The Importance of Rasa in Indian Poetics

The idea of rasa appears not only in commentaries on the natsya sastra and works on Indian poetics, but also in treatises on music. Ananda Vardana developed the idea of suggestion to explain how rasa can be evoked by poetry. If you are trying to make the audience appreciate sadness, it is downright counterproductive to have a character say something like, I'm sad now.