This chapter will highlight some instances of textual reuse in selected works of alaṃkāraśāstra (poetics) and nāṭyaśāstra (dramaturgy). The material will be investigated in order to find a provisional rationale regarding the what,how and why of various kinds of quotation scenarios, specifically and primarily in connection with the issue of novelty and its relation to the self-understanding of traditional knowledge systems. After illustrating the well-known standard view of the denigration of novelty as such in Sanskrit śāstra (Pollock 1985, 1989a, 1989b, 1989c), I will tackle the reverse in the field of alaṃkāraśāstra, as has been propounded by McCrea (2011). My cursory survey will therefore begin with a contrastive example regarding the origination of rasas (“aesthetic emotions”) according to Abhinavagupta (10th–11th CE) and Bhoja (11th CE), each in dialogue with Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra (2nd– 4th CE), the seminal work of Sanskrit dramaturgy. The second case to be examined is the often-studied list of the views of earlier thinkers found in Abhinavagupta’s commentary on the rasasūtra of Bharata, a crucial aphorism in the sixth chapter of the Nāṭyaśāstra. In his commentary, Abhinavagupta weaves, so to speak, a narrative of various authors’ opinions and refutations, at the end of which his own view is enthroned as the only correct endpoint of a history of progressively improving speculations. Borrowing from the thorough analysis in Cox (2013), the third case that will be examined is Śāradātanaya’s Bhāvaprakāśana (13th CE), in which, on one hand, recognized citations and re-adaptations are employed to appropriate and domesticate the well-known Kashmirian version of literary theory in a South Indian theoretical milieu, and on the other, Śāradātanaya seems to attribute textual passages by both earlier authors and himself to texts and authors that probably never existed, but are smuggled in as the “actual” ones. Arguably this has been done to legitimize his own cultural endeavor and sanction its theoretical and practical validity. The last work that will be considered is Hemacandra’s Kāvyānuśāsana (11th–12th CE). In his own sub-commentary, called Viveka, Hemacandra repeats almost verbatim Abhinavagupta’s entire analysis of rasa found in the above-mentioned rasasūtra commentary. This act of sheer repetition, however, camouflages small but significant changes to the quoted portions, probably introduced to make the material better fit Hemacandra’s own theoretical agenda. It is worth noting that the case of Hemacandra represents a number of similar cases of extensive reuse of textual materials in alaṃkāraśāstra and nāṭyaśāstra in the second millennium. My tentative conclusion for assessing these very disparate and sometimes unusual manners of textual reuse hinges on a partial acceptance of McCrea’s thesis of the peculiar nature of alaṃkāraśāstra as a laukika (thisworldly) system of knowledge, for which novelty and change are the norm and not the exception. My acceptance remains partial insofar as the evidence can be better interpreted by postulating two paradigms of textual authority whose fortunes alternate over the centuries. They are tightly linked both to the search for a foundational text in the specific folds of alaṃkāraśāśtra, and the overlapping of topics and the synthesis of theoretical notions across the two domains of alaṃkāra- and nāṭyaśāstra. Their intersection might be postulated as one of the main reasons for the fluctuation between meta-speculative stances regarding novelty and tradition.