Britannica Sources used in this answer

What does rasa mean in South Asian music, dance, sculpture, and painting?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Watch and hear a person playing the mridangam drum of the Carnatic music tradition — South Asian arts The *mridangam*, the principal drum of the Carnatic music tradition.

In South Asian arts, rasa (Sanskrit for "taste" or "flavour") is a fundamental concept of aesthetic experience. It refers to a contemplative abstraction in which the inwardness of human feelings suffuses and irradiates the surrounding world of embodied forms. Rather than being described, rasa is an essential element that can only be suggested in a work of art.123

The theory, attributed to the sage Bharata and further developed by Abhinavagupta, posits that artists aim to evoke specific sentiments in the spectator. There are nine recognized rasas, each corresponding to a human emotion (bhava):13

Erotic (love)
Comic (laughter)
Pathetic (pathos)
Furious (anger)
Heroic (energy)
Terrible (fear)
Odious (disgust)
Marvelous (wonder)
Quietistic (quietude)132

In music, dance, sculpture, and painting, these arts are deeply interconnected; a literary background is often considered necessary to properly express or perceive the rasa within them. In music, performers use melodic frameworks (raga) to create a unique atmosphere or rasa. In dance and theatre, the success of a performance is determined by the artist's ability to evoke these sentiments in the audience. Similarly, in sculpture and painting, rasa serves as the underlying aesthetic flavour that brings the work to life.452