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The present study grew out of a much larger work that the authors are presently completing.  We have both been long interested in Sanskrit literary criticism.  Professor Patwardhan has taught the Dhvanyaloka and the Rasagangadhara over a period of fifteen years to students in Fergusson College.  Mr. Masson has translated and annotated the Dhvanyaloka and the first chapter of the Lacana for his Ph.D. thesis at Harvard.  When we met we discovered a deep mutual interest in Abhinavagupta's Locana, the greatest Indian work on aesthetics, but a text so difficult that even the Pandits hesitate to teach it in the Pathasalas.  We began meeting twice a week for 3-4 hours sessions to read and discuss textual difficulties in the Locana.  We soon found that we shared nearly identical views on the major problems in this work.  Gradually most of the textual mysteries began to yield up their secrets, and we decided to translate the entire Locana as a joint work.  The section on Santarasa was originally to have been an appendix to this three-volume annotated translation.  But we found that so many issues in the Locana had a direct bearing on the problem of Santarasa that it really required a more extensive and separate treatment.  Especially in reading the santarasa passage in the Abhinavabharati, a text of notorious difficulty, we found that our readings in the Locana were a great help to its elucidation.  It is primarily as an aid to understanding this santarasa passage of the Abhinavabharati that we are publishing the results of our research.  We regard this as an introduction to our translation of the Dhvanyalokalocana which will be published along with the Dhvanyaloka in the Harvard Oriental Series.