Note 76 — III DRAMATIC THEORY XIII THE THEORY OF THE DRAMATIC ART

An effort is made to describe the precise nature of the mental activity involved in the enjoyment of sentiment, and to base upon it a division of the sentiments. The four sentiments of love, heroism, horror, and fury are taken as primary, and brought into connexion with mental conditions described as the unfolding (vikāsa), expansion (vistara), agitation (kṣobha), and movement to and fro (vikṣepa) of the mind.76 These are evidently mental conditions, believed to be reached by introspection, and they have the merit of giving a quasi-psychological rationale for the doctrine of four primary and four secondary sentiments found in the Nāṭyaçāstra.77 But there was no early agreement on this piece of psychology; Abhinavagupta,78 with Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, accepts only three aspects of mental condition as involved, the melting (druti), expansion, and unfolding, a division which is applied also in the theory of poetics to justify the doctrine of the existence of three qualities only of words.79 On Dhanaṁjaya’s view the sentiment of calm which he denies for drama,80 if it exists at all, must be regarded as combining all the four mental aspects above distinguished.