PLATO’S THEORY OF FORMS AND SANSKRIT LITERARY THEORY – A COMPARITIVE STUDY

Mrs. ANJANA SOJAN
Page No.7-10

The western tradition of literary theory and criticism essentially derives from the Greeks, and there is a sense in which Plato, Aristotle, and Longinus mark out positions and debates that are still being played today. At a moment when we are questioning the sufficiency of such western critical methods to make sense of the plethora of literatures produced by the world’s cultures, it may be useful to remind ourselves that other equally ancient classical critical traditions exist. There is an unbroken line of literary theory and criticism in Indian culture that goes back at least as far as the western tradition. Indian criticism constitutes an important and largely untapped resource for literary theorists, as the Indian tradition in important respects assigns a more central role to literature than the Greek tradition does. While explicit literary theory in India can be traced as far back as the fourth century B.C.E, placing Indian critical theory at the same time as Aristotle and Plato, there is much discussion of poetic and literary practice in the Vedas, which developed over the period 1500 BCE to 500 BCE. In India, literary theory and criticism was never isolated simply as an area of philosophy; the practice and appreciation of literature was deeply woven into religion and daily life. The study of value, called axiology, has three main branches: ethics, concerning the morally good; political theory, concerning the social good; and aesthetics, concerning the beautify, or taste. Modern value theory may be said to have arisen with modern science, which distinguished between fact and value. For Plato, there was no discord between the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. The theory of Forms or theory of Ideas in which Plato argues that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas. Ideas or Forms are the non - physical essences of all things, of which objects and matter in the physical world are merely imitations.