Abstract
Bhayānaka (the horror and the Horrific)—the rasa (aesthetic tasting) of the psychological state of bhaya (the fear)—is evoked by the verbal and thematic structures of a literary/performative text, but its experience due to the self’s liberation from structures of language and thought is that of the absolute consciousness. With examples from the Rigveda, the Upanīṣads, the Bhagavad-Gītā, and the Mahābhārata, and drawing upon the philosophical hermeneutics of Abhinavagupta (eleventh century CE), the chapter argues that bhayānaka is not substantially apart from bībhatsa (the Odious), the seventh rasa formulated by Bharata. Both rasa-s (aesthetic experiences) terminate into śānta (the Tranquil), resulting into a transmutation of the Horrific, from the phenomenal to the aesthetic experience.
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Notes
- 1.
The term vibhāva denotes an artistic, literary, or dramatic situation or event that determines the corresponding emotion in the character. However, unlike the life experiences, the relation between vibhāva (determinants) and the consequent speech, body movements, facial gestures, and emotion is not that of cause and effect but that of mode and the psychophysical state of being. That’s why Bharata does not use the terms kāraṛna and kārya (cause and effect) in relation to art, because the relation between determining object or situation and the resultant emotion in art and literature is artificial and liberated from the limitations of empirical relations. Hence, a horrific scene produces aesthetic pleasure in the reader or the spectator.
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Singh, D. (2018). Bhayānaka (Horror and the Horrific) in Indian Aesthetics. In: Corstorphine, K., Kremmel, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97406-4_2
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