X
MURĀRI, RĀJAÇEKHARA, THEIR PREDECESSORS AND SUCCESSORS
1. The Predecessors of Murāri
We know definitely of very few dramatists of the eighth and ninth centuries. Kalhaṇa[1] mentions expressly Yaçovarman of Kanyakubja as a patron of literature, who, as we have seen, patronized Bhavabhūti and Vākpati, and we learn of his drama Rāmābhyudaya, which is mentioned by Ānandavardhana in the Dhvanyāloka, by Dhanika and Viçvanātha, but has not yet been found. To Kalhaṇa[2] also we are indebted for knowledge of the period of Çivasvāmin, who lived under Avantivarman of Kashmir (A.D. 855–83) and was a contemporary of the poet Ratnākara. He wrote many Nāṭakas and Nāṭikās, and also Prakaraṇas, but save an occasional verse in the anthologies his fame is lost.
Anan̄gaharṣa Mātrarāja,[3] on the other hand, is known to Ānandavardhana and Abhinavagupta, and his play Tāpasavatsarājacarita is a variation on the theme of the ruse of Yaugandharāyaṇa to secure the marriage of Vatsa and Padmāvatī, in face of the deep love of the king for Vāsavadattā. Vatsa in this drama, which is of little poetic or dramatic value, becomes an ascetic on learning of his queen’s supposed fate, whence the title of the play. Padmāvatī, who had become enamoured of the king from a portrait sent by the minister, follows suit. Eventually Vāsavadattā and Vatsa are united in Prayāga when each is about to commit suicide in sorrow at separation, and the usual victory is reported by Rumaṇvant to give a happy ending. [[221]]There seems little doubt that the author used the Ratnāvalī, which gives the upper limit of his date. His father’s name is given as Narendravardhana.
Māyurājā[4] has been less fortunate in that his Udāttarāghava is known only by reference. Rājaçekhara represents him as a Karaculi or Kulicuri, which suggests the possibility that he was a king of the Kalacuri dynasty, of which unhappily we know little during the period in which he is probably to be set. He seems to have known Bhavabhūti. Like him he eliminated treachery from the slaying of Vālin by Rāma, and he represents Lakṣmaṇa as first to follow the magic gazelle, and Rāma as going later in pursuit. He is cited more than once in Dhanika’s commentary on the Daçarūpa.
No other dramatist of this period is known with any certainty; the Pārvatīpariṇaya once ascribed to Bāṇa is now allotted to Vāmana Bhaṭṭa Bāṇa (c. A.D. 1400), and the Mallikāmāruta, wrongly thought to be Daṇḍin’s, is the work of one Uddaṇḍin of the seventeenth century.
Of these dramatists Yaçovarman has had the honour of being considered worthy of quotation by the writers on theory who have preserved for us some interesting verses:[5]
ākrandāḥ stanitair vilocanajalāny açrāntadhārāmbhubhis
tvadvicchedabhuvaç ca çokaçikhinas tulyās taḍidvibhramaiḥ
antar me dayitāmukhaṁ tava çaçī vṛttiḥ samāpy āvayoḥ
tat kim mām aniçaṁ sakhe jaladhara dagdhum evodyataḥ.
‘My moans are like thy thunder, the floods of my tears thy ever-streaming showers, the flame of my sorrow at severance from my beloved thy flickering lightning, in my mind is her face reflected, in thee the moon; like is our condition; why then, O friend, O cloud, dost thou ever seek to consume me with the burning pangs of love?’
This is decidedly pretty, and there is elegance and beauty in another verse:[6]
yat tvannetrasamānakānti salile magnaṁ tad indīvaram
meghair antaritaḥ priye tava mukhacchāyānukāraḥ çaçī
ye ’pi tvadgamanānukāragatayas te rājahaṅsā gatās
tvatsādṛçyavinodamātram api me daivena na kṣamyate.
[[222]]
‘The blue lotus which rivalled thine eyes in beauty is now sunk in the lake; the moon which imitated the fairness of thy face, beloved, is hidden by the clouds; the royal swans which aped thy lovely gait are departed; cruel fate will not grant me even the consolation of thy similitude.’
This verse is appropriated by the Mahānāṭaka, and so is the following,[7] which deals elegantly enough with the commonplace contrast between the sad lover and the Açoka tree, whose name is interpreted as ‘sorrowless’, and which flowers, as the poets never weary in telling us, when touched by the foot of a fair lady, especially one young:
raktas tvaṁ navapallavair aham api çlāghyaiḥ priyāyā guṇais
tvām āyānti çilīmukhāḥ smaradhanurmuktāḥ sakhe mām api
kāntapādatalāhatis tava mude tad api mamāvayoḥ
sarvaṁ tulyam açoka kevalam ahaṁ dhātrā saçokaḥ kṛtaḥ.
‘Thou are proud in thy new shoots, I in the glorious excellences of my beloved; the bees resort to thee, to me the arrows shot from love’s bow; like me thou dost delight in the touch of thy dear one’s foot; all is alike for us both save only that, O tree Sorrowless, the creator hath made me a man of sorrows.’
kāmavyādhaçarāhatir na gaṇitā saṁjīvanī tvaṁ smṛtā
no dagdho virahānalena jhaṭiti tvatsaṁgamāçāmṛtaiḥ
nīto ’yaṁ divaso vicitralikhitaiḥ saṁkalparūpair mayā
kiṁ vānyad dhṛdaye sthitāsi nanu me tatra svayaṁ sākṣiṇī.[8]
‘I have not recked of the wound given by love, the hunter, for the memory of thee hath been my elixir; the fire of separation hath not consumed me straightway because of the nectar of the hope of union with thee; all this day hath been spent by me in limning thy fancied form; nought else have I done, as thou thyself art witness, for dost thou not live in my heart?’ We may regret the loss of a work which contained verses as pretty as these, even on the outworn topic of Rāma and Sītā.
It might be interesting to know whether Yaçovarman was successful in introducing any new element into the established plot. The play is cited in the commentary on the Daçarūpa[9] to illustrate the device called deception or humiliation (chalana) and the parallel cited is that of the treatment of Vāsavadattā in the [[223]]Ratnāvalī. The definitions of the theory leave this idea far from clear; Viçvanātha seems to treat it as the bearing of insult for the sake of the end to be reached, and the allusion in the case of Sītā may be to her abandonment by Rāma as an act of duty.
A much less favourable impression is left by the few fragments of the Udāttarāghava which are preserved. The poet seems to have affected the horrible, as two of his few stanzas deal with it; the better is:[10]
jīyante jayino ’pi sāndratimiravrātair viyadvyāpibhir
bhāsvantaḥ sakalā raver api rucaḥ kasmād akasmād amī
etāç cograkabandharandhrarudhirair ādhmāyamānodarā
muñcanty ānanakandarānalamucas tīvrā ravāḥ pheravāḥ.
‘The victors are vanquished; thick darkness invades the sky and triumphs over the brilliant rays of the sun; why this inexplicable event? Why do these jackals, whose bellies are swollen with the blood sucked from the wounds of bleeding corpses, and whose gaping jaws belch flame, utter these piercing cries?’
A somewhat flat passage illustrates the conflict of thought in Rāma’s mind when appealed to by Citramāya on the score that Lakṣmaṇa is in danger from a Rākṣasa:[11]
vatsasyābhayavāridheḥ pratibhayam manye kathaṁ rākṣasāt
trastaç caiṣa munir virauti manasaç cāsty eva me sambhramaḥ
mā hāsīr Janakātmajām iti muhuḥ snehād gurur yācate
na sthātuṁ na ca gantum ākulamater mūḍhasya me niçcayaḥ.
‘The boy is an ocean of valour; how can I fear danger for him from a Rākṣasa? Yet the sage here is terrified and calls for aid, and my own mind is confused; my master too in his affection ever begs me not to leave Janaka’s daughter alone; my heart is troubled, and in my confusion I cannot resolve either to go or to stay.’
Another Rāma drama, the Chalitarāma, is also referred to by Dhanika in his comment on the Daçarūpa; it may belong to this period, or fall somewhat later; we have from it a picture of the leading captive of Lava:[12]
yenāvṛtya mukhāni sāma paṭhatām atyantam āyāsitam
bālye yena hṛtākṣasūtravalayapratyarpaṇaiḥ krīḍitam
yuṣmākaṁ hṛdayaṁ sa eṣa viçikhair āpūritāṅsasthalo
mūrchāghoratamaspraveçavivaço baddhvā Lavo nīyate.
[[224]]
‘He who caused such trouble to the Sāman reciters turning to look at him in his childish play, who amused himself by stealing and giving back strings of beads and bracelets, he, your heart’s joy, his shoulder pierced by arrows, powerless through entry into the dread darkness of fainting, is being led away bound, even Lava.’
Another stanza refers to Bharata; Rāma returning to Ayodhyā in the celestial chariot declines thus to enter the town, since it is not his, but under the rule of Bharata; scarcely has he descended when he sees before him his brother:[13]
ko ’pi siṅhāsanasyādhaḥ sthitaḥ pādukayoḥ puraḥ
jaṭāvān akṣamālī ca cāmarī ca virājate.
‘There stands some one, below the lion throne, before a pair of sandals, wearing his hair long, bearing a rosary, resplendent beneath the chowrie.’
The same play[14] contains an amusing slip by Sītā where she bids her boys go to Ayodhyā and tender their respects to the king. Lava naturally replies by asking why they should become members of the king’s entourage, and Sītā answers because the king is their father, a slip which she explains away as well as she can by saying that the king is father of the whole earth.
