8
SANSKRIT STUDIES
there is only the faintest allusion to the incidents that lead up to the bitter disappointment ; and the poet does not tarry even to mention the names of the hero and the heroine. Thus the poem has not a single prop to support it ; and yet, its one hundred and odd stanzas have been, during fifteen centuries, regarded by all, not excluding the modern Sanskritist, as 'a perpetual feast of nectared sweets’.
A striking change like this in the poet’s attitude could not have taken place on a sudden even when so mighty a genius as Valmlki initiated it. . . . By the time of Kalidasa, the new tendency had been firmly established and the predominance of emotion or ‘unity of rasa ’ had come to be insisted upon as indispensable to poetic excellence. And it is not improbable that the example of Kalidasa ensured its future. From Valmiki’s time to about Kalidasa’s, Sanskrit poetry may be taken to have been in a transition stage in which the place of emotion had not been finally settled. This cir- cumstance affords us a fresh type of evidence for determining the age of a Sanskrit poem. Nothing of course that is based on so elusive a test as the aesthetic one can lead to any certainty of con- elusion. Yet, other considerations apart, the lack of what I have termed ‘unity of rasa' may be looked upon as presumptive evidence for the antiquity of a work. ...
Although these two kinds of poetry are so different in scope, they both, according to the Indian conception of art, have the same end in view. To discover what this end is let us consider how we ordinarily view the world around and within us. Generally we look upon men and things in their relation to our purposes and grasp only such of their features as have a proximate or at least *a remote bearing on our interests. We ignore all other features as having no meaning for us. If our conception of the external world is thus interested it is intensely more so in the case of our thoughts, feelings and actions. This self-interest gives rise to a continuous tension in life. When we are not actively engaged we feel this tension relaxed, but this feeling of relaxation is deceptive, for even then self-interest survives as may be within the experience of us all. Art relieves this inner strain also and we feel as if the burden of life has fallen from our shoulders. We forget ourselves and there instantly springs up happiness, for self-forgetfulness is the very essence of true happiness. Thus the aim of poetry, as that of other fine arts, is to induce in us a mood of detachment, albeit temporarily, and enable us to escape from the bonds of interested life.
