Time, Action and Narration. On Some Exegetical Sources of Abhinavagupta’s Aesthetic Theory

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This article is an attempt at understanding the use that Abhinavagupta (950–1020?), the Kashmiri Śaiva philosopher and scholar of poetics, makes of a few concepts and theories stemming from the tradition of Vedic ritual exegesis (Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā). Its starting point is the detailed analysis of a key passage in Abhinavagupta’s commentary on the “aphorism on rasa(s)” of the Nāṭyaśāstra, where the learned commentator draws an analogy between the operation of the non-prescriptive portions of the Veda in the ritual and the “generalisation” (sādhāraṇīkaraṇa) taking place, according to him, in the appreciation of a work of art. Arguing against the tendency of modern historiography to explain this analogy exclusively in terms of Kumārila’s theory of effectuation (bhāvanā) in its two modalities, the article endeavours to show how Abhinavagupta relies on a variety of other textual sources he knew extensively and presumably first-hand. Some of them belong to the great Mīmāṃsaka tradition (Śabara, possibly Maṇḍana Miśra); others, to different trends of medieval Brahmanism claiming exegetical heritage, as in the case of Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s Nyāyamanjarī The nature of Abhinavagupta’s debt to Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka and his concept of bhāvanā is also reconsidered in light of these new findings. This investigation finally leads to identify, in the Abhinavabhāratī, an original theory of scriptural narratives and their efficacy, irreducible to any of its exegetical (or pseudo-exegetical) sources. According to this theory, mythological passages of the Veda directly prompt action (as would a Vedic injunction), through the same capacity of abstraction or “de-temporalisation” that is at work in our appraisal of literature and theatre.