls, who were Muslim, also commissioned pictures of the rasa-lila.

Music in India has a similarly long aesthetic tradition. The Samaveda treats it as a divine art. Indian philosophers have been particularly interested in the aesthetics of sound (Malik), music and dance (Mittal; Iravati), and chant and storytelling (Kaushal).