Jagannātha vs Corneille on Transgression
- Jagannātha and the Vedānticization of Rasa (c. 1650, Vārāṇasī) — Rasagaṅgādhara transforms rasābhāsa (semblance of rasa) from creative-resource into censorship-catalog.
- Jagannātha and the Vedānticization of Rasa (c. 1650, Vārāṇasī) — Rasagaṅgādhara transforms rasābhāsa (semblance of rasa) from creative-resource into censorship-catalog. Explicit prohibition list: martial-determination on the part of a lowborn man, spiritual-disenchantment in an untouchable, anger directed toward father, laughter-directed-at-father, fear in a hero, disgust felt for fat-or-flesh-or-blood of sacrificial animal. The transgressive themes the tradition forbids. - Pierre Corneille (c. 1637, France) — Le Cid explicitly explores martial determination across class lines, anger between father-figures, transgressive honor codes. Corneille's drama becomes the engine of European modern literary creativity — exactly the kinds of materials Jagannātha's transgression-catalog refuses.
The two near-contemporary frameworks operate in opposite directions on identical materials. Jagannātha c. 1650 codifies the discipline's refusal of transgressive content. Corneille c. 1637 establishes transgressive content as the engine of modern literary creativity. The two trajectories diverge precisely at the moment of early modernity.
Pollock's A Rasa Reader makes this comparison explicit: "It was precisely such transgressive material that elsewhere in the world — and not in Sanskritic India — would move to the very center of literary creativity and help make modern literature modern (for example, Jagannātha's near contemporary in France, Corneille, with his Cid)."
The structural feature that determined the opposite trajectories is not the religious-secular distinction (both traditions had religious commitments) but the relationship between propriety-doctrine and disciplinary-authority. The Sanskrit aesthetic tradition by 1650 had bound propriety-doctrine and disciplinary-authority so tightly that propriety-violations had to be refused at the discipline's gate to preserve the discipline's coherence. The European literary tradition c. 1637 had separated propriety-doctrine from disciplinary-authority enough that propriety-violations could be theorized within the discipline (Corneille's Discours and the Querelle du Cid are exactly this theorization-work) rather than excluded from it.
- For the candidate idea to hold, the following would need verification:
- The Sanskrit aesthetic tradition's propriety-doctrine and disciplinary-authority were more tightly bound in late-medieval period than in earlier periods (testable via comparison of Udbhaṭa, Ānandavardhana, Mammaṭa propriety-treatments against Jagannātha's).
- The European literary tradition c. 1637 actively theorized propriety-violation within the discipline rather than excluding it (testable via Corneille's Discours and the Académie française's Sentiments).
- The structural feature is not unique to Indian-vs-European but is operative wherever a discipline binds propriety to authority tightly enough that the discipline cannot accommodate propriety-violations.
- Comparable cases from other traditions (Chinese aesthetic theory, Persian poetic theory) would show similar divergences when their propriety-doctrines became disciplinarily binding vs disciplinarily theorized.