Now, with the verse 'The summary I gave…', Bharata points ahead to the detailed division of the very things he had so far only listed.

'Its' means 'of the summary'. The point is simple: the division is nothing other than the same summary, now stretched out in full.

Is the whole task finished just by naming things? No. That is why he says 'with nirukti (saniruktam)' — he will carry the treatment through to a genuine critical examination, not halt at the bare names.

The word 'up to the end' gives an avyayībhāva compound (the reading here is uncertain). And you cannot examine what has not first been defined — so he adds 'sakārikam', 'furnished with kārikās': the defining verses supply that definition. The prefix 'sa-' here compounds in the sense of 'endowed with'.

Of the two tasks he takes the division first. It is the whole stretch running from 'śṛṅgāra, hāsya…' at v15 down to the word 'nāṭyasaṅgraha' at 6-31.

Here is what nāṭya really is. It is a represented object (artha): one that a still, wholly gathered mind fastens on, a mind for which the power of the actor's abhinaya has become direct perception; and one lit up by a particular poetic form — some member of the whole family of nāṭaka and the rest. That object is nāṭya.

Though nāṭya is built of endless vibhāvas and the rest, it still comes down to one thing. Every insentient element rests in consciousness; consciousness rests in the one who enjoys it; and the whole crowd of enjoyers rests in the principal enjoyer. So the true nature of nāṭya is the abiding mental state — the sthāyibhāva — of that one chief enjoyer, the hero.

Now trace what happens to that single abiding state once it is on the stage. It is set among hundreds of other states no longer felt as 'mine' or 'his'. It takes its very shape from the ten limbs of lāsya — worldly songs, sung verses and the like — and rests on a practised, beautiful garland of performance: poetry heightened by ornament, song and music. So lifted, it is dislodged from its ordinary footing, and thereby becomes generalized. It draws even the onlookers in, felt as the very being of their own selves. Through that identification it shines out quite unlike an everyday emotion — which is someone else's, held from outside by inference, scripture, yogic sight or plain perception. It no longer appears lodged in any one limited self. Unlike your own private love or grief, it cannot push you on into further reactions. And just because it is now grasped by an activity of unobstructed, self-aware, restful joy — an activity whose other name is rasanā, 'relishing' — it is called by the word rasa.

So nāṭya simply is rasa. And the fruit rasa yields, they say, is vyutpatti — the cultivated discernment and refinement of the audience.

This is also why the coming verse at 6-31 can say 'apart from rasa…' in the singular: since all of nāṭya reduces to the one rasa, the single number is exactly right.

From the one great rasa (mahārasa), which is primary, the separate rasas are set out as its parts. How exactly the parts stand to the whole is left open in three ways, each borrowed from a theory of how words make a sentence. On the sphoṭa view the parts are unreal — only the one whole is real. On the anvitābhidhāna (Prābhākara) view they are both real and not, real only as already bound into the whole. On the abhihitānvaya (Bhāṭṭa) view they are fully real, and the great rasa is just their aggregate. Abhinava lines up all three and picks none.

Abhinava points ahead to Bharata's own line, "they bring the poem's meanings into felt being" — the phrase that will fix why these states are called bhāva, from bhū / bhāvayati, 'to make be, to make felt.'

Because rasa is the primary thing, Bharata names the rasas first. And on Abhinava's count they are nine — the eight of the verse plus śānta.

Those who reject śānta as a rasa keep the verse's word 'eight,' reciting only the eight. Abhinava reports the camp without folding it into his own view.

Now the order. Kāma is within reach of every living kind and is the most familiar of feelings — it either overpowers everyone or (on the variant reading) is dear to every heart. So the rasa built on it, śṛṅgāra, is named first.

Hāsya comes right after śṛṅgāra, as laughter shadows love. Then karuṇa — the exact reverse of śṛṅgāra: where love lives on the hope of union, grief is the state where nothing more is looked for.

Then raudra, sprung from that grief, with worldly gain (artha) as its driving aim; and at its core it is amarṣa, the indignation that cannot let a wrong stand.

