From aesthetic rapture to servile love: the myth of the rasika in kalidasa's kumarasaNbhava
This paper explores the aesthetic world of the KumarasaNbhava (The Birth of the Son) and probes its central theme of erotic love, perhaps one of the most important concerns of most kavya poets. Using Robert Goodwin's theoretical framework of the identification of the hero inside the Sanskrit Love Plays and the rasika connoisseur outside the play or simply, the rasika myth this paper sets out to explore the text as a psychological process rather than an aesthetic product. The central psychological element of the rasika myth is 'love' in its most sophisticated and naive manner: aesthetic erotic love (srngararasa) vis a vis love as an ordinary feeling (rati) The mythic paradigm thus emphasises the psychological tensions that surround kavya's aestheticism and its various representation of the notion of love. Clearly, the KumarasaNbhava depicts Siva's psychological reaction to the shifting status of a beautiful woman around him from being the female Sri of sexual allure of the first half of the poem t.