2023-03-29 18:09:27 by ambuda-bot
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INTRODUCTION
(I) THE PROBLEM
The Indian poetics, or alamkāraśāstra,¹ has not been favored in the West
with attention commensurate to its position among the traditional
intellectual disciplines of India. The interest that has been shown has
tended to concentrate on those aspects of Indian poetics which bear
some superficial resemblance to theories current in the West and indeed
further our expectations (or prejudices) of poetry itself. The result has
generally been a haphazard and distorted view of the nature and aims
of Indian poetics, and interpretations of the history of that poetics which
imply critical standards alien to it. What is needed is a new approach
to the entire problem-one which, while retaining its critical distance,
ttempts to place Indian poetics in the context of classical Indian poetry
and culture, and to perceive in some measure what important poetic
problems the poetic was in fact explicating. We must not judge it only
insofar as it may explicate problems posed by contemporary poetry.
(a) Poetic as Aesthetic Psychology
Starting from the Crocean position, whose own roots go back at least to
Longinus, most contemporary critics of classical Indian poetics² tend
1 Lit.: 'science of the ornaments (or figures of speech)'. On the word alamkāra
(lit.: 'a making adequate"), cf. "The Meaning of the Word Alamkāra" in J. Gonda,
A Volume of Eastern and Indian Studies in Honour of F. W. Thomas (Bombay, 1939),
pp. 97ff.
* Particularly S. K. De, whose views will retain our attention throughout this Introduc-
tion. His recently published lectures Sanskrit Poetics as a Study of Aesthetic (University
of California Press, 1963) (henceforth referred to as SPSA) state his critical view with
cogency and clarity, but it is represented also in many of De's other works: History
of Sanskrit Poetics (2nd ed., Calcutta, 1960) (hereafter cited as HSP); Some Problems
of Sanskrit Poetics (Calcutta, 1951), pp. 1 ff., etc. The views which De expresses most
vigorously are also held by others as, for example, S. N. Dasgupta (with whom he
(I) THE PROBLEM
The Indian poetics, or alamkāraśāstra,¹ has not been favored in the West
with attention commensurate to its position among the traditional
intellectual disciplines of India. The interest that has been shown has
tended to concentrate on those aspects of Indian poetics which bear
some superficial resemblance to theories current in the West and indeed
further our expectations (or prejudices) of poetry itself. The result has
generally been a haphazard and distorted view of the nature and aims
of Indian poetics, and interpretations of the history of that poetics which
imply critical standards alien to it. What is needed is a new approach
to the entire problem-one which, while retaining its critical distance,
ttempts to place Indian poetics in the context of classical Indian poetry
and culture, and to perceive in some measure what important poetic
problems the poetic was in fact explicating. We must not judge it only
insofar as it may explicate problems posed by contemporary poetry.
(a) Poetic as Aesthetic Psychology
Starting from the Crocean position, whose own roots go back at least to
Longinus, most contemporary critics of classical Indian poetics² tend
1 Lit.: 'science of the ornaments (or figures of speech)'. On the word alamkāra
(lit.: 'a making adequate"), cf. "The Meaning of the Word Alamkāra" in J. Gonda,
A Volume of Eastern and Indian Studies in Honour of F. W. Thomas (Bombay, 1939),
pp. 97ff.
* Particularly S. K. De, whose views will retain our attention throughout this Introduc-
tion. His recently published lectures Sanskrit Poetics as a Study of Aesthetic (University
of California Press, 1963) (henceforth referred to as SPSA) state his critical view with
cogency and clarity, but it is represented also in many of De's other works: History
of Sanskrit Poetics (2nd ed., Calcutta, 1960) (hereafter cited as HSP); Some Problems
of Sanskrit Poetics (Calcutta, 1951), pp. 1 ff., etc. The views which De expresses most
vigorously are also held by others as, for example, S. N. Dasgupta (with whom he