148. 168 CHAPTER III

168 CHAPTER III

The situation etc. have no fixed definite meaning in isolation from other constituents of the dramatic presenta- tion. In order to obviate this dubiousness, the situation, mimetic changes and transient emotions are presented together.

THE CONCLUSION. The æsthetic experience at the Kathartic level in the light of Abhasavada, is not the objective cognition of a basic mental state in the hero, but the self-experience of the self, free from all limitations, as identified with the basic mental state becoming patent through the rise of Vasana due to identification with the focus of the situation.

THE AIM OF THE DRAMATIC PRESENTATION. The Indian dramatist aims at presenting an emotive experience and not action, as do the European dramatists. This experience is not an ordinary daily experience of the common run of men, but that of an ideal man in an ideal situation. And because experience is an inner state of the self and as such does not admit of being directly presented, the physical situation, mimetic changes and in- voluntary physical states are introduced as the only means of presentation of the inner state. Further, the experience that the dramatist attempts to present, being essentially emotive, presupposes a situation, without which the presen- tation would be but partial. Hence the situation is introduced not as an independent centre of attention but only as a means of realisation of the emotive experience. Full appreciation of an Indian drama is, therefore, not possible through objective perception of the external situation and physical states, because they are only means to an end, So far as the experience itself is concerned, its objective perception is a psychological impossibility ;