Dear Colleagues,

I have two questions about a passage from the Nāṭyaśāstra cited in V. Raghava’s book, The Number of Rasas. The passage comes at the ed of Ragavan’s summary of the “adbhuta synthesis” of Nārāyaṇa, the grandfather of Viśvanātha.

First I give it in what seems a paraphrase: “The story has to be, says Bharata, like a cow’s tail, bushy at the end, full of surprises. There must be adbhuta at the end.”

Raghavan 1940, 173 cites and quotes Nāṭyaśāstra 20.46-47, which I give here in my transliteration:

kAryaM gopucchAgraM kartavyaM kAvyabandhamAsAdya

ye codAttA bhAvAH te sarve pRSThataH kAryAH

sarveSAM kAvyAnaM nAnArasabhAvayuktiyuktAnAm

nirvahaNe kartavyo nityaM hi raso ‘dbhutastajjJaiH

My two questions are:

1.      I don’t see in the Sanskrit what would make the cow’s tail “bushy?”

2.      Can any of you tell me whether this is one of the Nāṭyaśāstra’s well-known gems, and, whether it is or not, does gopuccha occur elsewhere in connection with literary endings?

Very best,

Alf Hiltebeitel