Sankuka

Śaṅkuka was a Sanskrit theorist of drama, probably from Kashmir and active around the ninth century, who wrote a commentary on Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra that has not survived. His views are known from later writers, above all Abhinavagupta, who reports and criticises them. Śaṅkuka held that rasa, the aesthetic emotion of drama, is the emotion the audience infers in the character from the actor's portrayal, with the inferring itself relished because it takes place in an artistic setting.

Key ideas

• The audience infers the character's emotion from its signs, as one infers fire from smoke.
• The actor is grasped as the character, as a painted horse is taken as a horse without error or belief.
• Because the setting is artistic, the inference is itself a source of relish.
• Critics objected that inference is too cold to account for being moved.

Major works

• Commentary on Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra (lost)
• Abhinavagupta, Abhinavabhāratī (records and criticises his view)
• Mammaṭa, Kāvyaprakāśa (later summary of his position)

In the conversation

• Discussion Rasa and ordinary emotion: why can grief in a play be a kind of delight? Kavya Menon · 5 replies
• Reading group Reading group: the Nāṭyaśāstra’s chapters on rasa and bhāva Kavya Menon · 4 replies
• Reading group Reading group: how grief becomes rasa, from Lollaṭa to Abhinavagupta Meera Kulkarni · 5 replies

In the Journal

• Journal Why does sad art feel good? What the rasa theorists worked out Meera Kulkarni · 0 replies