Why give each rasa a colour? Because it helps in the dhyāna, the mental visualization, one performs while worshipping the deity. Others say it also serves a stage purpose: the colour of the actor's facial makeup (mukha-rāga).

Those who accept śānta as a rasa read the colour-line differently: transparent (svaccha) for śānta and yellow (pīta) for adbhuta. This gives the peaceful rasa a colour of its own. Abhinava reports the variant without adopting it.

The point of naming deities: to raise a particular rasa on stage, the actor worships that rasa's deity. That is why Bharata pairs each rasa with a god. And 'Viṣṇu,' śṛṅgāra's deity, is here glossed as Kāmadeva, the god of love — the fitting patron of the erotic.

The Pramathas are Śiva's gaṇas, his troop of attendants, and they are given over to play (krīḍā) — apt patrons of hāsya, the comic. Rudra is the destroyer of the three worlds — apt for raudra, the furious.

This is why Yama is karuṇa's deity. His name is read as 'the one who impels' (codayati) — a variant reading gives 'the one who restrains' (yamayati). Once Yama has brought about a death or the like, grief follows: pathos (karuṇa) arises. Death is the trigger (vibhāva) of grief, and Yama is its lord.

In 'of bībhatsa, Mahākāla,' the verse omits the word 'deity' — supply adhidaivata: Mahākāla is bībhatsa's deity. And rightly, for Mahākāla haunts exactly what stirs disgust — skeletons, cremation grounds and the like. Those are the vibhāvas, the exciting causes, of bībhatsa.

Mahendra (Indra) is king of the three worlds — apt for vīra, heroism. Brahmā fashions marvels beyond thought — apt for adbhuta, the wondrous.

Some who admit śānta read verse 45's ending as: 'Buddha for śānta, the lotus-born (Brahmā) for adbhuta.' They install Buddha as śānta's deity while keeping Brahmā for adbhuta. Abhinava records the variant, not resolving it.

In that variant, 'Buddha' is the Jina, wholly devoted to helping others — a temperament suited to the peace of śānta. Or one may take the word simply as prabuddha, 'the awakened one.' Abhinava leaves both senses of the word open.

A caution: defining a rasa by its origin (utpatti) — by the deity or source it springs from — proves nothing final. It is circular (anyonyāśraya): the rasa is explained by the deity and the deity's fitness by the rasa. So origin-based definition cannot settle what a rasa is.

So the colour-and-deity scheme is no strict logical definition — yet it holds, because tradition (āgama) establishes it. On that footing Bharata closes the section in one paragraph, beginning with the word 'evam…'.

'Eteṣām,' of these, means of all the rasas. Now Bharata turns to give each rasa its own specific definition (viśeṣa-lakṣaṇa), and frames the opening of that section with the word 'idānīm,' 'now,' and what follows.

A specific definition (viśeṣa-lakṣaṇa) is one that separates a thing from others of its own kind — here, one rasa from the other rasas, not merely rasa from non-rasa.

But you cannot tell one rasa from another until you have first told rasa from non-rasa. Membership in the class (sajātīyatva) presupposes the class being fenced off from outside. So the specific definition rides on a general one behind it.

And the specific definition cannot stand without the general one. To show that the specific follows immediately on the general, Bharata first restates the general definition of rasa — beginning with the word 'anubhāva…' — before giving the eight particular ones.

What follows serves at once as definition (lakṣaṇa) and as illustration (nidarśana), and each item is specific — tied to a single rasa.

So the sense is: a specific definition is given for each rasa in turn. That is the first way of taking Bharata's words.

Or, read the other way: the specific definitions are worked illustrations (nidarśana) of the single general definition, each displaying the general lakṣaṇa in one rasa. Abhinava leaves both readings standing.

This completes the alternative Abhinava floated just before: the specific definitions of each rasa are the illustrations of the one general definition. They are the places where that umbrella definition actually gets fitted onto a particular rasa and shown in action. A general rule, and then eight cases that both carry it and demonstrate it.

Why must the general definition come with the specific ones? Because a general rule cannot be shown at all except through its cases — take the cases away and there is nothing to point to. Then Abhinava reads a small word: the 'ca' in the passage is not idle. It signals reverent attention, because rasa is lokottara — it stands outside ordinary worldly experience and so is handled with care.

Take the durable emotions — love, grief, fear — as they are in ordinary life. There they are only movements of the mind, and worse, they harness a person to an unbroken chain of duties that breed toil without end. Abhinava's claim is bold: even these, of all things, we shall raise to the condition of rasa. And the lever is a teaching — that rasa is the single abode of repose. In the world these emotions drive you to labour; turned to rasa, the very same emotions become pure rest.

Here is how the leading is done. Poets and actors set out the vibhāvas — the situations, persons and stimulants of the emotion — each in its proper place. By that fitting presentation the durable emotions are carried up into rasa. So the transformation is not magic: it is craft, the appropriate arrangement of the causes on the page and on the stage.

Abhinava backs the point with a verse. It names two kinds of inner sight. First, the poet's fresh vision — the one that is actually at work relishing and producing the rasas. Second, the scholar-critic's vision, whose flash of insight plays over meanings already settled and worked out. The half-verse lays out the pair; the reason it is quoted is the first member, the poet's rasa-relishing sight.

The verse finishes. Leaning on both visions at once — the poet's and the critic's — and tirelessly painting the whole universe in words, the speaker says: we have exhausted ourselves, and still, O Lord who lies upon the ocean, we never found a happiness the equal of loving devotion to you. The couplet's own peak is bhakti; for Abhinava's argument what matters is that it has just named the two visions, the first of which is the poet's rasa-relishing sight.

Abhinava now mines the verse's word 'fresh' (navā). It fits the poet, not the actor. The actor's vision lives off the poet's — it is second-hand. It can see and present what the poet made, but it does not itself do the fresh relishing that brings rasa into being. That is precisely why the verse reserves the epithet 'fresh' for the poet's sight alone.

Here is the pay-off. When we teach how to deploy, fittingly, the vibhāvas and the rest that serve relishing, the durable emotions are thereby led up into rasa. And that is the whole point of giving these definitions: Bharata, by saying this, shows the fruit of the passage cast as a definition. A definition is not idle classification here — it is the instruction that turns worldly emotion into rasa.