This much-needed sourcebook in classical Indian aesthetics covers the period from roughly the early part of the Common Era to 1700, with a focus on emotion in art and the famous theory of rasa (a polysemous word that Sheldon Pollock correctly translates in the aesthetic context as “taste”). This is the first volume in the Murty Classical Library's welcome new series on historical sourcebooks in classical Indian thought. Word limits entail being necessarily selective in what follows, but my genuine and immense admiration for this superlative reader should not be doubted at any stage.
Pollock begins with a comprehensive and clear introduction to the entire volume, which gives readers a superb sense of the historical developments of Indian aesthetics as an unfolding narrative. Besides this introduction, the volume also contains a useful list of English translations of Sanskrit titles, a list of abbreviations, an English-Sanskrit glossary, critical endnotes, a bibliography,...
