Rasa in Shakuntala

Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof states that the theory of rasa proposes that there are eight fundamental potential or innate emotional states, called bhava, within every individual: 1. Pleasure or delight 2. Laughter or humour 3. Sorrow or pain 4. Heroism or courage 5. Anger 6.Fear 7. Disgust  8. Wonder.  These emotions can be brought upon watching or reading certain events in acts or texts.

So in Shakuntala, in act 2 a feeling of rasa can be felt when the king is professing his love for a women he just met and telling himself whether she loves him back or not: (to himself) Thus a lover deceive himself. He judges his love’s feelings by his own desires.” He goes on saying that she might like him back but that might be her just being nice. The emotions that are brought upon this are humour and some sorrow since we feel bad that a king is going through this dilemma but at the same time it is funny to see him think about this and second guess himself. Basically the entire collection of acts want the reader to feel the emotion of love based the king falling in love at firs glance.