Comparative Aesthetics Indian Aesthetics 2d Ed 1959

AIM In spite of a reasonably extensive literature in English' and Indian vernaculars, there are extremely few books on Indian music that can be considered of a scientific standard. I found, when I took up an interest in Indian music in 1967, that even protracted reading of the studies in English was not conducive to an understanding of the principles of performance. Most of my study and research have been devoted to the gradual refinement of this very understanding. In the course of time it also became obvious that different scholars and different musicians held divergent views on many basic concepts of Indian music. Therefore, one of my tasks was to assess the degree of variability in Indian music. As a corollary I wanted to know how this variability could manifest itself as change in a relatively short and well-documented period. It is often assumed that traditional cultures, as e. g. in India, are rather inert and that the art forms hardly ever change. This study proves the contrary: Indian music has a strong vitality. If we examine the different treatises through the centuries this vitality would appear to be a basic characteristic. I felt that at least an effort to discover the roots of such change would be valuable as a contribution to the study of art history and possibly to the sociology of culture.

This innovative study develops a unified theory of literature by critically evaluating the categories of sanskrit poetics from a single theoretical standpoint that of rasa the theory that holds that poety is essentially emotive discourse. Literature Chariargues is defined not by the use of any formal linguistic devices but rather by the emotive meaning embodied is therefore the proper aim and the common denominator of all literary works.

Offering a broad perspective of the philosophy, theory, and aesthetics of early Indian music and musical ideology, this study makes a unique contribution to our knowledge of the ancient foundations of India's musical culture. Lewis Rowell reconstructs the tunings, scales, modes, rhythms, gestures, formal patterns, and genres of Indian music from Vedic times to the thirteenth century, presenting not so much a history as a thematic analysis and interpretation of India's magnificent musical heritage. In Indian culture, music forms an integral part of a broad framework of ideas that includes philosophy, cosmology, religion, literature, and science. Rowell works with the known theoretical treatises and the oral tradition in an effort to place the technical details of musical practice in their full cultural context. Many quotations from the original Sanskrit appear here in English translation for the first time, and the necessary technical information is presented in terms accessible to the nonspecialist. These features, combined with Rowell's glossary of Sanskrit terms and extensive bibliography, make Music and Musical Thought in Early India an excellent introduction for the general reader and an indispensable reference for ethnomusicologists, historical musicologists, music theorists, and Indologists.

This volume contains the most comprehensive collection of scholarly sources on Indian poetics and aesthetics (the Alaṃkāraśāstra ever published in ancient India. Entries are divided into three sections and a detailed index is provided. Reference to primary sources from several languages range from about the 5th to the 19th centuries. Secondary sources in two dozen languages are divided into two sections, viz., books and articles. These begin in the mid-19th century and continue to the present. Annotations are usually brief and descriptive.