Comparative Aesthetics Indian and Western (Set of 2 Books)

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Comparative Aesthetics Indian and Western
Comparative Aesthetics Volume I	Comparative Aesthetics: Volume II

I had the pleasure of examining Dr. K. C. Pandey's Thesis on Comparative Aesthetics for the D. Litt. degree of the' Lucknow University and I recommended the award of the degree. His work deals with a ralatively unexplored section of lndian thought and his handling of the original sources and sympathetic interpretation of Aesthetic doctrines are remarkable. No student of Indian Aesthetics can afford to neglect this important work. When the projected second and third volumes appear, Dr. Pandey would have done work of an enduring character.

The following pages fulfil the promise, made to the reader in the Introduction to my Abhinavagupta: An Historical and Philosophical Study. Here the word 'Aesthe- tics' stands for 'Science and Philosophy of Fine Art', - For, the texts, on the basis of which 'Indian Aesthetics' is presented in the following pages, have approached the problem from both, the technical and the philosophical points of view. Here the problem of aesthetics is studied from the points of view of the dramaturgists and the poeticians. Although the School of Aesthetics, represented by Bharata and Abhinavagupta, regards all other arts, whether fine or mechanical, as auxiliaries to the dramatic art, yet the authorities on two arts, (i) Music and (ii) Architecture, assert the independence of these two fine arts in - giving rise to aesthetic experience. Thus, in India, there are three schools of the Philosophy of Fine Art: (i) Rasa-Brahma-Vada, (ii) Nada-Brahma-Vada and (iii) Vastu-Brahma- Vada. The latter two will be dealt with in a subsequent volume on the subject.

In this volume also, as in the case of the previous, Sanskrit texts have been studied from the historical and the philosophical points of view. It is primarily concerned with the presentation of Abhinavagupta's Theory of Aesthetics against the background of the History of Aesthetic Thought in India and in proper setting of the system of the monistic Saiva Philosophy of Kashmir, as propounded by him in his two famous and voluminous works, (i) Isvara Pratyabhijna VimarsinI and (ii) Isvara Pratyabhijna Vivrti Vimarsini

The latter' work is a commentary by Abhinavagupta on Utpalacarya's own commentary on his own Isvara Pratyabhijna Karika. It was available only in MSS. at the time when the present work was undertaken, though its publication has recently been completed by the Research .Department of Kashmir. But the original commentary of Utpalacarya seems to be irrecoverably lost. For, not only my search for this valuable work in private and •public collections of M SS. all over India has failed to trace it out but also that of the Research Department of Kashmir, with all the resources of Kashmir State at its disposal.The published text tallies with MS. No. 464 of 1875-76 in the' Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, so much so that the same portions are missing in both.

In the absence of the original, it iS exceptionally difficult to follow the commentary closely. But Abhinava- gupta's method of commenting is such as gives to his work some sort of independent value. At the beginning of his commentary on each Karika he gives his own interpre- tation so as to bring out clearly its full meaning. On many . important philosophical points, referred to by Utpalacarya in the course of his lost commentary, he enters into fairly lengthy discussions. Some of these are very important for a proper understanding of his theory of aesthetics. In the present work they have been utilised for the first time.

The Abhinava Bharati has not yet been fully published. Only the first two volumes, which cover first 18 Chapters, have been •'brought out by our learned friend, Rama Krishna Kavi. It is the most important and the biggest work on Indian Aesthetics. And without a careful study and thorough understanding of its contents, it is not possible to write on Indian AEsthetics so as to show the jmportance of Abhinavagupta's Theory of Aethetics.in a comparative light. In this work the whole of the Abhinava Bharati has been used for the first time to solve different problems connected with AEsthetics, such as those of the unities of time, place and action in Sanskrit Drama: and why is there no tragedy in Sanskrit in the strict Shakespearian sense of it.

The scholars, who have so far written on Abhinava- gupta's Theory of AEsthetics, have either completely ignored the philosophical aspect of the problem, as Dr. Sankaran has done in his Some Aspects of Literary Criticism, or have attempted to present it in terms of the Vedanta Philosophy, as has been done by P. Panchapagesa Shastri in his Philosophy of AEsthetic Plasure. Such an attempt is as good as interpreting the AEsthetic Theory of Hegel in terms of the philosophy of Kant, He has, however, followed the tradition, which developed, in ignorance of the philosopby of Abhinavagupta, of interpreting his AEsthetic Theory in terms of the Vedanta,

I feel greatly encouraged by the demand for the Second Edition of this Volume on Comparative AEsthetics, long before the Second Volume on the subject could appear. I am, therefore, extremely grateful to the readers in general, who took such a keen interest in it; to the professors, who made use of it in teaching the post-graduate courses; to the reviewers, whose valuable appreciations and helpful suggestions drew the attention of scholars to it and to the Universities, which recommended it for Post-graduate study not only in Sanskrit but also in Philosophy.

