Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/325

320 further precise by the assertion that the dominant emotion becomes a sentiment, because it is enjoyed by the spectator of taste, and he is actually at present in existence; the sentiment is not located in the hero whose actions are represented, for he belongs to the past, nor does it appertain to the poem, for that is not the object of the poem – its function being to set out the determinants, &c., through which the dominant emotion is brought out and generates the sentiment, — nor is sentiment the apprehension by the spectator of the emotions enacted by the actor, since in that case spectators would feel not sentiment, but an emotion varying in the different individuals, just as in real life from seeing a pair in union those who see them feel according to their nature shame, envy, desire, or aversion. The position of the spectator is compared to that of the child which, when it plays with its clay elephants – the ancient equivalent of our tin soldiers – experiences the sensation of its own energy as pleasant; the deeds of Arjuna arouse a like feeling in the spectator's mind. This experiencing sentiment is a manifestation of that joy which is innate as the true nature of the self, and this manifestation comes into being as the result of the pervasion of the mind of the spectator with the dominant emotion and the determinants, &c., in combination.

An effort is made to describe the precise nature of the mental activity involved in the enjoyment of sentiment, and to base upon it a division of the sentiments. The four sentiments of love, heroism, horror, and fury are taken as primary, and brought into connexion with mental conditions described as the unfolding (vikāsa), expansion (vistara), agitation (kṣobha), and movement to and fro (vikṣepa) of the mind. These are evidently mental conditions, believed to be reached by introspection, and they have the merit of giving a quasi-psychological rationale for the doctrine of four primary and four secondary sentiments found in the Nāṭyaçāstra. But there was no early agreement on this piece of psychology; Abhinavagupta, with Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, accepts only three aspects of mental condition as involved, the melting (druti), expansion, and unfolding, a division which is applied also in the theory of poetics to justify the doctrine of the