Book Description

"This is the first book in over a thousand years to approach the Mahābhārata and the Harivaṃśa via rasa theory. It argues that both texts put adbhutarasa, the "mood of wonder," to work as their dominant rasa, in a way that takes readers from their heroes' rollicking adventures to the text's profoundest moments. Two Kashmiris, Ānandavardhana (9th century) and Abhinavagupta (10th century), launched such inquiry, claiming that the Mahābhārata's dominant rasa was śāntarasa, the "mood of peace." Both worked the Harivaṃśa as a related text into their argument, which emphasized peace along with dispassion and the quest for liberation. Although they used some textual highjinks to make their case, their argument prevailed, and has remained the only serious contestant for rasic interpretation. This book disputes their claim, and can expect controversy. Some may continue to favor śāntarasa. Some may cite the two Kashmiris' view that adbhuta cannot sustain a major work. This book contests that by putting "the work of adbhutarasa" into its title and arguing for the hard work it does. Some may also be uncomfortable with a temporal incongruity the book poses in that the Mahābhārata and Harivaṃśa are probably four or five centuries earlier than the first text to explore rasas, the Nāṭyaśātra. Śāntarasa faced the same problem but Ānandavardhana and Abhinavagupta, lacking a modern sense of the relative dates, overlooked it. The answer here goes to the heart of this book's argument: our texts deploy the "proper terms" adbhuta, "wonder" and vismaya, "surprise," to work adbhutarasa through rich and contrasting textual strategies. They must have worked out their program with these terms before the śāstra"--