Upanishads · Bhāvanā p9
॥
Devanāgarī
नियतिसहिताः शृङ्गारादयो नव रसा अणिमादयः
Transliteration (IAST)
niyatisahitāḥ śṛṅgārādayo nava rasā aṇimādayaḥ
Word-by-word
SanskritIASTMeaning
नियति-सहिताःniyati-sahitāḥtogether with destiny
शृङ्गार-आदयः नव रसाःśṛṅgāra-ādayaḥ nava rasāḥthe amorous and the other nine moods
अणिमा-आदयःaṇimā-ādayaḥare Aṇimā and the rest
Translation
Together with destiny, the amorous and the other nine moods are Aṇimā and the rest.
Version
8f6f0ce07804 · published Aug 12, 2026, 5:00:00 AM UTC
Available inRUENPage between verses with
The nava-rasa, "nine moods," are named, and this is not a theological list but one from the science of poetry. The count is this: śṛṅgāra — the amorous; hāsya — the comic; karuṇā — the pathetic; raudra — the wrathful; vīra — the heroic; bhayānaka — the terrible; bībhatsa — the repulsive; adbhuta — the marvelous; śānta — the peaceful. This mapping goes back to Bharata's Nāṭya-śāstra and is the foundation of all Indian poetics.
Its appearance in a book about a diagram is unexpected and good. The nine moods are equated to the eight siddhis with one added; that is, what a person experiences is set in the place of what he possesses. The Vaiṣṇava side makes more use of this count than anyone else and has remade it for her own purposes. In Rūpa Gosvāmī's Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, the same moods are mapped as kinds of relationship toward God: peaceful, servile, friendly, parental, and amorous — five chief ones, with seven subsidiary ones alongside them.
This remaking is instructive and worth mentioning. Poetics described what happens to a spectator watching another's life; and here the same names are applied to what happens to a person turned toward God. And the conclusion follows directly: the relation to Him is described in the language of feelings, not of concepts — otherwise poetics would not have been needed for it.