Nava rasas

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The Nine Rasas are the nine basic emotions that are fundamental to all Indian aesthetics and art forms-dance, music and literature. Bharata Muni enunciated the Rasas for the first time. Bharata Muni, in his Nātyasāstra, spoke only of eight rasas: Sringara, Vira, Kaarunya, Haasya, Adbhuta, Roudra, Bhayanaka and Bibhatsa. Shantha or the rasa of quietude had to undergo a good deal of struggle between the sixth and the tenth centuries, before it could be accepted by the majority of the Alankarikas, and the expression Nava- rasas could come into wide vogue.

Similar is the story of the emotion of Bhakti. Despite its great vogue from the earliest times in the country’s life. In the literary compositions, the emotion of Bhakti as a feeling of adoration towards God was long considered only a minor feeling, a Bhava, a fit theme for Stothras, but not capable of being developed into a full swung Rasa as the sole theme of a whole poem or drama. In the tenth century, it was still struggling and Aacharya Abhinva Gupta, mentions Bhakti in his commentary on the Natya Shathra, as an important accessory sentiment of the Shantha Rasa which he strove with great effort to establish. But just as the much-denied Shantha slowly attained to such state of primacy that it was considered the Rasa of Rasas, Bhakti also soon began to loom large and despite the lukewarmness of the great run of Alankarikas, had the service of some distinguished advocates, including Tyagaraja. It is the Bhagavatha that gave the great impetus to the study of Bhakthi from an increasingly aesthetic point of view.

Later on, Bhakti, Shantha and Vaatsalya also began to be associated with the concept of Nava Rasas.

A Rasa is the developed relishable state of a permanent mood, which is called Sthayi Bhava. This development towards a relishable state results by the interplay on it of attendant emotional conditions which are called Vibhavas, Anubhavas and Sanchari Bhavas. Vibhavas means Karana or cause: it is of two kinds- Alambana, the personal or human object and substratum, and Uddipana, the excitants. Anubhava, as the name signifies, means the ensuants or effects following the rise of the emotion. Sanchari Bhavas are those crossing feelings which are ancillary to a permanent mood. Eight more emotional features are to be added, namely, the Saatvika Bhavas. (C.Ramanujachari and Prof.V.Raghavan-the authors of "The Spiritual Heritage of Tyagaraja").

In classical music, each Rasa is associated with specific ragas. Often, it is not possible to separate each of the Rasas into water-tight compartments. The Nava Rasas map into each other.