Yet another drama of which we know nothing else is revealed to us by Dhanika, the Pāṇḍavānanda, from which is cited a stanza interesting in its series of questions and answers, a literary form of which the dramatists are fond:[15]
kā çlāghyā guṇināṁ kṣamā paribhavaḥ ko yaḥ svakulyaiḥ kṛtaḥ
kiṁ duḥkhaṁ parasaṁçrayo jagati kaḥ çlāghyo ya āçrīyate
ko mṛtyur vyasanaṁ çucaṁ jahati ke yair nirjitāḥ çatravaḥ
kair vijñātam idaṁ Virāṭanagare channasthitaiḥ Pāṇḍavaiḥ.
‘For the good what is there praiseworthy? Patience. What is disgrace? That which is wrought by those of one’s own blood. What is misery? Recourse to another’s protection. Who in the world is enviable? He to whom one resorts for aid. What is death? Misfortune. Who escape sorrow? Those who conquer their foes. Who learned this lesson? The Pāṇḍavas when they dwelt in concealment in the city of Virāṭa.’
We learn also from Dhanika of two further dramas, of unknown [[225]]authorship and date; they are mentioned[16] as illustrating the two kinds of Prakaraṇa as a dramatic form, the basis of distinction being whether the heroine is the wife of the hero and therefore a lady of good family or whether she is a courtesan. Of the latter class we have an example in the Taran̄gadatta, and of the former in the Puṣpadūṣitaka; the latter name occurs in the slightly altered form of Puṣpabhūṣita in the Sāhityadarpaṇa. As an example of the Samavakāra the Daçarūpa[17] mentions the Samudramanthana, a title doubtless as well as the description of the drama in question.
2. Murāri
Murāri tells us that he was the son of Çrīvardhamānaka of the Maudgalya Gotra and of Tantumatī; he claims to be a Mahākavi, and arrogates the style of Bāla-Vālmīki. His date is uncertain; he is certainly later than Bhavabhūti since he cites from the Uttararāmacarita,[18] while we have evidence from the anthologies that he was reckoned by some as superior to Bhavabhūti, apparently his predecessor. A further suggestion as to date may be derived from the Kashmirian poet Ratnākara,[19] who in his Haravijaya makes a clear reference to Murāri as a dramatist, for the effort of Bhattanatha Svamin to disprove the reference must be deemed completely unsuccessful. As Ratnākara belongs to the middle of the ninth century A.D., this gives us that period as the latest date for Murāri. Curiously enough, Professor Konow,[20] who accepts the disproof of the reference to Murāri in Ratnākara, admits that the reference to Murāri in Man̄kha’s Çrīkaṇṭhacarita[21] (c. A.D. 1135) suggests that he was regarded by that author as earlier than Rājaçekhara, a fact which accords excellently with his priority to Ratnākara, and is far more important than the fact that he is not cited by the authors on theory of the eleventh century A.D. A further effort to place him late is that of Dr. Hultzsch,[22] who infers from verse 3 of the Kaumudīmitrāṇanda of Rāmacandra, pupil of Hemacandra, that that [[226]]dramatist was a contemporary of Murāri. But the evidence is clearly inadequate; the words used are perfectly compatible with the fact that Murāri was dead, and there are grave chronological difficulties in the way of the theory. It is practically impossible that a contemporary of Rāmacandra could have been cited by Man̄kha at the date of the Çrīkaṇṭhacarita. Moreover Murāri seems to have been imitated by Jayadeva in the Prasannarāghava.[23]
Of his place of activity we know nothing definite. He mentions, however, Māhiṣmatī as the seat of the Kalacuris, and it has been suggested that this indicates that he lived under the patronage of a prince of that dynasty at Māhiṣmatī, now Māndhātā on the Narmadā.
3. The Anargharāghava
Murāri declares in the prologue to the solitary drama, the Anargharāghava[24] which has come down to us, though quotations show that he wrote other works, that his aim is to please a public tired of terror, horror, violence, and marvels, by a composition elevated, heroic, and marvellous throughout, not merely at the close. He defends his choice of the banal subject of Rāma; his character adds elevation and charm to the poet’s work, and it would be folly to lay aside so splendid a theme. The Anargharāghava, however, does little to justify the poet’s confidence in his choice of topic. The theme, treated already at length by Bhavabhūti, offered no chance of success save for a great poet, and Murāri was not such a poet save in the estimate of occasional later writers who extol his depth (gambhīratā) without any shadow of justification.
Act I shows us Daçaratha in conversation with Vāmadeva. The arrival of the sage Viçvāmitra is announced; he exchanges with the king hyperbolic compliments of the most tedious type, but proceeds to business by demanding the aid of Rāma against the Rākṣasas which are troubling his hermitage. The king hesitates to send one so young and dear into danger. The sage insists on his obeying the call of duty, and he hands over Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa to the care of the ascetic. The herald announces [[227]]midday, and the king mourns the loss of his son. In Act II we have first a long-drawn-out conversation between Çunaḥçepha and Paçumeḍhra, two pupils of Viçvāmitra, which serves to enlighten us on the history of Vālin, Rāvaṇa, the Rākṣasas, Jāmbavant, Hanumant, and Tāḍakā. The entr’acte is followed by the appearance of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa who describe the hermitage and the doings of its occupants, and then the heat of midday. Time, however, does not trouble the dramatist; though there is no further action and no interruption in the dialogue, we find ourselves transported to the evening; Viçvāmitra enters and describes in converse with the boys the sunset. A cry behind the scene announces the approach of the demoness Tāḍakā; Rāma hesitates to slay a female, but finally departs for the necessary duty; on his return he has to describe the rising of the moon. Viçvāmitra then suggests a visit to Janaka of Mithilā, affording an opportunity for a description of the city and its ruler.
In Act II only do we reach the motif which Bhavabhūti with far greater skill made the leading idea of the drama, thus giving it effective unity, so far as the story permits. The chamberlain of Janaka in conversation with Kalahaṅsikā, one of Sītā’s suite, lets us know that the princess is now ripe for marriage, and Rāvaṇa seeks her hand. In the scene that follows the king accompanied by Çatānanda receives Rāma, but hesitates to put him to the severe test involved in bending Çiva’s bow. Çauṣkala, Rāvaṇa’s envoy, arrives to demand the maiden’s hand, but indignantly declines the request that his master should bend the bow. He eulogizes Rāvaṇa whom Rāma depreciates. Rāma is at last allowed to make the trial; those who remain on the stage describe his wonderful deed in breaking the bow. He is promised Sītā’s hand, while the other sons of Daçaratha are also awarded consorts. Çauṣkala departs, menacing revenge. Act IV shows us Rāvaṇa’s minister Mālyavant lamenting the failure of his scheme to win Sītā. Çūrpaṇakhā arrives from Videha and tells of the union of Rāma and Sītā. Mālyavant recognizes that Rāvaṇa will insist on seeking to separate the pair, and he counsels Çūrpaṇakhā to assume the disguise of Mantharā, the maid of Kaikeyī, with the view of securing the banishment of Rāma to the forest, where he will be more vulnerable to attack. [[228]]He is also cheered by the news given by Çūrpaṇakhā of the approach of Paraçurāma to Mithilā, whence some gain may accrue to his cause. The following scene shows us Rāma and Paraçurāma in verbal contest; Rāma is even more polite than in the Mahāvīracarita which is obviously imitated, while the friends of Rāma carry on a vituperative dialogue behind the scene without actually appearing. Finally they resolve to fight, for Rāma has annoyed his rival by reminding him that the flag of his fame won by his destruction of the Kṣatriyas is worn out and challenging him to mount a new one. The fight itself takes place off the stage; Sītā, we learn from a voice behind the scenes, is apprehensive lest Rāma be drawing again his bow to win another maiden. The rivals then appear on excellent terms; Paraçurāma exchanges farewells with his former interlocutors and disappears. Then enter Janaka and Daçaratha. The latter is determined to resign his kingdom to Rāma, but Lakṣmaṇa enters introducing Mantharā who bears a fatal missive from Kaikeyī, bidding the king grant the two boons of the banishment of Rāma and the coronation of Bharata. The kings faint; Rāma sends Lakṣmaṇa to tell Sītā, and commends his father to Janaka.
In Act V a conversation between Jāmbavant and an ascetic lady, Çravaṇā, tells of the doings of Rāma until his advent in the forest. Çravaṇā goes to Sugrīva to bespeak a kindly welcome for the wayfarers, while Jāmbavant overhears a dialogue between Rāvaṇa, disguised as a juggler, and Lakṣmaṇa. The vulture Jaṭāyu then appears with the grave news that he has seen Rāvaṇa and Mārīca in the forest; Jāmbavant goes to warn Sugrīva of the danger, while Jaṭāyu sees the rape of Sītā and pursues the ravisher. After this entr’acte Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa enter, wandering in grief in vain search. They are interrupted by a cry and see the friendly forest chief, Guha, assailed by the headless Kabandha. Lakṣmaṇa rescues him, but, in doing so, knocks off the tree, on which it was suspended, the skeleton of Dundubhi, to the annoyance of Vālin, who appears, and after a lengthy conversation challenges Rāma to battle. The fight is described from the stage by Lakṣmaṇa and Guha; the enemy is slain. Voices from behind the scenes report the coronation of Sugrīva and his determination to aid Rāma in the recovery of [[229]]Sītā, and Lakṣmaṇa and his friend leave the stage to rejoin their party. In Act VI Sāraṇa and Çuka, two spies of Rāvaṇa’s describe to Mālyavant the building of the bridge over the ocean and the advent of Rāma’s army. Voices from behind announce the departure of Kumbhakarṇa and Meghanāda for battle; in the same way we learn of their fall and the last exit of Rāvaṇa, whom Mālyavant decides to follow to the field. The final struggle is described with tedious and tasteless prolixity by two Vidyādharas, Ratnacūḍa and Hemān̄gada, and with this the Act closes.
