This concept of race consciousness or national-soul goes a long way in explaining universality in art

Anandavardhana lays great stress on the suggestive element in poetry and advocates the Dhvani theory, which is vyanjana or suggestion applied to poetry. This vyanjana suggests an extension of the original meaning and it relates to the fundamental problem of interrelating facts, speech and thought with their vast hinterlands. Dr. Seal in fact got them correlated in an aesthetic context by the postulation of mass consciousness, race consciousness, and time consciousness thereby implying that in the art-activity facts, speech and thought as understood in the aesthetic context get fused together and their disparateness disappears when they are touched upon by the magic of the artist’s imagination.

This concept of race-consciousness as explained by Brojendranath, in a way, comes close to Aurobindo’s idea of nation soul…This concept of race consciousness or national-soul goes a long way in explaining universality in art. Art, as communication could be well explained with this idea of nation-soul or race-consciousness. This concept again stresses the importance of the study of the history of art and art in its own environment, i.e. empirical study of art. -- Studies in Modern Indian Aesthetics (p.98-99) by S.K. Nandi (IIAS-1975)