Then vīra. Since both love and gain rest on dharma, the rasa whose leading value is dharma itself comes next — for vīra is heroism in the cause of duty.

And since the heart of heroism is granting safety to the frightened, the rasa of fear itself — bhayānaka — is set right after vīra: the hero exists to answer someone's fear.

Because the things that stir fear can be taken to be the very things that stir disgust — the corpse frightens and revolts at once — bībhatsa, the loathsome, is placed next to bhayānaka.

So this whole stretch — fear and disgust — is what vīra pulls in behind it. And because wonder (adbhuta) is the fruit crowning the heroic deed, adbhuta is taken up right after vīra's train closes.

Bharata's own later rule is cited: the adbhuta rasa should always come last.

Then, last, śānta. Its nature is the dharma of turning back (nivṛtti), the reverse of the dharma of engagement (pravṛtti) that drives the three worldly aims; and its fruit is liberation. So śānta closes the list as mokṣa closes the four ends of life.

It was already said that rasa is savored when the spectator's own self enters in. But that relish only happens through the force of the vibhāvas and the other feeling-elements. So now Bharata must set out the bhāvas — which is why v16 turns to 'again I shall tell of the bhāvas.'

A poet or actor who has never known the ordinary feeling — love and the rest — inwardly cannot possibly assemble the vibhāvas that belong to it. You must know the abiding feeling before you can stage its causes. That is why the sthāyibhāvas are enumerated first, in v17.

What is śānta's abiding feeling? One camp reads it as 'śama,' tranquil quiescence. Abhinava simply records the reading; the next sentence adds three more, none yet settled.

Others hold that its abiding feeling is utsāha, resolve; some say jugupsā, distaste for the world; and some say any of the feelings can serve. Four camps, four answers — Abhinava lays them side by side without choosing.

Abhinava gives his own answer: śānta's abiding feeling is nirveda born of the knowledge of truth — not mere despair, but the world-weariness that comes of seeing things as they are. And this is exactly why nirveda, though an inauspicious word to open with, is placed first in the list of transient feelings (v18): to signal that it works in both roles at once — as the abiding feeling of śānta and as a passing feeling elsewhere.

Because the sāttvikabhāvas depend on the actor's bodily enactment, they are listed right after the transient feelings — the eight of v22: paralysis, sweat, horripilation, and the rest.

A further camp observes that Bharata fixes no number for the sthāyibhāvas — unlike the thirty-three transient feelings and the eight sāttvika ones. And it is just because their count is left open that these same feelings, abiding in one setting, can also act as transient feelings in another.

Abhinava breaks off here: the whole question of how the abiding and transient feelings overlap he will unfold in full further on.

When Bharata says 'these are the transient feelings' and gives the count thirty-three, the number is stated to fix the boundary both ways at once: nothing outside these thirty-three counts as a vyabhicārin, and none of these thirty-three is anything but a vyabhicārin. The tally seals the class shut on both sides — which is exactly why the sthāyins, given no count, stay open (s30).

The sāttvika-bhāvas — stambha (going rigid), sveda (sweat), romāñca (bristling hair), and the rest of v22 — draw on two things at once: the working of the vyabhicāri-bhāvas and the working of abhinaya. Because they lean on both, Bharata counts them as a class of their own, apart from abhinaya and the rest. That is why v22 lists the eight sāttvikas on their own, even though sāttvika also stands as one of the four abhinayas in v23.

By counting 'four' — and so folding āhārya in among them — Bharata quietly shows that even the āhārya (the costume-and-prop enactment: the bow, the mask or headpiece, the crown, and so on) is an integral limb of the drama, not an outside add-on. When these props are put to work to make something directly perceptible on stage, they belong to the inner life of the play. Then he moves to the next word, 'resting on nāṭya.'

But in ordinary life, enactment (abhinaya) is sometimes not present at all. Why? Because out in the world the object is already grasped directly — you simply see the real thing, so there is nothing left to represent.

But in drama it is the reverse: those four enactments are its very life — take them away and there is no play. That is precisely why Bharata sets out the abhinayas right here, immediately after the rasas and the bhāvas. So the unit closes: rasas, then bhāvas, then the enactments that carry them.