In Act VII we have a determined effort to vie with the close of the Mahāvīracarita. Rāma, Sītā, Lakṣmaṇa, Vibhīṣaṇa, and Sugrīva proceed in Kubera’s celestial car to Ayodhyā. But the route is diversified from the simplicity of the model, for the travellers are taken to the celestial regions to view in all its aspects the mythical mountain Sumeru and the world of the moon; only then do they commence their journey in its terrestrial aspect by a description of Siṅhala, distinguished as usual from Lan̄kā; the route then passes over the Malaya mountains, the forest, the mountain Prasravaṇa, the Godāvarī, mount Mālyavant, Kuṇḍinīpura in the Mahārāṣṭra country, Kāñcī, Ujjayinī, Māhiṣmatī, the Yamunā, the Ganges, Vārāṇasī, Mithilā and Campā; the car goes then west to Prayāga, and later turns east to Ayodhyā, where the priest Vasiṣṭha waits with Rāma’s brothers to crown him king.
The demerits of the poem are obvious; there is no attempt to improve on the traditional narrative, though Vālin is honourably killed; the characters are as stereotyped as ever. The author, however, delights to overload and elaborate the theme; hyperbole marks every idea; his mythological knowledge is adequate to enable him to abound in conceits and plays on words, when he does not sink, as largely in Act III, to mere commonplace. The taste which invents the visit to the world of the moon and Sumeru is as deplorable as that which substitutes the dull dialogue between Jāmbavant and Jaṭāyu for the vigorous conversation of Jaṭāyu and Sampāti in the Mahāvīracarita. For dialogue in general Murāri has no taste at all, and what merit his work has lies entirely in the ability which he shows to handle the Sanskrit language and to frame sentences of harmonious [[230]]sound in effective metrical forms. His knowledge of the lexica is obvious, while his love of the recondite in grammar has won him the fame of being used to illustrate rare forms by the author of the Siddhāntakaumudī. These linguistic merits have secured him the preference shown for him by modern taste. Nor indeed can his power of expression be justly denied:[25]
dṛçyante madhumattakokilavadhūnirdhūtacūtān̄kura—
prāgbhāraprasaratparāgasikatādurgās taṭībhūmayaḥ
yāḥ kṛcchrād atilan̄ghya lubdhakabhayāt tair eva reṇūtkarair
dhārāvāhibhir asti luptapadavīniḥçan̄kam eṇīkulam.
‘There are seen the towering slopes as of sand where the pollen tilts off from the mango shoots, shaken by the female cuckoos, maddened by the intoxication of spring; scarce can the antelopes in their fear of the hunter leap over them, but the dust which they raise in showers accords them security by concealing the path of their flight.’ The idea is certainly trivial enough, but the expression, which defies reproduction in English, is in its own way a masterpiece of effect.
A pretty erotic verse is found in Act VII:[26]
anena rambhoru bhavanmukhena: tuṣārabhānos tulayā dhṛtasya
ūnasya nūnam pratipūraṇāya: tārā sphuranti pratimānakhaṇḍāh.
‘When the moon is placed in the scales, fair-limbed one, against thy face, assuredly it is found wanting, and to make good the deficit the stars must shine as make-weights.’
Not a bad example of more elaborate, yet graceful, eulogy is found in the following stanza:[27]
gotre sākṣād ajani bhagavān eṣa yat padmayoniḥ
çayyotthāyaṁ yad akhilam ahaḥ prīṇayanti dvirephān
ekāgrāṁ yad dadhati bhagavaty uṣṇabhānau ca bhaktim
tat prāpus te sutanu vadanaupamyam ambhoruhāṇi.
‘Since manifestly in their family has been born the blessed one, sprung from the lotus; since all day long they delight the bees as they rise from their bed; since their whole faith they devote to the blessed lord of the sharp rays, thus, O lovely one, the flowers that spring from the water attain the likeness of thy face.’ [[231]]
Happy also is another erotic stanza:[28]
abhimukhapatayālubhir lalāṭa—: çramasalilair avadhūtapattralekhaḥ
kathayati puruṣāyitaṁ vadhūnām: mṛditahimadyutidurmanāḥ kapolaḥ.
‘Its painted mark obliterated by the moisture which streams from the wearied brow over the face, the cheek reveals the longing of women, melancholy as the wan moon.’
udeṣyatpīyūṣadyutirucikaṇārdrāḥ çaçimaṇi—
sthalīnām panthāno ghanacaraṇalākṣālipibhṛtaḥ
cakorair uḍḍīnair jhaṭiti kṛtaçan̄kāḥ pratipadam
parācaḥ saṁcārān avinayavatīnāṁ vivṛṇate.
‘Footprints on pavements of moonstone, marked with the lac that dyes deep the feet, wet with drops that have the radiance of rising cream, made with anxiety at every step as the Cakoras fly up disturbed, mark the departure of ladies who violate decorum.’[29]
A further stanza in some manuscripts of the poem occurs in the drama, while elsewhere it seems to be treated as a verse about Murāri:[30]
devīṁ vācam upāsate hi bahavaḥ sāraṁ tu sārasvatam
jānīte nitarām asau gurukulakliṣṭo Murāriḥ kaviḥ
abdhir lan̄ghita eva vānarabhaṭaiḥ kiṁ tv asyā gambhīratām
āpātālanimagnapīvaratanur jānāti manthācalaḥ.
‘Many serve the goddess speech, but the essence of eloquence Murāri alone knows to the full, that poet who long toiled in the house of his teacher; even so the monkey host leapt over the ocean, but its depth the Mount of Churning alone knows, for its mighty mass penetrated down even to the realms below.’
4. The Date of Rājaçekhara
Rājaçekhara, with the usual prolixity of bad poets, is voluble on his personality; he was of a Mahārāṣṭra Kṣatriya family of the Yāyāvaras, who claimed descent from Rāma; son of the minister Durduka or Duhika, and of Çīlavatī; grandson of Akālajalada, and descendant of Surānanda, Tarala, and Kavirāja, all [[232]]poets of name. He married Avantisundarī of the Cāhamāna family, and was a moderate Çaiva.[31]
In the Karpūramañjarī, probably his first play since it was produced at the request of his wife, and not a king, he refers to himself as the teacher of Nirbhaya or Nirbhara, who was clearly the Pratihāra king, Mahendrapāla of Mahodaya or Kanyakubja, of whom we have records in A.D. 893 and 907. The Bālarāmāyaṇa was produced at his request. But he seems then to have visited another court, for the Viddhaçālabhañjikā was produced for the Kalacuri king, Yuvarāja Keyūravarṣa of Tripurī. But, as the unfinished Bālabhārata was written for Mahīpāla, successor of Mahendrapāla, whose records begin in A.D. 914, we may assume that he returned to the court of the Pratihāras and died there. In the Bālarāmāyaṇa he speaks of six of his works, not apparently including the Viddhaçālabhañjikā and the Bālabhārata, and in fact we have many stanzas from him regarding famous authors, though of course the proof of derivation from this Rājaçekara is not always complete.
The Bālarāmāyaṇa shows to perfection Rājaçekhara’s own estimate of himself. He traces his poetic descent from Vālmīki, through Bhartṛmeṇṭha and Bhavabhūti, but it is not clear that Bhartṛmeṇṭha must be assumed to have dramatized the work, and the little we know of this obscure person merely shows that he wrote an epic, the Hayagrīvavadha, while his date is involved in the problems of Vikramāditya and Mātṛgupta.[32]
5. The Dramas of Rājaçekhara
The Bālarāmāyaṇa[33] is a Mahānāṭaka, that is one in ten acts, and the author, to add to the horror of the length, has expanded the prologue to almost the dimensions of an act, celebrating his non-existent merits, and has expanded each act to almost the dimensions of a Nāṭikā. The whole has 741 stanzas, and of these no less than 203 are in the 19-syllable Çārdūlavikrīḍita and 89 in the Sragdharā, which has two more syllables in each pada or 84 in a stanza. The play has a certain novelty, because [[233]]the author has made the love of Rāvaṇa the dominating feature. He appears in person in the first act, but declines to test himself by drawing Çiva’s bow, and departs, menacing evil to any husband of Sītā. In Act II he seeks the aid of Paraçurāma, but is insulted instead, and a battle barely prevented by intervention of friends. In Act III the marriage of Sītā is enacted before him to distract his amorous sorrow, but the attempt is as little a success as it deserved to be; he interrupts, and finally the scene has to be broken off. In Act IV the duel of Rāma and Paraçurāma is disposed of, but in Act V we find another ludicrous effort to amuse Rāvaṇa; dolls with parrots in their mouths are presented to him as Sītā and his foster sister; he is deceived until he finds that his grasp is on wood; distracted, he demands his beloved from nature, the seasons, the streams, and the birds, as does Purūravas in the Vikramorvaçī. The arrival of Çūrpaṇakhā, his sister, who has suffered severely from her attack on Rāma, brings him to a condition of more manly rage. A tedious Act then carries matters down to the death of the sorrowing Daçaratha. In Act VII the problem of inducing the ocean to accept the burden of the bridge is solved; Dadhittha and Kapittha, two monkeys, describe at length its construction to Rāma. A momentary terror is caused by a stratagem of Mālyavant; the severed head of Sītā seems to be flung on the shore, but it speaks and reveals the fraud; it is the head of the speaking doll. In Act VIII we have Rāvaṇa’s impressions as disaster after disaster is announced; he sends out Kumbhakarṇa, but sees even him helpless, despite his magic weapons, before Rāma. In Act IX Indra himself describes the last desperate duel of Rāma and Rāvaṇa. In Act X the party of Rāma makes the usual aerial tour of India, including the world of the moon, and ending with the inevitable consecration.
