Discussion # 4 assignment for 4 October 2001

Indian Painting and Poetry

Because there is quite a bit of reading next week, there will be no written assignment for next week’s discussion section. Instead, I ask you to carefully do the Goswamy reading on rasa and read over the handout from Love Song of the Great Lord that I will give to you in class on Tuesday. I will bring a number of slides for discussion that exemplify some of the concepts brought up in the reading.

In many ways, this discussion section is one of the most important ones of the semester, because it focuses on the primary foundation of Indian aesthetics. Without an understanding of rasa, much of Indian painting, poetry, religion, and music is hard to understand.

Questions you might ask yourself are:

· How is the religious experience evoked through poetry and the arts in general? Why did Indian art develop such a complex, nuanced and rarified system of aesthetics? What purpose does it serve?

· How do you reconcile the notion of erotic love and divinity? What religious and philosophical ideals are being drawn upon?

· In what specific ways are mood and emotion evoked? Jot down some of the signs, symbols, markers, and conveyors of rasa that you have noticed in the readings and in class.