 In Indian literature, emotions are discussed in several different contexts (Bilimoria and Wenta 2015b; Torella 2015): first, within aesthetics (rasa). The word rasa can mean juice, sap, essence, condiment or even flavour and refers to the different sentiments invoked by a work of art, for example a piece of music. Secondly, emotions are discussed within the context of the bhakti (devotional) movement. Here particular emphasis is placed on cultivating the emotion of love for a supreme being, e.g., Śiva. Thirdly, they are discussed in various tantric traditions. These traditions form a counterbalance to the ascetic ideal of classical philosophical texts (fourth context in which emotions are discussed) in that they encourage “living out” emotions (and desires) without forming any attachment to them. This entry focuses on the emotions in this fourth context, namely classical Indian philosophical thinking, which includes Brāhmaṇical as well as Buddhist texts, among others. While there is no equivalent for the term “emotion” in Sanskrit, the concept nevertheless plays an important role in Indian philosophy. Terms used in Sanskrit texts include vedanā (feeling) and bhāva (feeling) as well as names of individual emotions, such as rāga (love, attraction), dveṣa (hatred, aversion), harṣa (joy), bhaya (fear) and śoka (sorrow). One of the reasons why emotions are philosophically interesting in India and the West is their relationship with the mental phenomenon of vijñāna or jñāna which is translated as “cognition”. The relationship between emotion and cognition is important for any account of reason and rationality. While the importance of the emotions for rational deliberation and decision-making has been acknowledged in recent discussions in the philosophy of mind, the history of Western philosophy contains many views, for example those of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, which emphasize the dangerous and destructive role of the emotions. At the heart of these views lies a division of our mental lives into cognitions and feelings. Cognitions are representational thoughts. They are often regarded as rational because they are capable of representing the external world and therefore they provide us with access to the external world, based on the best available evidence. So, according to this view of rationality, when I think that there is a book on the table, based on my available evidence, and there really is one, then my thought is rational. However, if I am hallucinating that there is a book on the table, my thought that there is a book might also be rational because the available evidence points towards this thought. In order to make sure that our thoughts represent reality correctly, we require an account of what counts as good evidence, which is one of the main foci of epistemology in Indian and Western philosophy. Nevertheless, cognitions derive their status as thoughts capable of rationality from the fact that they have objects which represent the external world. By contrast, feelings are some of the non-representational attitudes one can have towards the objects of the representations of our thoughts. For example, when a person thinks about her daughters, she has a cognition which represents her daughters. The objects of her thought are her daughters and her thought picks them out among various objects and subjects in the world. There are several ways in which these objects can be picked out: one can simply have the thought that one has two daughters or one’s thought can be “coloured” with love and affection. This “colouring” of thought is often regarded as an affect. Together with the thought, it accounts for an emotion. So, the emotion of love, for example, is the thought of the object of love plus an affect. The affect is non-representational and regarded as a “mere” feeling.