Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c85.4

v2.c85.4

² The problem, therefore, does not concern rhetoric merely, and the ideal of beauty (if the expression is allowable) is no longer conceived from the outside, being associated with a peculiar condition of artistic enjoyment, the suggestion of which is taken as the chief function of poetry. As suggested by an able critic of Sanskrit literature (Oldenberg, *Die Literatur des alten Indien*, pp. 207f), the Indian theorists permit intellectual vigour and subtlety, the masculine beauty, to stand behind that of purely feminine enjoyment born of the finest sensibility. Both these traits are found in the literature from the earliest times; the idea of ecstatic rapture side by side with a strong inclination towards sagacity and subtlety. It is true that the dogmatic formalism of a scholastic discipline naturally sank to the level of a cold and monotonously inflated rhetoric; but at the same time it must be admitted that the theorists were not blind to finer issuses, nor were they indifferent to the supreme excellence of real poetry and the aesthetic pleasure resulting from it. They always take care to add that despite dogmas