Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c79.74

v2.c79.74

The idea of rasa, apart from any theory thereon, was naturally not unknown to old writers; and Bharata's treatment would indicate that some system of rasa, however undeveloped, or even a Rasa school, particularly in connexion with the drama, must have been in existence in his time. But the bearings of this doctrine on poetry were seldom discussed, and the importance of rasa as one of the essential factors of poetry was indeed naively understood but was not theoretically established⁴⁴. As Dramaturgy was in the beginning a separate study, from which Poetics itself probably took its cue, the *rasa*-doctrine, which sprang up chiefly in connexion with this study, confined its activity in the first stage of its development to the sphere of dramatic composition and exerted only a limited influence on poetic theories⁴⁵. The importance of this dramaturgic *rasa*-system must have been somewhat overshadowed by the early dominance, in Poetics proper, of the Alaṃkāra and Rīti systems, whose traditions are carried on by the two earliest writers on Poetics, Bhāmaha and Daṇḍin, both of whom allow a very subsidiary place to *rasa* in their scheme; but at the same time the comparative antiquity of such a *rasa*-system in connexion with the drama, going back to a time even earlier than Bharata, cannot be doubted.