Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v1.c2.6

v1.c2.6

A word of explanation may be deemed necessary regarding the use of the term "Poetics" to designate a half-theoretical and half-practical discipline which is known in Sanskrit as the *Alaṃkāra-śāstra* or the *Sāhitya-śāstra*. Prof. Jacobi, who seems to have been the first to make this term current, has sufficiently explained its scope in *ZDMG* lvi, 1902, p. 393, fn 1. It may be remarked that the commonly used term "Rhetoric" is inadequate in explaining the standpoint of a study which includes a great deal more than a mere practical treatment of rhetorical categories; while the expression "Aesthetics" is misleading in this connexion, inasmuch as the theoretical scope of Alaṃkāra is not fully co-extensive with what is expressed by that term in modern philosophical studies.