So far, we have seen in Indian nonsense the more universal nonsense characteristics, the influence of English culture and language and some of what makes Indian nonsense truly ‘Indian’. Yet, despite its roots in the history and culture of India, and despite its skilful practitioners, it has not been given the respect it deserves. This may be because it needed to be recognized as independent from British as well as from other Indian literary forms and it needed to be accepted as a serious Indian art—no small tasks for a genre derived in part from the British, in a country replete with endless literary forms, both folk and formal, and ancient, conservative concepts of the nature of art. Sukumar Ray, however, was fit for the task and came up with an ingenious solution to all of these problems.
In his Preface to Abol Tabol (1923), his famous collection of nonsense, he included an apologia: ‘This book was conceived in the spirit of whimsy.
It is not meant for those who do not enjoy that spirit.’ Part of the function of this was to warn the more serious^minded public and critics away from such a strange literary product. But there is far more meaning to this simple statement, owing to the Bengali words that cannot be directly translated. The ‘spirit of whimsy’ in this passage is, in Bengali, ‘ kheyaal raws}i and refers to a fundamental classification of Indian aesthetic theory, that of the rawsh , or rasas , as they are more commonly known (a word which also has the meanings of taste, the ‘essence’ of something, as well as living liquids like sap and juice). All Indian arts are designed to produce complex emotional effects on the audience. These effects are strictly delineated and classified according to Bharata’s Natyasastra (c. AD 200), an ancient treatise on the arts, and include nine rasas. 11 Each rasa corresponds to one emotional effect: love, anger, the comic/happy, disgust, heroism, compassion, fear, wonder and peace. All serious art must evoke combinations of these rasas.
The result of Ray’s inventing the tenth rasa is twofold. First, it helps to distinguish the nonsense form from other Indian literary forms. As Satpathy has discussed, Tagore initiated this distinction by recognizing that children’s chhoda represented a separate rasa: ‘There are nine rasas in our aesthetic theory. But, the chada (or chhoda ), meant for children, contains a kind of rasa which does not fit into any of the nine rasas. The beauty of this rhyme can be called, baalras [children’s rasa]. It is neither thick nor pungent. It is, rather, clear, innocent, beautiful, and that which cannot be related to anything.’ 12 Tagore was the first to recognize such value in folk rhymes and stories and, according to Chaudhuri, ‘it was largely owing to his efforts that these began to be recorded and studied seriously’. 13 Having folk material taken seriously was an important step for Indian scholarship and paved the way for Sukumar Ray to distinguish further the genre of nonsense from folk and other forms of literature.
xlii uncovering the tenth rasa
Ray’s new rasa is not restricted to children, as Tagore’s is. Rather, it represents the complexity of literary nonsense. As Satyajit Ray, Sukumar Ray’s son, claims in his introduction to his father’s volume, ‘There are traces of such whimsy in the folk poetry of any nation. But authentic literary nonsense masks its caprice beneath an apparent gravity in an urbane and sophisticated manner unknown in popular rhyme.’ By creating a tenth rasa , and designating it the prime rasa of nonsense, Ray was thus distinguishing nonsense, the essence of whimsy, from folk material, which only has ‘traces of such whimsy’. He was also giving it respectability as a genre that includes an adult audience.
More significantly, though, the creation of the rasa of whimsy revises about 1800 years of fundamental aesthetic theory, necessitating that nonsense be considered a serious, even conservative, art form. Long before Bharata’s treatise on art, Indian aesthetic theory was well developed, codified, directly related to religion and therefore mostly, if not exclusively, serious. Bharata recognized that the ‘comic’ mode existed but marginalized it (at best) by making it share a rasa with ‘happiness’, a conjunction any modern theory of comedy, such as Freud’s on jokes, would cast doubt upon. The creation of this tenth rasa thus has some quite revolutionary and revisionary effects. Incorporating ‘whimsy’ into the pantheon of rasas and claiming it to be the primary characteristic of nonsense legitimizes the genre in the eyes of even the most aesthetically and culturally conservative judges. Furthermore, including the concept of whimsy with the other rasas introduces a rebellious, potentially dangerous concept. ‘Whimsy’, which is a good translation of the Bengali ‘kheyaaV, is an ‘odd fancy; idle notion; whim’, or alternatively a ‘curious, quaint, or fanciful humour’ ( Webster’s New World ). But the Bengali word, even more than the English word, has a pejorative meaning, especially in the adjectival form. Thus, to sanction that which is odd, idle, contrary, fanciful—all partially in a pejorative sense—is dangerous; it could potentially disrupt the seriousness, the discipline and the sanctity of the others. In particular, it distinguishes itself from the combined ‘comedy/happiness’ rasa , perhaps showing the inherent rebellion or at least the sheer absurdity of nonsense that Gorey referred to, a mode that is often problematically comic. As French
absurdists like Ionesco show, nonsense can be comic, absurd, disquieting and terrifying all at once.
As rasas are not temporal creations but eternal qualities, Ray’s inclusion of‘whimsy’ implies that is has always been there, unrecognized yet affecting the other rasas (especially the comic/happy). One would have to go back to reconsider the other rasas in light of the newest ‘discovery’ and completely revise the ways they are used in the arts. Of course, one has to believe in the rasa for the revolution to occur. If the aesthetic pundits of Sukumar Ray’s time had accepted his concept, then he would have succeeded not only in the ultimate ‘Indianization of literary nonsense, but in potentially revolutionizing Indian art. His nonsense, not surprisingly, was not taken as seriously as he would have liked, though it did become wildly popular and continues to be to this day. West Bengal is also one of the few areas in India where nonsense is taken seriously by adults. His was but a beginning for this still nascent art form in India.
Michael Heyman