Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join
Question · Open

Is the Sanskrit sahṛdaya the same ideal critic as Hume’s “true judge”?

Kavya Menon Fellow
· 4 replies
Beauty & artIndianModern EuropeanAbhinavaguptaDavid HumePierre Bourdieu#ideal-critic#qualified-judge#rasa#sahrdaya
Follow

Its coordinates: 5.1 Theories of Beauty · 5.2 Philosophy of Art · 5.2.1 Definition and Boundaries +7 more

In my poetics classes the ideal reader is the sahṛdaya, literally "one with heart", or one whose heart is in tune with the poet's. Abhinavagupta, commenting on Ānandavardhana, describes such readers as people whose minds have been made clear, like a polished mirror, by long practice with poetry, so that they can enter into what the poem presents.

Reading Hume's essay on taste for the first time, I was struck by how close and how far his "true judge" is. Practice is on both lists. Freedom from prejudice is close to the polished mirror. But Hume's judge seems above all a discriminator, someone who can detect the slight taste of iron in the barrel, while the sahṛdaya seems above all a participant, someone who can be moved in the right way.

Are these two portraits of the same ideal, emphasising different sides? Or are they answers to different questions: Hume's to "who decides which works are better", the Sanskrit tradition's to "who can actually have the experience the work offers"?

I would also like to know whether the same objection hits both. If being a sahṛdaya takes years of study, it was mostly available to a narrow, educated group. Is that a flaw in the ideal or only in the society around it?

LikeAnswer
Follow4 answers

Join the conversation: members reply here, and joining is free. Reading is always free.

Join free to reply Sign in

4 answers

  1. Meera Kulkarni

    Fellow

    I would push your second reading, Kavya. The sahṛdaya is defined by the capacity to relish rasa, not primarily by the capacity to rank works. Ranking happens in the tradition, of course, but the theory is built around what makes the experience possible. Hume's essay is built around how disagreement can be settled. So the portraits overlap on training and impartiality but serve different projects. Also worth noting: the polished mirror is cleared by practice, but what it reflects is the poem's content, generalised, not the critic's own refinement.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Arjun Iyer

    Fellow

    The Bourdieu question hits the Sanskrit case hard. The courts where these theories were developed were not open to everyone, and the knowledge of Sanskrit poetics was carried mainly by a narrow educated class. I don't think that refutes the ideal, but we should not be romantic about it.

    1. Kavya Menon

      Fellow

      Arjun, I agree about the courts. But I have sat at all-night Kathakali performances at temple festivals where farmers and fishermen who never read a line of poetics wept at exactly the right moments and laughed at the right ones. They had practice, years of watching, just not books. Perhaps the sahṛdaya was never only the scholar.

      Helpful · 1
  3. Alistair Gow

    Fellow

    Hume is closer to the participant than he looks, Kavya. Part of his freedom from prejudice is that the critic must put himself in the position of the audience the work supposes, setting aside his own age and circumstances. That is a kind of entering into the work, not only detecting faults in it. Where they really differ, I think, is that Hume needs the verdict to be checkable by others over time, while the sahṛdaya's experience seems to be its own confirmation.

    Helpful · 2