I have utilised the opportunity, offered by the Second Edition, in giving a more complete picture of Indian AEsthe- tics than the one presented in the First Edition by adding Chapters on the history and philosophy of music and architecture, the two arts, which alone, besides poetry, are recognised to be independent or fine in Indian tradition, and, therefore, fall within the purview of a work On Indian aestbetlcs. I have also attempted to tackle some important problems such as the following:-

(i) Poetry is the highest form of art: drama is the highest form of poetry: tragedy is the highest form of drama. Why did not the tragic form of drama develop in Sanskrit?

(ii) Why is there more dialogue than action in Sanskrit drama?

(iii) Did the ancient stage employ curtains; presenting scenes of action such as mountains, palaces and temples, and artistic imitations of inanimate and animate objects such as chariots and horses?

(iv)What is the difference between the two experiences, Karune and tragic?

The primary aim of the two Volumes, which are before the readers, is a faithful presentation of Indian and Western theories of aesthetics in their proper philosophical setting. 'Sensitive discussion of Western thought from Indian point of view'; 'critical interpretation and appre- ciation of the aesthetic thought of the two cultures'; 'explanation of the points of agreement and difference between them' and similar other approaches, suggested by learned critics such as Prof. Alexander Sesonske, Prof. G. E. Myers and Prof. Herald Mc Arthy, will engage my attention in the Third Volume.

I am extremely grateful to Shri jaykrishna Das Gupta, Secretary, Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, for his keen personal interest, to Shri Anand Shankar, director, Tara Printing Works, for his careful guidance of the pressmen, to Mr. Aditya Prakash Mishra and to Mrs. Lila Pandey for the valuable assistance in research to complete this work.

A careful study of the asthetic theories of the Western thinkers from Sophist Gorgias ( about 470 B. C. ) and Socrates" (469-399 B. C.) to Croce ( 1866-1952) produces an impre- ssion on the mind of one who is familiar with Indian AEsthe- tics that the East and the West have thought on the problem of the beautiful in ways which have marked similarity and. therefore, there is ample scope for a comparative approach to the problem of esthetics. Such an impression has been respon- sible for my thesis "Comparative .AEsthetics".

To prove the correctness of the thesis, this Volume presents the imitative, hedonistic, pedagogic, kathartic, -mystic, inte- llectualistic, emotive, transcendental, absolutist, intuitive and other allied theories of art generally in a chronological order. grouping together the thinkers of a particular country; shows how each resthetic thinker influenced his successors; states in the beginning of each chapter the points of similarity bet. ween the aesthetic thought of a Western thinker and that of an Indian; and in the concluding chapter gives a summary of comparative approach.

A detailed comparison of Western esthetic thought, past and contemporary, with Indian, is the subject-matter of the Third Volume, Indian and Western .AEsthetics .

AEsthetics is a part of philosophy. The majority of estheticians have been influenced in their theories of art by their metaphysical. epistemic, psychological and ethical views. The relevant aspects of the philosophy of every important thinker, who propounds his own .system or follows an already existing school of thought, therefore, have been given as the background of his asthetic theory and it has been shown how he was influenced in his theory of art by his general philosophical outlook.

In the present work also as in the earlier, fidelity to the original texts has been the guiding principle. In order to convince the reader of this fact, foot-notes have been given indicating the texts on the basis of which the statements have been made in the body of the book. The foot-notes are of two kinds, with asterisks and without them. The former refer to the Sanskrit texts, the quotations from which are given in Appendix A. The latter refer to the texts in or translations into English. The original texts of many Western aesthetic thinkers have been accessible to me in their English translations only, as I do not know all the languages, in which they were written by their respective authors. The reader, therefore, I hope, will excuse me for any inaccuracy that may be due to this short-coming.

The present volume, like the earlier, has benefited very much from the learned suggestions of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, the Vice-President of India. It is, therefore, my sacred duty to acknowledge respectfully my deep debt of gratitude to him.

My sincere thanks are due to Professor N. K. Sidhanta for help in dealing with Aristotle ; to Professor E. Ahmad Shah for going through the typescript and giving many help- ful suggestions; to Professors K. A. S. Iyer, Kali Prasad, A. V. Rao and Dr. Raj Narain for occasional help-; to my research assistants, Mr. Aditya Prakash Misra, Mr. A. K. Banerjee and Mrs. Lila Pandey. for their wholehearted devotion to work; and above all to my late learned guide, Professor N. N. Sengupta, who helped me in understanding such difficult texts as Kant's Three Critiques.

