An Introduction to Indian Aesthetics

This book offers a comprehensive historical and conceptual overview of all the major schools in Sanskrit poetics-one of the most sophisticated and long-standing traditions of literary criticism in the ancient world. The book, despite its primary focus on the major exponents of each school, also aims to give the reader a good idea as to how these concepts were treated before and after their major practitioners. An important part of Sanskrit poetics that often intimidates a modern reader is its seemingly difficult terminology. This book particularly addresses this issue by using a contemporary idiom for readers who have no background of Sanskrit. It also aims to draw points of comparison, wherever relevant, between certain concepts in Sanskrit poetics and their western counterparts.