Rasa Sidhanta

The history of Rasa begins from Rg veda where it is generally used in the sense of the juice of the soma plant. It also denotes water milk, flavour and taste and essence. The Taitiriya Upanisad describes it ' raso vai sah ' rasam hyevayam labdhvanando bhavati' which describes the Supreme Reality. It is very likely that the earlier thinkers in literary criticism took this Rasa to mean the aesthetic pleasure. Valmiki stands at the threshold of the development of the theory of Rasa and he is believed to be the father of the theory of Rasa. But it was definitely formulated in its. first time by Bharata in his Natyasastra. Hence Bharata may justly claim the title of the Father of Sanskrit literary criticism. During the period between Bharata and Anandavardhana the theory of Rasa gained little favour among the literary critics. Before discussing the theory of rasa in detail we have to go through briefly some of the definitions of poetry.