Abhinavabharati The celebrated and only available commentary of Bharata's Natyasastra penned by Abhinavagupta, the great Kashmiri Saivite philosopher.In this monumental work, Abhinavagupta explains the rasasutra of Bharata in consonance with the theory of abhivyakti propounded in Anandavardhana's Dhvanyaloka the light as well as the tenets of the Pratyabhijna philosophy of Kashmir. Acording to Abhinavagupta, the aesthetic experience is the manifestation of the innate dispositions of the self like love and sorrow by the self.It is characterised by the contemplation of the bliss of the self by the connoisseur .It is akin to the spiritual experience as one transcends the limitations of one's limited self because of the process of universalisation taking place during the aesthetic contemplation to characters depicted in the work of art.Abhinavagupta maintains that this rasa is the somnum bonum of all literature.
He was born in Kashmir and he wrote on Shaivism, aesthetics, music, and a variety of other subjects.
His two famous commentaries on poetry, drama, and dance, the Locana on the Dhvanyaloka and the Abhinavabharati on the Natyasastra engage with almost every important aspect of Indian aesthetics.
In their book Santarasa (published by Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, 1969) authors J.L. Masson and M.V. Patwardhan write about Abhinavagupta's major contribution to Sanskrit aesthetics, the theory of rasa.
While in Gandharva the tala of a song indicated the linear arrangement of temporal units which matched the duration of the entire song, in the subsequent systems a short time span repeated over the duration of the song came into practice.
[4] Abhinavabharati on Natyasastra, 31, 1, p.152, In.
Natyasastra of Bharata Muni, with the Commentary Abhinavabharati of Abhinavagupta, ed.
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