352. 390 CHAPTER VII

390 CHAPTER VII

Rasasvada, which Bharata uses with monotonous regularity. THE DRAMATIC AND THE POETIC EXPERIENCES DIFFERENTIATED. The æsthetic experience, of which we have talked in the foregoing pages, is essentially an experience, in which the elements of individuality of both, the subject and the object, are eliminated. It is a subjective realisation of a universalised basic mental state (sthayin), unified with the situation (vibhava),etc. It is due to identification of the spectator with the focus of the situation. This is primarily dramaturgic conception of æsthetic experience. The earliest available authority, that mentions it, is Bharata. The poeticians, however, had a different concep- tion of it. According to them, it is not an immediate expe- rience, as according to the dramaturgists, but a judgement. It arises, therefore, not in consequence of self-forgetfulness of the audience and their identification with the focus of the presented situation : on the contrary, it is due to the appreciative attitude towards, and the object- tive apprehension of, the presented. On the objective side also it is different from that of the dramaturgists. Its object need not be an emotive situation. Any linguistic presentation, provided it is not a mere matter-of- fact description of a thing as it appears to an ordinary man, but possesses some crookedness (Vakratva) and is recognised to have some element of art and to represent an object as it figures in poetic imagination and, therefore, is capable of arousing the interest of an appreciative audience of fine taste, is sufficient for the æsthetic experience, as conceived by the poeticians. Thus the poetician's conception of æthetic experience is quite different from that of the dramaturgists in respect of its essential nature as well as