Our object of study is the ring of invariant differential operators on a hermitian symmetric space G/K of classical and noncompact type. Here, as usual, G is a connected noncompact semisimple Lie group with finite center and K is a maximal compact subgroup of G. It is well-known that the ring, denoted by ?(G/K), is isomorphic to a polynomial ring of 1 variables, 1 being the rank of G/K. This is true even in the nonhermitian case. If 1 = 1, it is generated by the Laplace-Beltrami operator z/ which is essentially self-adjoint; moreover -Iz2 is nonnegative. In the general case, an easily posable problem is to find an explicitly defined set of generators. We can go one step further by focusing our attention on the nonnegativity, which necessarily limits the range of eigenvalues under a suitable integrability condition on functions. It is thus natural to ask whether there exist some canonically defined operators which generate -9(G/K) and have the property of nonnegativity. The main purpose of the present paper is to give an affirmative answer to this question. In fact, our answer applies to a somewhat more general type of rings of differential operators which includes 9(G/K) as a special case. To be explicit, we take an irreducible representation p: K -* GL(V) with a complex vector space V of finite dimension, and consider the set C'(p) of all V-valued Cx functions f on G such that f(xk -1) = p(k)f(x) for every k e K. We then denote by ?(p) the ring of left-invariant difrrential operators on G which map C'(p) into itself. Now the complexification g of the Lie algebra of G has abelian subalgebras p+ and pwhich can be identified with the spaces of holomorphic and antiholomorphic tangent vectors on G/K at the origin. For any complex vector space W let Sr(W) denote the ring of all complex-valued homogeneous polynomial functions on W of degree r, and let S(W) = Er=0Sr(W). Through the adjoint representation of G on g, K acts naturally on Sr( ?+). It is a known fact, due to Hua and Schmid, that each irreducible constituent of this representation of K has multiplicity one. Now our principal