The Bālabhārata[34] is mercifully unfinished; it covers the marriage of Draupadī, and the gambling scene with the ill usage of Draupadī. The other two plays are really Nāṭikās, but the first, the Karpūramañjarī[35] is classed by the theory as a Saṭṭaka, simply because it is in Prākrit, none of the characters [[234]]speaking Sanskrit. It is the old story; here the king is Caṇḍapāla, possibly a compliment to Mahendrapāla, and his beloved the Kuntala princess, Karpūramañjarī, who is really a cousin of the queen. In Act I a magician, Bhairavānanda, displays the damsel to the king and queen; the apparition tells her tale, and the queen decides to add her to the number of her attendants. The king and the maiden fall at once in love. In Act II a letter from the maiden avows her passion, and the Vidūṣaka and her friend Vicakṣaṇā arrange to let the king see her swinging and also producing by her touch the blossoming of the Açoka. Between the Acts we must assume that the queen has found out the love, and has confined the maiden, while the king has secured the making of a subterranean passage giving access to her prison. In Act III by this means the princess and the king enjoy a flirtation in the garden, when the queen discovers them. In Act IV we find that the end of the passage giving on the garden has been blocked, but another passage has been made to the sanctuary of Cāmuṇḍā, the entrance concealed behind the statue. Thus the prisoner can play a game of hide-and-seek with the queen, and this enables her to carry out a clever ruse invented by the magician to secure the queen’s blessing for the wedding. The queen is induced to demand that the king shall marry a princess of Lāṭa who will secure him imperial rank. She is still at her home, but the magician will fetch her to the place. The wedding goes on merrily, but the princess is no other than Karpūramañjarī, and the queen has unwittingly accomplished the lovers’ desires.
The same motif is repeated in the Viddhaçālabhañjikā,[36] which is a regular Nāṭikā. Act I tells us that Candravarman of Lāṭa, vassal of Vidyādharamalla, has sent to the court of his overlord his daughter Mṛgān̄kāvalī in the guise of his son and heir. The king, Vidyādharamalla, recounts a dream in the truthful hours of the morning, in which a beautiful maid had cast a collar of pearls round his neck; he is haunted by her, and next finds her in sculptured form (çālabhañjikā) in the picture gallery. He has a further glimpse of her in the flesh but no more, before the heralds announce midday. In Act II we learn that the queen proposes to marry Kuvalayamālā of Kuntala to the pretended [[235]]boy, while the Vidūṣaka has been promised by her foster-sister, Mekhalā, marriage with a lady of the seductive name of Ambaramālā, Air Garland. Imagine his disgust when she turns out to be a mere slave; the king has to calm him, and together they watch in hiding Mṛgān̄kāvalī playing in the garden, and hear her reading a letter of love. The heralds proclaim the evening hour. In Act III we are told that the dream of the king was reality, devised by Bhāgurāyaṇa, his minister, who knew that the husband of the heroine would attain imperial rule. The Vidūṣaka punishes Mekhalā’s ruse by another; he bids a woman hide herself and call out a warning to Mekhalā of evil to befall her unless she crawl between a Brahmin’s limbs. The queen begs the Vidūṣaka to permit this ceremony, and, it over, he avows the plot to the great indignation of the queen. The Vidūṣaka and the king then have an interview with the heroine. In Act IV we learn of a plot of the queen to punish the king. She induces him to agree to marry the sister of the pretended boy, meaning that he should find that he has married a boy. The king agrees; the marriage is completed; news comes from Candravarman that a son is born, begging the queen to dispose in marriage of his daughter, who may resume her sex. The queen, tricked and deceived, makes the best of her situation; with dignity and hauteur she bestows on her husband both Mṛgān̄kāvalī and Kuvalayamālā, while news is brought that the last rebels are subdued and the king’s suzerainty is recognized everywhere.
There can be no doubt of the demerits of Rājaçekhara’s works; he is devoid of the power to create a character: Vidyādharamalla is stiff and uninteresting beside his model, the gay and gallant Vatsa; the queen is without the love or the majesty of Vāsavadattā; Bhāgurāyaṇa is a feeble Yaugandharāyaṇa, whose magician is borrowed in the Karpūramañjarī and spoiled in the borrowing. The heroines are without merit; the Vidūṣaka in the Karpūramañjarī is tedious, but Cārāyaṇa in the Viddhaçālabhañjikā has merits; he has plenty of sound common sense, though he is simple and capable of being taken in by others. The intrigue in both Nāṭikās is poorly managed; the confusion of exits and entrances in the Karpūramañjarī is difficult to follow and probably more difficult to act, while in the Viddhaçālabhañjikā the queen is induced to arrange a marriage out of a [[236]]puerile incident affecting the Vidūṣaka only. The taste of giving two brides to the king at once is deplorable, as is the failure to explain why the king accepts the suggested marriage when ignorant of its true import.
In all his dramas, however, Rājaçekhara is merely concerned with exercises in style. The themes he frankly tells us in the prologue to the Karpūramañjarī are the same; the question is the expression, and the language is indifferent; therefore Prākrit being smooth, while Sanskrit is harsh, the language of women as opposed to men, can be used as a medium of style by one who boasts himself an expert in every kind of language. We have, therefore, elaborate descriptions in equally elaborate verses, of the dawn, midday, sunset, the pleasures of the harem, the game of ball, the swing, a favourite enjoyment of the Indian maidens, and in the Nāṭakas pictures ad nauseam of battles with magic weapons, and appalling mythical geography and topography. His allusions to local practices and customs may be interesting to the antiquarian, but are not poetical. More praiseworthy is his real accomplishment in metres, especially the Çārdūlavikrīḍita, his facility in which Kṣemendra justly praises, the Vasantatilaka, Çloka, and Sragdharā. His ability to handle elaborate Prākrit metres is undeniable; in 144 stanzas in the Karpūramañjarī he has 17 varieties. If poetry consisted merely of harmonious sound, he must be ranked high as a poet. He is fond of proverbs: varaṁ takkālovaṇadā tittirī ṇa uṇa diahantaridā morī, which gives our ‘A bird in hand is worth two in the bush’; he introduces freely words from vernaculars, including Marāthī. But, despite his parade of learning, he cannot distinguish accurately Çaurasenī and Māhārāṣṭrī in his drama; in the former we find such forms as laṭṭhi for yaṣṭi, ammi in the locative and hiṁto in the ablative singular of a-stems, and esa for the pronoun. Important as he is lexicographically for both Sanskrit and Prākrit, it is undeniable that both were utterly dead languages for him, which he had laboriously learned. Forms like ḍhilla equivalent to çithila in the Karpūramañjarī show how far the vernaculars had advanced beyond the Prākrits of the drama.
It would, however, be quite unjust to deny to Rājaçekhara the power of effective expression; like all the later dramatists he is capable of producing elegant and attractive verses, which are [[237]]largely spoiled in their context by their being embedded in masses of tasteless matter. Thus the benediction of the Viddhaçālabhañjikā is decidedly graceful:
kulagurur abalānāṁ kelidīkṣāpradāne
paramasuhṛd anan̄go rohiṇīvallabhasya
api kusumapṛṣatkair devadevasya jetā
jayati suratalīlānāṭikāsūtradhāraḥ.
‘Family preceptor of young maidens for the bestowal of the sacrament of love, the bodyless one, dearest friend of Rohiṇī’s lover, he that with his flower arrows overthrew the god of gods, he is victorious ever, the director of the comedy of the play of love’s mysteries.’
The description of summer is also pretty if banal:
rajaniviramayāmeṣv ādiçantī ratecchām
kim api kaṭhinayantī nārikelīphalāmbhaḥ
api pariṇamayitrī rājarambhāphalānām
dinapariṇatiramyā vartate grīṣmalakṣmīḥ.
‘This is the glorious season of summer, delightful in the length of the days, when the royal plantain fruits are ripened, and the milk in the coco-nut is hardened, and the season bids us enjoy the delight of love in the closing watches of the night.’
The signs of a maiden distracted by unfulfilled affection are quaintly described:
candraṁ candanakardamena likhitaṁ sā mārṣṭi daṣṭādharā
bandhyaṁ nindati yac ca manmatham asau bhan̄ktvāgrahastān̄gurīḥ
kāmaḥ puṣpaçaraḥ kileti sumanovargaṁ lunīte ca yat
tat kāmyā subhaga tvayā varatanur vātūlatāṁ lambhitā.
‘Biting her lip, she wipes out the figure of the moon sketched in sandal paste; snapping her finger-tips she mocks at love as barren; to flout his darts, the flowers she gathers she tears in shreds; assuredly the fair one whom thou shouldst love hath been brought by thee to madness.’
antastāraṁ taralitatalāḥ stokam utpīḍabhājaḥ
pakṣmāgreṣu grathitapṛṣataḥ kīrṇadhārāḥ krameṇa
cittātan̄kaṁ nijagarimataḥ samyag āsūtrayanto
niryānty asyāḥ kuvalayadṛço bāṣpavārām pravāhāḥ.
‘Rippled on the surface of the pupil, slightly foaming, forming drops on the tips of the lashes, then slowly issuing in streams, [[238]]betokening by their weight her heart’s sorrow, there pour forth from the lotus-eyed one the floods of her tears.’
Of all the plays the Karpūramañjarī is undoubtedly that which contains the most substantial evidence that Rājaçekhara had some real poetic talent, despite the banality and stupidity of his conception of love in Act III. The swing scene contains really effective lines of word-painting, in harmonious metre:[37]
vicchaanto ṇaararamaṇīmaṇḍalassāṇaṇāiṁ
viccholanto gaaṇakuharaṁ kantijoṇhājaleṇa
pecchantīṇaṁ hiaaṇihiaṁ ṇiddalanto a dappaṁ
dolālīlāsaralataralo dīsae se muhendū.
