The Transcendent Aesthetic: Rasa and Sublimity Across Two Traditions

Abstract

Literary experience is closely connected with the human capacity to perceive, interpret, and respond to aesthetic qualities.
Aesthetic perception shapes the way individuals encounter literature, influencing how a literary work is read, evaluated,
appreciated, and critically interpreted. Such responses occur across different cultural and historical contexts, whether among
Western or Eastern readers, or within ancient and modern literary traditions. Although literary works emerge from particular
times and places and are shaped by language, mythology, imagery, social practices, and cultural contexts, these differences
do not necessarily restrict their aesthetic reception. Rather, they contribute to the diverse ways in which literary experience
is understood. The capacity of literature to evoke emotional and aesthetic responses enables it to communicate across cultural
and temporal boundaries. Within this broader field of literary aesthetics, the concepts of Rasa and the Sublime occupy
significant positions, particularly in their engagement with intense emotional and imaginative experience.
Against this background, the present study revisits two influential classical aesthetic theories, Rasa and the Sublime, by
examining the conceptual affinities between the aesthetic thought of Bharata Muni and Longinus. Although they belong to
different historical, geographical, and intellectual traditions, both thinkers are concerned with the capacity of artistic
expression to generate an elevated and emotionally significant experience in the reader or spectator. Bharata Muni develops
his aesthetic principles primarily through Natya, particularly dramatic performance, while Longinus discusses the Sublime
in relation to poetry and elevated literary expression. Their approaches therefore emerge from distinct literary forms and
cultural contexts, yet both address the relationship between artistic expression, emotional response, and the transformative
potential of aesthetic experience. A comparative reading of these traditions provides a broader understanding of how classical
aesthetic thought approaches the capacity of literature and performance to move beyond ordinary perception and produce an
intense experience of artistic appreciation