भाव

The Concept of Bhava

Bhava or to emote is the essence of literary and performing art. Bhava is the becoming. In other words, everything (objective or material) that can exist or comes in to existence is bhava. Going by this simple understanding, the state of mind and even the material conditions like birth and death or growth and decay or existence and transformation is bhava. This understanding can be extended to artistic creativity. The feeling and the thought process are the direct outcome of the state of mind in real life and at the same time, attributes like place, time, action, movement, gesture, posture, etc. can also be defined and described as bhava. The only difference that needs to be acknowledged is that in real life becoming is more due to direct implications of what we call the law of causation and with the reference to artistic creativity, it is the artist who influences it; using the sheer power of his imagination and creativity.

The artist does this by creating situations, incidents, characters and infusing attributes like feelings, thoughts, actions etc. It would be termed as process of “becoming” with the reference to artistic creativity more as, induced or caused and not as a production of material thing. In this light, Bharat Muni’s coining of the term “Nispatti” should be more interpreted as “Samavitti” means the process of creating intellectual awareness of an emotional experience through the means of Vibhava and other factors in the minds of the bhavaka or the spectator or the reader. This only leads to conclude that whether it’s a mental or material state, bhava means nothing but depiction of consciousness as rightly put by Bharata Muni – “Bhavayati iti bhava” and in this context, relating bhava with the expression artistic creativity is very much justified.

Bhava or to emote is the essence of literary and performing art. Bhava is becoming. Going by this simple understanding, state of mind and even the material conditions like birth & death or growth & decay or existence & transformation is bhava.