Indian Aesthetics

This is something that I read some time back on the internet. Very interesting but unfortunately again; I can’t remember the details of the source.

“A long and varied tradition.

More sophisticated at an earlier stage than western aesthetics. In the west, although individual philosophers had written on various issues concerning beauty and art (Plato talks about the form of beauty, about the danger of poetry, and the effect that various musical modes may have; Aristotle about the effect of tragic drama)we don’t get any sense of aesthetics as a unified discipline until the early 18th century.

The word “aesthetics” is coined by Baungarten in 1735. Only at this stage do westerners recognise the system of ‘fine arts’(music, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, etc.). only at this stage do westerners recognise that painting, poetry, and music, have anything at all in common and can be subject of unified philosophical study.

Indian aesthetics dates from at least 300 BCE. The most famous foundational thinker is Bharata (100 BCE) who wrote Natya Sastra.

Bharata distinguishes 8 or 9 (some scholarly argument) rasas. Love, Humour, Pathos, Anger, Heroism, Terror, Disguest, Wonder, Serenity. These are moods/modes/sentiments/qualities which a work of art may have. Bharata regards artworks as expressing one or more of these rasas.

Note firstly that this provides Indian aesthetics with the concept of an artwork( an artefact which is created to express a rasa) 1800 years before we in the west get a corresponding concept.

Note secondly that Bharata’s 9 fold classification of rasas generates a potentially richer aesthetics than we have in the west. We tend to be preoccupied with the notion of beauty. There is some talk of terror. And Kant notes the existence of wonder but doesn’t say much about it. In contrast Indian aesthetics is well equipped to provide a much more detailed exploration of our aesthetic experience.

He also distinguishes between the rasa or an artwork and the emotion that we feel upon experiencing it. An artwork might express one emotion but we might feel something completely different when we experience the artwork.”

Great to know..isn’t it?