‘Paling the face of every beauty here, making the sky’s vault to ripple with the liquid moonlight of her loveliness, and breaking the haughty pride in the hearts of maids that regard her, appeareth the moon-like orb of her face as she moveth straight to and fro in her sport on the swing.’ The effective alliteration and paronomasia of this stanza are surpassed by the metrical perfection of the next but one, where the Pṛthvī metre, with ‘its jingling tribrachs and bell-like, chiming cretics’, is employed in a stanza which admirably conveys by its sound the sense at which it aims:
raṇantamaṇiṇeuraṁ jhaṇajhaṇantahāracchaḍaṁ
kaṇakkaṇiakin̄kiṇīmuhalamehalāḍambaraṁ
vilolavalaāvalījaṇiamañjusiñjāravaṁ
ṇa kassa maṇomohaṇaṁ sasimuhīa hindolaṇaṁ.
‘With the tinkling jewelled anklets, With the sound of lovely jingles
With the flashing jewelled necklace, From the rows of rolling bangles,
With the show of girdles garrulous Pray whose heart is not bewildered
From their ringing, ringing bells While the moon-faced maiden swings?’
Excellent also is the king’s address[38] to the Açoka when made to blossom by the touch of the foot of his young beloved, but more characteristic in his comment,[39] inspired by the Vidūṣaka’s [[239]]ungallant comparison of the fresh beauty of the maiden with the passée comeliness of his queen:
bālāu honti kuūhaleṇa emeya cavalacittāo
daralasiathaṇīsu puṇo ṇivasai maaraddhaarahassaṁ.
‘Though maidens in their young zest for life are fickle of faith, yet it is with them—their breasts just budding—that the mystery of the dolphin-bannered doth abide.’
For technique Rājaçekhara is of interest, because he uses in the Karpūramañjarī the old form of prologue quite openly, with the Nāndī recited doubtless by the Sūtradhāra, followed by the advent of the Sthāpaka who recites two verses. It is noteworthy that the manuscripts often alter the Sthāpaka to the Sūtradhāra despite the clear sense of the text. The late Pārvatīpariṇaya likewise has a Nāndī before the Sūtradhāra speaks a verse. It is probable that the older technique long persisted in the south.
Rājaçekhara’s indebtedness to his predecessors is wholesale; the influence of Kālidāsa, Harṣa, and Bhavabhūti is obvious, and it is probably an indication of his contemporaneity with, or slight posteriority to, Murāri that he does not seem to have known his writings. Influence of the vernacular or of Prākrit is to be seen in his occasional use of rhyme, such as is found in the later Gītagovinda or the Mohamudgara.
6. Bhīmaṭa and Kṣemīçvara
A verse attributed to Rājaçekhara mentions the five dramas of Bhīmaṭa, of which the Svapnadaçānana won him chief fame. He is described as a Kaliñjarapati, whence the suggestion has been made that he was a connection of the Candella king Harṣa of Jejākabhukti, who, we know, was a contemporary of Mahīpāla of Kanyakubja, patron of Rājaçekhara, but we have no ground for positive assertion.[40]
The case is different with Kṣemīçvara, who in his Caṇḍakauçika wrote for Mahīpāla, doubtless the king of Kanyakubja, patron of Rājaçekhara. Kṣemīçvara asserts his patron’s victory over the Karṇāṭas, which was doubtless the view taken in royal circles of the contest against the Rāṣṭrakūṭa Indra III, who for his part claims victory over Mahodaya, or Kanyakubja.[40] A [[240]]variant of the name is Kṣemendra, but he is not to be identified with the Kashmirian poet of that name. His great-grandfather was called Vijayakoṣṭha or Vijayaprakoṣṭha, who is designated as both Ārya and Ācārya, and was, therefore, a learned man of some sort.
Kṣemīçvara has left two dramas. The Naiṣadhānanda[41] in seven acts deals with the legend of Nala, famous in the epic and later. The Caṇḍakauçika[42] reveals the stupid story of Hariçcandra, who, seeing as he thought the sacrifice of a damsel on the fire rebukes the Kauçika Viçvāmitra, and in return for his gallant action is cursed by the irascible sage, who was merely bringing the sciences under his control. He secures pardon by the surrender of the earth and a thousand gold pieces; to secure the latter he sells wife and child to a Brahmin, and himself to a Caṇḍāla as a cemetery keeper. One day his wife brings the dead body of their child, but it turns out merely to be a trial of his character; his son is alive and is crowned king. The plot is as poor as the execution of the piece. He shows in metre a special fondness for the Çikhariṇī, which occurs 20 times, nearly as often as the Çārdūlavikrīḍita (23), while the Vasantatilaka appears 27 times and the Çloka 36. His Prākrits, Çaurasenī and a few Māhārāṣṭrī stanzas, are artificial.
The compilers of anthologies make little of Kṣemīçvara, with sufficient reason, for his verses do not rise above mediocrity. The second stanza of the three-verse benediction in the Naiṣadhānanda is on a common theme, but not unhappily expressed; it follows a verse in honour of Puruṣottama and Çrī, with the usual impartiality of this period:
asthi hy asthi phaṇī phaṇī kim aparam bhasma bhasmaiva tac
carmaiva carma kiṁ tava jitaṁ yenaivam uttāmyasi
naitāṁ dhūrta paṇīkaroṣi satatam mūrdhni sthitāṁ Jāhnavīm
ity evaṁ Çivayā sanarmagadito dyūte Haraḥ pātu vaḥ.
‘A skull is but a skull, a serpent a serpent; what more? The ashes and the skin also which thou dost wear are but ashes and skin. What of thine hast thou lost that thus thou art outworn? Ah, rogue, it is that thou wilt not stake Jahnu’s daughter that [[241]]rests ever on thy crest. May Hara guard you, Hara to whom Çivā once spake playfully when they diced.’
This amusing play on the unwillingness of Çiva to prolong the dicing after he has unsuccessfully staked his necklace of skulls and serpents, and his clothing of ashes and hide, is followed by a wearisome eulogy of the glances of the god in the Tāṇḍava dance, alluding to the great moments in his history. Similar bad taste is shown in the curious and unusual form of the last verse of the drama:
yenādiçya prayogaṁ ghanapulakabhṛtā nāṭakasyāsya harṣād
vastrālaṁkārahemnām pratidinam akṛçā rāçayaḥ sampradattāḥ
tasya kṣattraprasūter bhramatu jagad idaṁ Kārttikeyasya kīrtiḥ
pāre kṣīrāmbhusindho ravikaviyaçasā sārdham agresarena.
‘Through all the universe beyond the ocean of milk, heralded by the fame of his bard, the sun, may the fame wander of that scion of heroism, that god of war, who bade this drama be performed and who in keen delight at the pleasure he found in it gave daily to the poet abundant store of raiment, jewels and gold.’ Such a mode of immortalizing himself, and his patron can hardly be regarded as precisely dignified, and it certainly is not in harmony with the traditions of the drama. [[242]]
[1] See Aufrecht, ZDMG. xxxvi. 521. [↑]
[2] v. 36; Lévi, TI. ii. 87. The citations are mainly from his Kapphiṇābhyudaya; Thomas, Kavīndravacanasamuccaya, p. 111. [↑]
[3] Pischel, ZDMG. xxxix. 315; Hultzsch, GN. 1886, pp. 224 ff. [↑]
[4] Bhattanatha Svamin, IA. xli. 139 f.; Bhandarkar, Report (1897), pp. xi, xviii; Peterson, Report, ii. 59. The name is variously given as Māyūrāja. [↑]
[9] i. 42; SD. 390; N. xix. 94; Lévi, TI. ii. 9. [↑]
[16] DR. iii. 38 comm.; SD. 512. [↑]
[17] DR. iii. 56 f. comm.; SD. 516. [↑]
[18] vi. 30/31 is cited in i. 6/7. [↑]
[19] xxxviii. 68. For his date cf. Bühler, Kashmir Report, p. 42. See Bhattanatha Svamin, IA. xli. 141; Lévi, TI. i. 277. [↑]
[20] ID. p. 83. Dhanika (DR. ii. 1) cites, anonymously as usual, iii. 21. [↑]
[23] ii. 34, as compared with vii. 83. [↑]
[24] Ed. KM. 1894; cf. Baumgartner, Das Râmâyaṇa, pp. 125 ff. [↑]
[31] Konow, Karpūramañjarī, pp. 177 ff.; Hultzsch, IA. xxxiv. 177 ff.; V. S. Apte, Rājaçekhara, Poona, 1886. Of special virtue is his Kāvyamīmāṅsā on rhetoric, which is better than his dramas. [↑]
[32] Winternitz, GIL. iii. 47; Lévi, TI. i. 183 f. [↑]
[34] Ed. C. Cappeller, Strassburg, 1885; Weber, IS. xviii. 481 ff. [↑]
[35] Ed. S. Konow, trs. C. R. Lanman, HOS. iv. 1901; J. Charpentier, Monde oriental, ii. 226 ff. [↑]
[36] Ed. Poona, 1886; trs. L. H. Gray, JAOS. xxvii. 1 ff. [↑]
[37] ii. 30. The translation of this and the next verse is taken from Lanman’s version. [↑]
[40] Konow, ID. p. 87; Peterson, Reports, ii. 63; Bhandarkar, Report (1897), p. xi. ↑ [a] [b]
[41] Peterson, Reports, iii. 340 f. [↑]
[42] Ed. Calcutta, 1884; trs. L. Fritze, Leipzig, 1883. On the same theme is Rāmacandra’s Satyahariçcandra (twelfth cent.); see Keith, JRAS. 1914, pp. 1104 f. [↑]
XI
THE DECLINE OF THE SANSKRIT DRAMA
1. The Decadence of the Drama
We have seen already in Murāri and Rājaçekhara the process which was depriving the drama of real dramatic quality. The older poets were, indeed, under the influence of the epic; they lived in the atmosphere of the poetry of the court and their dramatic instincts had always to fight against the tendency to introduce epic and lyric verses into their works, heedless of the ruin thus wrought on the drama. Had the stage been a more popular one, this defect might have been counteracted, but the audience for whose approval a poet looked was essentially one of men of learning, who were intent on discerning poetic beauties or defects, and who, as the theory proves, had singularly little idea of what a drama really means.
