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APPENDIX-I
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properties. Instead of getting bogged down into details of nomenclature or semantic quibblings, it would be worthwhile to look rather for the informing aesthetic principle. The sagacious Hemacandrācārya calls the simile 'hrdyam sådharmyam'-pleasurable (heart-pleasing) similitude, and this should lead us to the modern exploring of the link of analogy in feeling.
Even if the concept of tragedy is foreign to India, and the 'tragic' is not exactly 'karuna-rasa,' there is an aesthetic principle which is common to both. Plato talked of 'tragic pleasure' (Philebus, 47-8). Aristotle says that tragedy does not depress one, it raises the spirits of men.2 The Sanskrit writers (except Rāmacandra-and-Guņacandra) have constantly maintained that Pathos (the karuna-rasa) also pleases, that all rasas are dominated by plcasure, that all art-experience ends in beatitude.
Every critic who deals with a poem has to keep in his view the trinity of (1) the poet, (2) the poem, and (3) the reader. Where does he actually start from ? Perhaps he thinks he starts from the second-the poem itself. But, what is a poem ? Is it just a piece of paper with marks of ink on it or a video-tape ? Valery said, "It is the reading of the Poem that is the Poem”. In other words, it is in somebody's experience of poem that 'the poem' becomes itself. So, the critic, while dealing with a poem, has always to start with the third-the reader, himself, i.e. his own experience of the poem. The Sanskrit writers on Poetics, especially those who testify to rasa, could not be more right. One can speak about the poem and even the poet only after one's experience of the poem.
It is surprising that no less an expert on Sanskrit poetics than the late S. K. De should chide the Ācāryas for their preoccupation with the under standing of the nature of art-experience. He says,4".. they consider the problem indirectly and imperfectly from the standpoint of the readers and not directly and completely from that of the poet”, and adds, “they are concerned mainly with the question of the reader's reproduction but not of the poet's production". But, there is no way of dealing with the poet's production but through the reader's reproduction. Even if the poet himself chooses to say something about his production, outside of the production itself, he cannot be treated as a final authority. His account would be one of many such accounts available from discerning readers and the final authority has to be the critic himself engaged in the task of judging it aesthetically.
However, it is not correct to say that the Ācāryas have neglected the problem of poetic creation. In fact, their concern with it is interconnected with their concern with the problem of poetic experience. For, when the rasasūtra 'vibhāvānubhava-vyabhicări-samyogad rasa-nispattiḥ' lays down
2. Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle Vol. II, William Benton, Publisher, Encyclopaedia
Britanica, Inc., 1952, p. 688. 3. Paul Valery, "A Course in Poetics : First Lesson," Southern Review, 5 (Winter 1940), p. 409. . 4. S. K. De, Sanskrit Poetics as a Study of Aesthetics, Oxford University Press, 1963, p. 74.
