#BharataMuni

Bharata Muni · text c. 200 BCE – 200 CE

In the books · 1 chapter

Who this is

Dramaturgy and aesthetics — theatre, dance, music, and the theory of rasa, the emotional "flavour" art produces in its audience.

“Nobody knows who wrote the world's most complete ancient manual of performance — the author's name may simply mean "Actor" — but two thousand years later, classical Indian dancers still learn their art by its rules.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 42

The big idea, in the book's words:

“Art exists to cook feeling. Take the causes of an emotion, the visible symptoms of it, and the small passing feelings around it, combine them on stage like spices in a dish — and the audience will taste the emotion, purified, as flavour. That taste is rasa, and it happens in you, not on the stage.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 42