Other factors doubtless helped the decline of the drama. The invasion of the Mahomedans into northern India, which began in earnest with the opening of the eleventh century, was a slow process, and it could not immediately affect the progress of the dramatic art. But gradually, by substituting Mahomedan rulers—men who disliked and feared the influence of the national religion, which was closely bound up with the drama—for Hindu princes, the generous and accomplished patrons of the dramatists, it must have exercised a depressing effect on the cultivation of this literary form. The drama doubtless took refuge in those parts of India where Moslem power was slowest to extend, but even there Mahomedan potentates gained authority, and drama can have been seldom worth performing or composing, until the Hindu revival asserted the Indian national spirit, and gave an encouragement to the renewal of an ancient national glory.
Yet a further and most important consideration must have lain in the ever-widening breach between the languages of the [[243]]drama and those of real life. In Bhāsa’s days and even those of Kālidāsa we may imagine that there was not too great difficulty in following the main features of the drama both in Sanskrit and in Prākrit, but the gulf between the popular languages and those of learning went on widening every year, and Rājaçekhara, as we have seen, was, despite his boasted studies, of which we have no reason to doubt, unable to discriminate correctly his Prākrits. It in no wise disproves this view that the Lalitavigraharājanāṭaka of Somadeva shows a close connexion with the language as laid down in Hemacandra’s grammar, for, as that work preceded the play in date and was produced at the court of Aṇhilvāḍ, which was in close connexion with that of Sambhār, where Somadeva lived, we need not doubt that copies of Hemacandra’s work were available for the production of artificial Prākrit.
It was clearly a very different thing to compose in Sanskrit and Prākrit in A.D. 1000, when the vernaculars were beginning to assume literary form, than in A.D. 400, and the difficulty of composition in any effective manner must have rapidly increased with the years, and the growth of the realization that it was idle to seek fame under modern circumstances by the composition of dramas, for which there was no popular audience and only a limited market. What is amazing is that for centuries the Sanskrit drama continued to be produced in very substantial numbers, as the existence of manuscripts proves, and that so strong was the force of tradition that the first attempt to introduce the vernacular into the drama by Bidyāpati Ṭhākur in Behar took the form of producing works in which the characters use Sanskrit and Prākrit and the songs only are in Maithilī. So powerful has been the strength of the Sanskrit drama that it is only in the nineteenth century that vernacular drama has exhibited itself in Hindi, and in general it is only very recently that the drama has seemed proper for vernacular expression. But the writing in artificial languages has revenged itself on the writers; their works are reminiscent of modern copies of Greek or Latin verses, which only too painfully reveal through all the artifices suggested by careful study the impossibility of the production of real poetry, not to mention drama, in dead languages. It is significant in this regard that perhaps the most interesting of later dramas is the Prabodhacandrodaya of Kṛṣṇamiçra, a [[244]]drama of allegory on philosophical topics, which claim as their right Sanskrit as a mode of expression. The Sanskrit of the author thus represents the medium of his habitual use in discussions and is appropriate to the matters dealt with.
This is essentially the period when the dramatic rules, strong in their hold earlier over the minds of dramatists, attain even greater sway. It is to this that we owe the few specimens we have of the rarer types of drama which are not represented among the scanty remains of the classical drama. There is no reason to suppose that these types were popular among the earlier dramatists; they had, it seems, their vogue in the time before the Nāṭyaçāstra assumed its present form, but were rejected as unsuitable by the classical drama. We have also specimens of types which may have been regularly produced in classical times, but none of which are represented in the extant literature. Finally, we have specimens of new forms, the result of efforts to introduce into Sanskrit dramatic forms which had sprung up in more popular circles.
2. The Nāṭaka
The Nāṭaka remains throughout the post-classical period of the drama the natural exponent of the higher form of the dramatic art. No change of importance appears in its character; it merely steadily develops those features which we have seen in full process of production in Murāri and Rājaçekhara, the subordination of action to description, and the degeneration of the description into a mere exercise in style and in the use of sounds.
The character of the decline is obvious enough in the Prasannarāghava,[1] a Nāṭaka in seven Acts, in which the logician Jayadeva (c. A.D. 1200), son of Mahādeva and Sumitrā, of Kuṇḍina in Berar, endeavours to tell again the story of the Rāmāyaṇa.[2] In Act I a disciple of Yājñavalkya appears and repeats from the speech of two bees heard behind the scene the news they are discussing; the Asura Bāṇa is to rival Rāvaṇa for the hand of [[245]]Sītā. Two heralds then appear to describe the suitors for the maiden’s hand; they are interrupted and insulted by a gross and rough arrival who casts a contemptuous eye on the bow which the suitor must bend, and would forcibly seize the prize. The heralds soothe him, but he assumes the monstrous form of Rāvaṇa with his ten heads. Bāṇa then appears, tries in vain the bow, insults Rāvaṇa and retires. In Act II we have a ludicrous scene in which Rāma watches Sītā and her friend; both he and she describe the beauties of the union of the Vāsantī creeper and the mango-tree, an allusion to their own state to be, and confronted shyly whisper love. In Act III we have an intolerable series of compliments exchanged by all the parties, Viçvāmitra, Çatānanda, Janaka, Daçaratha, Rāma, and Lakṣmaṇa; Viçvāmitra bids Rāma bend the bow of Çiva, though a message from Paraçurāma deprecates such an insult. The bow is broken, there is great joy, and the marriage is celebrated. In Act IV Paraçurāma himself arrives; his great feats are set out in a dialogue of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa; he encounters them, exchanges harangues, is dissuaded by Janaka, Çatānanda, and Viçvāmitra from battle, but an insult of his to Viçvāmitra breaks down Rāma’s patience; they fight, Rāma is victor, but falls at his rival’s feet and asks his blessing. In Act V we have a new and picturesque conception and one wholly aloof from drama. The river goddess Yamunā tells Gan̄gā of her grief at Vālin’s act in exiling his brother, Sugrīva. Sarayū joins them and reports the fate of Rāma until his departure for exile; her flamingo arrives to carry on the tale until Rāma’s fatal departure in pursuit of a golden deer. Anxious, the rivers hasten to the ocean, Sāgara, to learn the news; they find Godāvarī in converse with Sāgara; she tells of the rape of Sītā, the death of Jaṭāyu, the fall of Sītā’s jewels and their transport to Ṛṣyamukha. The Tun̄gabhadrā arrives with her tale; Rāma has slain Vālin and made alliance with Sugrīva and Hanumant. Suddenly a great mass flies over the ocean. Is it the Himālaya? the Vindhya? Sāgara goes out to see and the rivers follow. In Act VI we find that sorrow has all but driven Rāma mad; he asks the birds, the moon, for his beloved. Fortunately two Vidyādharas by magic art are able to show him the events in Lan̄kā; Sītā appears, saddened lest Rāma suspect, or be faithless to her; Rāvaṇa seeks her love; she [[246]]despises him; angry, he reaches out his hand for his sword to slay her, but receives in it the head of his son, Akṣa, slain by Hanumant, who it is who has leaped the ocean and attacked Lan̄kā. Sītā is desperate; she seeks to burn herself on a funeral pyre, but the coal changes to pearl, and Hanumant consoles her by news of Rāma’s fidelity. In Act VII Rāvaṇa is given by Prahasta a picture sent by Mālyavant showing the details of the enemy’s attack and the bridge; he refuses to regard it as more than a painter’s fancy; Mandodarī, his wife, enters; she has received an oracular response which terrifies her and also Prahasta, but Rāvaṇa scorns it. At last, however, he realizes that the city is attacked, sends Kumbhakarṇa and Meghanāda to their death, and at last himself issues forth to die; his fate is described by a Vidyādhara and his mate. Then enter Rāma, Sītā, Lakṣmaṇa, Vibhīṣaṇa, and Sugrīva, who all describe in turn the setting of the sun and the rise of the moon; they mount the aerial car, describe a few points of interest in the country over which they pass in their journey north, and then in turn solemnly describe the rising of the sun.
The play is typical of the later drama; its one merit is Act V where the spectacle of the river goddesses grouped round the ocean affords admirable scope for an effective tableau, but it is wholly out of harmony with dramatic action. As usual, the author is fond of the long metres, though the Vasantatilaka is his favourite; then comes the Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Çloka, Çikhariṇī, and Sragdharā, while he shows decided fondness for the Svāgatā, which occurs a few times in Rājaçekhara and the Mahānāṭaka, but is not employed in the earlier drama. The drama is superior in merit to the other very popular Rāma drama, the Jānakīpariṇaya[3] by Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita, who flourished and wrote many bad works at the end of the seventeenth century. The number of Rāma dramas already known is enormous; any one of merit appears still to be unearthed. The commentary on the Daçarūpa knows a Chalitarāma which would probably date before A.D. 1000, but its preservation is problematical. The Adbhutadarpaṇa[4] of Mahādeva, son of Kṛṣṇa Sūri, a contemporary of Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita, shows Jayadeva’s influence in that it presents the events [[247]]at Lan̄kā as happening by means of a magic mirror. Its ten acts cover only the period from An̄gada’s mission to Rāvaṇa to the coronation of Rāma, and it introduces, contrary to the rule in Rāma dramas, the figure of the Vidūṣaka.
