Nāṭyaśāstra
The Nāṭyaśāstra is an ancient Sanskrit treatise on performance that systematizes drama, dance, music, stagecraft, and aesthetic experience.
Rasa (aesthetics): An aesthetic flavor or emotional experience evoked in an audience through artistic representation. The treatise’s account of drama centers on producing rasa from represented emotions.
Sāttvika abhinaya: A mode of performance expression conveyed through involuntary or simulated bodily signs of inner emotion. It describes how emotion becomes legible through signs such as trembling, tears, or a changed voice.
Bharata Muni: The traditional sage-author to whom the Nāṭyaśāstra is attributed. The text presents its teachings through the authority of Bharata and his dialogue with sages.
Abhinavagupta: An eleventh-century Kashmiri philosopher and commentator whose writings profoundly influenced Indian aesthetics. His commentary gave the treatise’s rasa theory a lasting philosophical interpretation.
Dhananjaya: A tenth-century Sanskrit poet and theorist, author of the dramaturgical handbook Daśarūpaka. His concise account reorganizes dramatic theory associated with the Nāṭyaśāstra.
Bhāva: A represented or enacted psychological state that contributes to aesthetic experience in Indian arts. Bhāvas are the emotional states that performance transforms into rasa.
Mudra: A symbolic hand gesture used in religious practice, dance, and visual representation in South Asia. Codified gestures contribute to the treatise’s system of bodily communication.
Sanskrit literature: Literary works composed in Sanskrit across poetry, drama, philosophy, and other genres. The treatise belongs to the intellectual world that produced classical Sanskrit drama and poetics.
Abhinavabharati: Abhinavagupta’s extensive commentary on the Nāṭyaśāstra, especially influential for its account of rasa. It is the most influential surviving interpretation of the treatise’s aesthetic theory.
Daśarūpaka: A Sanskrit treatise by Dhananjaya that classifies drama into ten principal forms. It offers a later, more compact system of dramatic genres than the Nāṭyaśāstra.