The Concept of The Beautiful in Sanskrit Literature

Preface The Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute is indeed happy and privileged to bring out this monograph on Sanskrit aesthetics by Dr. V. Raghavan, the doyen,' a mong Sanskritists. He is well known in India and outside, for his pioneering and many-faceted contributions to Sanskrit literature and criticism and Indian Culture. According to his guru Prof. Kuppuswami Sastri, Dr. Raghavan was "a well informed Sanskrit scholar of conspicuous ability". Prof. Daniel H. H. Ingalls, the most complete and classical Sanskritist associated with the prestigious Harvard University in the United States for a long time, admired Dr. Raghavan's combination of the "precision of a traditional Indian Sanskritist with a breadth. of encyclopaedic knowedge".

"The Concept of the Beautiful in Sanskrit Literature" was the subject of Dr. Raghavan's lectures at Madras and Berkeley, California in the sixties. The subject of Indian aesthetics is yet to be built up by research work in Gita, Natya, Silpa and Citra and coordinating it with the useful related material in Alankara Sastra. Dr. Raghavan was a unique scholar equally proficient in all these fields. Hence his research as contained in these lectures is yet original, relevant and useful. 'Unfortunately it could not be published during his lifetime. The Institute is thankful to the family of late Dr. V. Raghavan, especially Mrs. Sarada Raghavan, for making the draft of these lectures available for publication by the Institute.

I cannot adequately thank the seniormost critic-poet and versatile scholar Prot K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, for his valuable Foreword.

**Contents and Sample Pages**