The Kṛṣṇa legend naturally attracted not less note; the Kerala prince Ravivarman, born in A.D. 1266, is the author of a Pradyumnābhyudaya.[5] The minister of Husain Shāh Rūpa Gosvāmin wrote about A.D. 1532 the Vidagdhamādhava[6] and the Lalitamādhava[7] in seven and ten Acts respectively on the theme of the loves of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, in pursuance of his eager support of the movement of Caitanya. For the son of Ṭodar Mall, Akbar’s minister, Çeṣa Kṛṣṇa wrote the Kaṅsavadha[8] which in seven Acts covers the ground of Bhāsa’s Bālacarita, as well as other plays on the Rāma legend. The winning of Rukmiṇī by Kṛṣṇa is the theme of the Rukmiṇīpariṇaya[9] by Rāmavarman of Travancore (1735–87), and Kṛṣṇa’s generosity to a poor friend, though in a surprising shape, is recounted by Sāmarāja Dīkṣita in the Çrīdāmacarita[10] written in A.D. 1681.
The number of dramas based on the Mahābhārata is decidedly smaller. We have not the Citrabhārata of the indefatigable Kṣemendra of Kashmir, who wrote in the middle of the eleventh century. But from that century probably are the Subhadrādhanaṁjaya and Tapatīsaṁvaraṇa[11] of the Kerala king Kulaçekharavarman, and from about A.D. 1200 the Pārthaparākrama,[12] a Vyāyoga, to be discussed hereafter, of Prahlādanadeva, a Yuvarāja, brother of Dhārāvarṣa, lord of Candrāvatī.
Of other mythological subjects we have the Harakelināṭaka[13] of the Cāhamāna king Vīsaladeva Vigraharāja, of whom we have an inscription of A.D. 1163, and whose work is partially preserved on stone. The Pārvatīpariṇaya[14] of Vāmana Bhaṭṭa Bāṇa, who wrote about A.D. 1400 under the Reḍḍi prince Vema of Koṇḍavīḍu, owes its fame to its being mistaken for a work of Bāṇa. The Haragaurīvivāha[15] of Jagajjyotirmalla of Nepal (1617–33) is interesting, because it is rather an opera than a play and the [[248]]vernacular verses are its only fixed element, but this is not likely to be a primitive feature.
Of dramas with lesser personages of the saga as heroes we have the Bhairavānanda[16] of the Nepalese poet Maṇika from the end of the fourteenth century, and at least a century later the Bhartṛharinirveda[17] of Harihara, which is interesting, as it shows the popularity of Bhartṛhari; he is represented as desolated by his wife’s death, through despair on a false rumour of his own death, but, consoled by a Yogin, he attains indifference, so that, when his wife is recalled to life, neither she nor their child has any attraction for him.
Of historical drama we have little, and that of small value. The Lalitavigraharājanāṭaka,[18] preserved in part in an inscription, is a work of the latter part of the twelfth century by Somadeva in honour of Vīsaladeva Vigraharāja, the Cāhamāna. The Pratāparudrakalyāṇa[19] by Vidyānātha, inserted in his treatise on rhetoric as an illustration of the drama, celebrates his patron, a king of Warangal about A.D. 1300.
More interesting is the Hammīramadamardana,[20] written between A.D. 1219 and 1229 by Jayasiṅha Sūri, the priest of the temple of Munisuvrata at Broach. It appears that Tejaḥpāla, brother of Vastupāla, minister of Vīradhavala of Gujarāt, visited the temple, and, with the assent of his brother, complied with the request of Jayasiṅha for the erection of twenty-five golden flagstaffs for Devakulikās. As a reward Jayasiṅha not merely celebrated the brothers in a panegyric, of which a copy has been preserved along with his drama, but wrote, to please Jayantasiṅha, son of Vastupāla, the play for performance at the festival of the procession of the god Bhīmeçvara at Cambay. He claims that it includes all nine sentiments, in contrast to Prakaraṇas, exploiting the sentiment of fear, with which the audience has been surfeited.
In Act I, after the introductory dialogue between the Sūtradhāra and an actor, Vīradhavala is brought in, conversing with Tejaḥpāla, the theme being the extraordinary merits of Vastupāla [[249]]as a statesman. But times are still troublous; the realm is menaced by the Turuṣka Hammīra, by the Yādava Siṅhana,[21] who may hope for aid from Saṁgrāmasiṅha, nephew of Siṅha, lord of Lāṭa. Vastupāla enters, and extols the skill of Tejaḥpāla’s son Lāvaṇyasiṅha, whose spies bring in valuable information. He then with Tejaḥpāla compliments the king, who tells them of his proposed attack on Hammīra. Vastupāla warns him against excessive valour in pursuit, and counsels him to secure the aid of the Mārvār princes. In Act II we find that the advice has been followed with success, as related by Lāvaṇyasiṅha, who has an opportunity of repaying the compliments showered on him by his uncle. The spy Nipuṇaka then enters with a tale of success; he has entered Siṅhana’s camp, passed himself off as a spy on Vīradhavala’s movements, reported that that king was making ready an attack on Hammīra, and persuaded Siṅhana to wait in the forest of the Tapti a favourable opportunity to attack Vīradhavala, after his forces have been weakened by battle with Hammīra. In the meantime Nipuṇaka’s brother Suvega, who has been serving Devapāla of Mālava, steals the best steed of his master and presents it to Saṁgrāmasiṅha, who is leading Siṅhana’s army. He then presents himself in the guise of a Tāpasa to Siṅhana, but runs away when the king goes to pay him due honour. Suspicion is thus aroused, and Suvega is seized; from his matted locks is extracted a letter addressed to Saṁgrāmasiṅha. It refers to the horse which it treats as a present from Devapāla to Saṁgrāmasiṅha, and advises him to attack Siṅhana when he has entered Gujarāt, the Mālava king engaging to assail him at that moment. Siṅhana asks Nipuṇaka to ascertain the truth about the horse, and he has no difficulty through Suvega in terrifying Saṁgrāmasiṅha into flight. We then find Vastupāla on the stage; his spy Kuçalaka reports that Saṁgrāmasiṅha menaces Cambay; Vastupāla takes precautions for its defence, and summons Bhuvanapāla, Saṁgrāmasiṅha’s minister, with whom he arrives at an understanding, assuring Vīradhavala of that prince’s aid. In Act III Vīradhavala and Tejaḥpāla hear from a spy Kamalaka the fate of Mewār’s king Jayatala; attacked by the Mlecchas, the people in despair flung [[250]]themselves into wells, burned themselves in their houses or hanged themselves, until he had heartened them and discouraged the foe by announcing the approach of Vīradhavala, at whose name the Turuṣkas fled in terror. Vīradhavala extols the cleverness of Vastupāla, who has enabled him to dispose of all his enemies save the Mlecchas, and Tejaḥpāla assures him of success even against these foes. What Vastupāla is doing is shown by a conversation between two spies, Kuvalayaka and Çīghraka, which forms the entr’acte to Act IV; he has induced the Kaliph of Baghdad by a false report to instruct Kharpara Khāna to send Mīlacchrīkāra to him in chains, and he has won over various Gūrjara princes by promising them the lands of the Turuṣkas when they are defeated. We then find Mīlacchrīkāra discussing his situation with his minister Gorī Īsapa; Kharpara Khāna, on the one hand, and Vīradhavala press him hard; the king declines, however, even to think of retreat, but both king and minister flee hastily before the sound of the approach of Vīradhavala’s army and the voice of the king, who is disappointed not to capture his foes, but obeys loyally Vastupāla’s counsel against rash pursuit. Act V shows us the triumphant return of the king, his reunion with his wife Jayataladevī, and exchange of felicitations with Vastupāla and Tejaḥpāla. We learn that Vastupāla has accomplished a further feat; he has intercepted at sea Radī and Kadī, Mīlacchrīkāra’s preceptors, returning from Baghdad, and the king has been forced, in order to secure their safety, to enter into friendly relations. Finally the king enters Çiva’s temple, where the god presents himself before him, and grants him a boon; the king, however, has little that is not formal to ask, so fortunate is he in his ministers.
Neither as history nor as poetry does the work claim any high merit. Its chief aim is to provide unlimited eulogy for Vastupāla and Tejaḥpāla, and secondarily for the king who is lucky enough to have in his retinue these remarkable models of intelligence and skill. It must be admitted, however, that the author does not exactly convey the impression of the real success of his objects of admiration; the impression is rather one of minor successes and a good deal of rather obvious diplomacy. Style, Prākrit, and metres are decidedly stereotyped.
A certain number of dramas of similar type has been preserved.[22] [[251]]Gan̄gādhara’s Gan̄gadāsapratāpavilāsa[23] celebrates the struggle of a Campānīr prince against Muhammed II, Shāh of Gujarāt (A.D. 1443–52). The stream, though scanty, flows continuously to the Ḍillīsāmrājya[24] of Lakṣmaṇa Sūri of 1912.
The adaptation of English drama is seen in R. Kṛṣṇamachari’s adaptation in 1892 of the Midsummer Night’s Dream in his Vāsantikasvapna.[25]
3. The Allegorical Nāṭaka
We cannot say whether Kṛṣṇamiçra’s Prabodhacandrodaya[26] was a revival of a form of drama, which had been practised regularly if on a small scale since Açvaghoṣa or whether it was a new creation, as may easily have been the case. At any rate, his work can be dated with precision; it was produced for one Gopāla in the presence of the Candella king Kīrtivarman of Jejākabhukti, of whom we have an inscription of A.D. 1098. Gopāla had restored, we learn, Kīrtivarman after his defeat by Karṇa of Cedi, who was living in A.D. 1042, but we can only guess that he was a general. The play in its six Acts is devoted to the defence of the Advaita form of the Viṣṇu doctrine, a combination of Vedānta with Viṣṇuism.
