Exploring VÄ tsalyam: The Emotion of Love for the Child

Rekha Sharma Sen and Shilpa Pandit
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Shilpa Pandit: Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

Psychology and Developing Societies, 2013, vol. 25, issue 1, 165-193

Abstract: The emotion of vÄ tsalyam is perceived as central to the construction of love in the Indian cultural context. Usually understood as the love of the parents for their children, it is not confined to parental love alone. The article examines the historicity of the concept of vÄ tsalyam as well as its contemporary expression. It combines enquiry from three domains—Indian philosophical thought, literature and folk psychology. The first section of the article provides the theoretical framework within which the concept is situated in Indian psychology. Drawing from the rasa theory, we explicate how experiencing of worldly emotions can simultaneously be the means of transformation. In the second section, we attempt to bring out the centrality of the emotion of vÄ tsalyam in Indian psyche and its pan-Indian expression by drawing from the literatures in Tamil, Hindi, Bengali and Marathi. The third section of the article uses a short qualitative enquiry to examine contemporary understanding of vÄ tsalyam based on responses of lay persons and artists relating to nature of vÄ tsalyam , their modes of expression of this emotion, its manifestation in various relationships, and their views on the uniqueness of this emotion, or otherwise, to the Indian cultural context

Keywords: vÄ tsalyam; rasa; bhakti; emotion; mamata; parental love; culture; folk theories; Indian philosophical thought; literary expressions; Indian psychology; transformative emotions; indigenous psychology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:psydev:v:25:y:2013:i:1:p:165-193

DOI: 10.1177/0971333613477303

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