50. HISTORY OF INDIAN ÆSTHETICS 53

HISTORY OF INDIAN ÆSTHETICS 53

dramatic presentation exactly as does that of a horse from a pictorial or plastic presentation of it.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF THIS THEORY :-

1. Indefinability of the experience. 2. Unpresentability of the basic mental state in language. 3. The doctrine of contradiction in experience.

ITS CRITICISM.

The imitation and inference theories of art cannot go together, if the inference has reference to the basic mental state, that is, if Rasa be held to be due to objective con- sciousness of an imitated basic mental state, got through inference from three types of reasons, cognised as imitations. The imitation theory of art is maintained by some of the western æstheticians also. We shall discuss the western point of view in the second volume. Here, therefore, we shall confine our attention to Sankuka's theory only. His imitation theory aroused immediate opposition fr om Abhina- va's teachers in poetics and dramaturgy, Bhatttenduraja and Bhatta Tauta, who were probably his younger contempora- ries, because Abhinava clearly attributes the criticism to his teachers1. It can briefly be stated as follows :-

Critics2 raised the question of the point of view, viz., from whose point of view is art an imitation ? Is it from the point of view (i ) of spectator ( ii ) or that of actor ( iii ) or that of a disinterested analyst, who aims at finding out the real nature of dramatic presentation ( iv ) or is it that it is the view of Bharata himself, as expressed somewhere in his Natya Sastra ? Let it be remembered that Srīsankuka's imitation theory of art refers to the basic mental state only.

1 A. Bh. Vol. I., 275. 2. A. Bh. Vol. 1. 275-6.