動物の恋は人を感動させるのか : インド古典美学における〈動物を拠り所とする情趣〉の価値

Indian classical literature is renowned for its rich portrayal of animal emotions. Poets convey a rasa (aesthetic sentiment) by describing particular emotions of animals to a competent reader (sahrdaya). Two major interpretations exist among the poeticians (ālaṃkārika) regarding the poetic value of this type of rasa founded on animal emotions. Some consider such a rasa genuine, while others consider it spurious (i.e., a rasābhāsa, ‘pseudo-rasa’). The followers of the latter position often hold the view that such a pseudo-rasa conveys an impropriety (anaucitya). This impropriety, as a poetic flaw (doṣa), negatively impacts the aesthetic quality of a poem. However, the poetician Jagannātha (ca. 17th c. CE) maintains that even the spurious manifestation of a rasa may have some poetic merit, if, that is, it serves to convey another rasa, thereby fostering some property of a character of the poetry. This specific quality is reminiscent of a poetic quality known as vaiśeṣikaguṇa.