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Indian aesthetic terminology
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accepted ethical norms and not sensualists. This stand is by no means a vindication of the autonomy of art; it is a servile submission to the dictates of orthodoxy. It is once again in Kumārila that we are able to trace the origin of this compromising attitude. He observes that even Vālmīki and Vyāsa deserve to claim our attention only because of their loyalty to Vedic scriptures :
"Vedaprasthānābhyāsena hi Vālmıki-Dvaipā yanaprabhịtibhiḥ tathaiva svavākyāri pranitāni”.
(Tantravāritika, Iji.7. Ben, Edn. p. 16) This is all right so far as religious art or literature is concerned; but what about secular art? Has it no place in the Indian scheme of things ? Is not beauty or aesthetic value an end in itself?
Europe had to await the dawni of Renaissance and Reformation before humanism could assert itself in all directions. But in India, even before the Christian era, Kautilya in his Arthaśāstra and Bharata in his Natyaśāstra upheld the autonomy of the secular values of arth (political power) and kāma (sensual pleasure) even like the first framers of the Kāmaśāstra anterior to Vātsyāyana. In popular folk-literature represented by Hāla's Gāthāsaptaśati and Guņādhya's Bịhatkathā, we have ample room for extra-marital love-affairs and adventurous careerists, a tradition which continued in the later Daśakumāracarita of Dandin and the still later Suka-saptati. In the field of lyric too, rank eroticism characterises Mayūra's asļaka as well as Amaru's Sataka. In the genre of drama, we have bawdy bhānas and obsene prahasanas produced as late as the 18th century. Though all these may be regarded as exceptioos to the general rule of conformity to ethical norms, the question remains whether they deserve to be rated as artistic, exclusively by their aesthetic value. Only two theorists have attempted their defence in all seriousness. One is Rājasekhara whose facetious or specious argument is that even Vedic texts are tarred with same brush and hence poetry should not be singled out for attack. The second is
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