According to Abhinavagupta, the Rasa theory of communication provided an opportunity for the audience's

According to Abhinavagupta, the Rasa theory of communication provided an opportunity for the audience's moral cultivation.

He held that aesthetic experience, the relishing of rasa, lifts the spectator beyond narrow personal concerns toward a purified, elevated state.

Through shared emotional immersion in art the audience is refined ethically and inwardly, not merely entertained.

Literary taste is too limited a reading, since Abhinavagupta's claim reaches beyond mere refinement of artistic preference to ethical growth.

Materialistic welfare misses the point entirely, as rasa concerns inner aesthetic and moral experience, not material gain.

Socialisation, while a general communication function, does not capture the specific transformative, character-cultivating value he assigned to rasa.