It is the greatest satisfaction of my lift that my works in the field of Comparative AEsthetics and Saiva Philo- sophy have aroused such an interest in the scholars, both in India and abroad, that the second editions of all of them are in demand. The second editions of Abhinavagupta: An Historical and Philosophical Study and Comparative AEsthetics Vol. 1, Indian AEsthetics, have already been published. I am very happy to be able to present to my Learned readers the second edition of Comparative AEsthetics Vol. II, Western AEsthetics.

Earlier, aesthetics was recognised to be exclusively a subject of the West. Histories of AEsthetics, written by Bernard Bosanquet, Benedetto Croce, and Gilbert and Kuhn, confined themselves to the presentation of aesthetic currents in the West only. They completely ignored oriental easthetics; probably because they thought that such a subject does not exist in the East.

Internationalism in (aesthetics, however, made a start with the first International Congress of AEsthetics., held in 1913 in Berlin. But it was confined to the nations in the West. The gap between the occidental and the oriental (aesthetics remained as ever before. About this time scholars in the East, particularly in India, China and Japan, and orientalists in the West started writing on oriental arts and aesthetics in English and other European languages. Their works made the Western estheticians recognise that "Oriental art contains important values not attained by art in the West"; (Thomas Munro : Oriental AEsthetics-. P. 13) led to the discovery of important insights in oriental aesthetics, applicable to art and aesthetic experience everywhere and made many Western artists and critics believe that the Western art has much to learn from Eastern methods.

Names of some of the important orientalists, whose writings on arts and aesthetics have led •to the recognition of oriental aesthetics, aesthetic currents in India, China and Japan, are as follows :-
( i ) Writers on Indian arts and aesthetics:
Stella Kamrisch, R. Gnoli, S. K. De, G. C. O. Haas, Clay Lancaster, Anand Coomaraswamy, Philip Rawson, P. J. Chowdhury, O. C. Gangoly, V. Raghavan, Benjamin Rowland, Radha Kamal Mukerjee, Paul Mus, Alice Boner, A. L. Basham, Manomohan Ghosh and K. C. Pandey . on whose contribution to esthetics Professor Thomas Munro in his Oreintal AEstheties ( P. 29 ) makes the following observation :-
"The most comprehensive publication by a single author on the combined field of Indian and Western aesthetics, as far as I know, is the monumental series of volumes by Professor K. C. Pandey of Lucknow University on Compa- rative .AEsthetics. Volume I, recently enlarged in a second edition, is on Indian .AEsthetics; Volume II on Western AEsthetics. Dr. Pandey displays in Volume II a consider- able knowledge of European Philosophy from Plato through Croce."
( ii) Writers on Japanese arts and aesthetics:
M. Ueda, D. T. Suzuki. Shin’ichi Hisamatsu,
( iii ) Writers on Chinese arts and aesthetics: Osvald Siren, A. C. Soper, Wen Fong, E. R. Hughes, Achilles Fang.

Now esthetics is not regarded as an exclusively Western subject, but as a world-wide subject. And a plan is being sponsored by UNESCO to bring out Twenty Volumes pre- senting different esthetic currents including Russian, Japa- nese, Chinese, Indian etc. under the common title "Sources of AEsthetics". Porfessor Jan Aler of the University of Amsterdam is the general editor of this series and I am contributing to it a volume on Indian AEsthetics.

I must apologise to my learned readers for my inability to make a substantial addition to the present edition because of my preoccupation with the aforesaid work, a typescript of which has already been submitted to the general editor; and the Svatantrakala Sastra Vol. II, Pascatya, which. I hope will be published soon to meet the demand of Indian readers for a book, presenting the aesthetic currents of the West, in Hindi, the national language of the country .

I am very happy to see that the Abhinavagupta Institute of AEsthetics and Saiva Philosophy, Lucknow University, is beginning to realise its aim of publishing a series of volumes on the two subjects in which it specialises and that this work of mine is the first contribution to it.

My most sincere thanks are due to Professors S. Radha- krishnan, I. A. Richards, L. Renou, Charles Morris, J, Brough and to the editors of the Journals-the Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, University of Buffalo, U. S. A., the Journal of AEsthetics and Art Criticism, Western Reserve University, U. S. A., the Visvabharati Quarterly, Santini- ketan, the Calcutta Review, the Annals af Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, whose considered opinions on and learned reviews of the first edition of this book drew the attention of the lovers of AEsthetics to it : to Mrs. Lila Pandey for her selfless help in seeing this edition through the press: to Sri Mohan Das Gupta and Sri Bitthal Das Gupta, Directors, Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series,for thier keen interest and careful guidance of the pressmen,: to the University Grants Commission, the U: P. Government and the Lucknow University for the much needed help to establish the Abhi- navagupta Institute of AEsthetics and Saiva Philosophy so as to enable it to start publication of the results oj the research that is carried on here.