The supreme reality which is truly one, but is united with illusion, has a son, Spirit, who again has two children, Discrimination (viveka) and Confusion (moha); the posterity of the latter has largely gained in strength, and the position of the former and his offspring is menaced. This is told us at the outset of the drama by Love in converse with Desire; the former is sure he has done much to attain the result. The one danger is the old prophecy that there will arise Knowledge (prabodha) and Judgement or Science (vidyā) from the union of Discrimination and Theology, Upaniṣad, but these two are long since parted, and their reunion seems unlikely. The two, however, flee before the approach of the king Discrimination who is talking with Reason [[252]](mati), one of his wives; to his joy he finds that she is all in favour of his reunion with Theology which she is fain to bring about. In Act II we find Confusion in fear of overthrow; he hastens by the use of Falsity (dambha) to secure Benares as the key of the world; Egoism, grandfather of Falsity, visits the city and discovers to his joy his relative. Confusion enters in triumphant pomp his new capital; the Materialist Cārvāka supports him. But there is bad news; Duty is rising in revolt; Theology meditates reunion with Discrimination; Confusion bids his minions cast Piety, daughter of Faith (çraddhā) in prison and orders Heresy (mithyādṛṣṭi) to separate Theology and Faith. In Act III Piety appears supported by her friend Pity; she has lost her mother Faith and is in sad plight, even dreaming of suicide, from which Pity dissuades her. In Digambara Jainism, Buddhism, and Somism she searches in vain for Faith; each appears with a wife claiming to be Faith, but she cannot recognize her mother in these distorted forms. Buddhism and Jainism quarrel; Somism enters, makes them drunk with alcohol and pleasure, and takes them off in search of Piety, the daughter of Faith. In Act IV Faith in great distress tells of a danger; she and Duty have escaped from a demoness who would have devoured them but for Trust in Viṣṇu, who has saved them. She brings a message to Discrimination to start the battle. He musters his leaders, Contemplation, Patience, Contentment, and himself goes to Benares, which he describes. In Act V the battle is over; Confusion and his offspring are dead. But Spirit is disconsolate, mourning the loss of Confusion and Activity. The doctrine of Vyāsa, the Vedānta, appears, disabuses his mind of error, and he resolves to settle down as a hermit with the one wife worthy of him, Inactivity. Act VI shows us the ancestor of all Being; he is still under the influence of Confusion, who, before dying, dispatched to him spirits to confuse him, and his companion, Illusion, favours their efforts. But his friend Reasoning shows him his error, and he drives them away. Peace of heart reunites Theology and Discrimination; she tells of her mishaps with Cult and Exegesis, Nyāya and Sāṁkhya, and reveals to Being that he is the Supreme Lord. This, however, is too much for his intellect, but the difficulty is cleared away by Judgement, which is the immediate supernatural child of the reunion of the [[253]]spouses. The appearance of Trust (bhakti) in Viṣṇu to applaud the result terminates the drama.
No one can doubt the cleverness with which the strife of races of one stock in the Mahābhārata and the plot and love interest of the usual Nāṭikā are combined, nor the ingenuity of fitting in the Vedānta doctrine of the Absolute and the devotion of the Vaiṣṇava creed. There is certainly some comedy in the exchange of views of Egoism and Falsity, who are perfect examples of hypocrisy, and the scenes between Buddhism, Jainism, and Somism are distinctly funny. None the less it would be idle to pretend that the play has any dramatic force. Its chief merits are its effective and stately stanzas of moral and philosophical content. Kṛṣṇamiçra is an able master of the Çārdūlavikrīḍita, his favourite metre; he has also effective Vasantatilakas, and rhymed Prākrit stanzas.
Kṛṣṇamiçra’s example has caused the production of numerous dramas of the same type, but of much less value. The Saṁkalpasūryodaya[27] of Ven̄kaṭanātha of the fourteenth century is excessively dreary, but it is better than the famous Caitanyacandrodaya[28] of Kavikarṇapūra, which is an account of Caitanya’s success, but which wholly fails to convey any suggestion of his spiritual power. He turns out as a long-winded discourser of a muddled theology, surrounded by obedient and unintelligent pupils. Two Çaiva dramas are the Vidyāpariṇayana[29] and Jīvānandana[30] written at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. They have no merits.
An example of a Jain allegory of comparatively early date is afforded by the Moharājaparājaya,[31] the conquest of King Confusion, describing the conversion of the Caulukya king of Gujarāt, Kumārapāla, to Jainism, his prohibition of the killing of animals, and his cessation from the practice of confiscating the property of persons dying without heirs in the realm, as a result of the [[254]]efforts of the famous sage, Hemacandra. The author, Yaçaḥpāla, was the son of a minister Dhanadeva and Rukmiṇī, of the Moḍha Bania caste, and he served the Cakravartin Abhayadeva or Abhayapāla, who reigned after Kumārapāla from A.D. 1229–32. The play is in five Acts, and all the personages save the king, Hemacandra, and the Vidūṣaka, are personifications of qualities, good and evil. The play was performed on the occasion of the festival of the idol of Mahāvira at the Kumāravihāra, or temple erected by Kumārapāla, at Thārāpadra, where the author seems to have been governor or resident.
The play begins with an invocation in three stanzas of the Tīrthakaras, Ṛṣabha, Pārçva, and Mahāvīra, followed by the usual dialogue of the Sūtradhāra and the actress, his wife. Then are introduced Kumārapāla with the Vidūṣaka, to whom enter Jñānadarpaṇa, the Mirror of Knowledge, the spy who has been sent to report on the affairs of King Confusion. He reports the successful siege by Confusion of the city of Man’s Mind, whose king, Vivekacandra, the Moon of Discrimination, has been forced to flee accompanied by his bride Calm, and his daughter Kṛpāsundarī, in whom Compassion is incorporated, and of whose escape Kumārapāla learns with joy. The spy further reports a meeting with Kīrtimañjarī, the Garland of Fame, daughter of Good Conduct by his wife Polity, and herself wife of Kumārapāla. She complains that the king has turned from her and her brother, Pratāpa, Valour, owing to the efforts of a Jain monk. She has, therefore, sought the aid of Confusion and he is preparing to attack Kumārapāla. The spy, however, disappoints her by answering her inquiry as to the victory in the struggle by insisting that it will be Confusion that must fall. The king expresses his determination to overthrow Confusion, and the announcement of the hour of worship by bards terminates the Act.
An entr’acte then tells us through Puṇyaketu, the Banner of Merit, minister of the king, that Discrimination has arrived at the penance grove of Hemacandra, and has met the king, who has looked favourably at his daughter. The Act itself shows us in the accustomed mode the king with the jester spying on Kṛpāsundarī and Somatā, Gentleness,[32] her companion, and ultimately [[255]]speaking to them; as usual the queen, Rājyaçrī, the Royal Fortune, with her companion, Raudratā, Harshness, intervenes, and the king vainly craves pardon. In Act III Puṇyaketu overcomes the obstacle to the match by a clever device; he stations one of his servants behind the image of the goddess to which the queen goes to seek the boon of the disfigurement of her rival, and thus, through apparent divine intervention, the queen is taught that by marriage with Kṛpāsundarī alone can the king overcome Confusion, and is induced to beg Discrimination for the hand of his daughter. Discrimination consents, but insists that to please his daughter the seven vices must be banished, and the practice of confiscating the property of those dying without heirs shall be abolished, terms to which the queen consents. The king also agrees, and the Act ends in his action in forgoing the property of a millionaire believed dead, who, however, opportunely turns up with a new bride in an aerial car.
In Act IV we have the fulfilment of the pledge to banish the seven vices. It first tells of the meeting of the Fortune of the City with that of the Country; the former persuades the latter to accept the tenets of Jainism. Then appears Kṛpāsundarī who is annoyed by the noises of hunting and fishing, but consoled by the appearance of the police officer, who proceeds to the business of banishing vices. Gambling, Flesh-eating, Drinking, Slaughter, Theft, and Adultery must depart, despite the plea that the king’s predecessors permitted them, and that they bring revenues to the State; Concubinage may remain if she will. In Act V the king, armed by Hemacandra with his Yogaçāstra, which is his armour, and the Vītarāgastuti, which serves to make him invisible, inspects the strong places of Confusion, and finally rendering himself visible does battle with the adversary and wins a great victory. He restores Discrimination to his capital, and pronounces a benediction in which praise of the Jina and of Hemacandra blend with the desire of close union with Kṛpā and Discrimination, and the hope that ‘my fame, allied with the moon, may prevail to dispel the darkness of Confusion’.
The play is certainly not without merits; in the main it is written in simple Sanskrit, free from the artifices which disfigure more pretentious plays, and it has also the merit of bringing vividly before us the activities of Jainism in its regulation of [[256]]Kumārapāla’s kingdom, casting an interesting light on what is known from inscriptions and other sources of the history of Gujarāt. The marriage of the king with Kṛpāsundarī is recorded by Jinamaṇḍana in his Kumārapālaprabandha as taking place in A.D. 1159. Interesting details are given of the forms of gambling, including chess, and of the sects which approve slaughter. The Prākrits are, of course, deeply influenced by Hemacandra’s grammar, and include Māgadhī and Jain Māhārāṣṭrī.
4. The Nāṭikā and the Saṭṭaka
The Nāṭikā differs in no real essential from a Nāṭaka save in the number of Acts, but its type continues to be rigidly restricted to that set by Harṣa. The Karṇasundarī[33] of Bilhaṇa belongs to the period about A.D. 1080–90. It seems to have been written out of compliment to Karṇadeva Trailokyamalla of Aṇhilvāḍ (1064–94), and to celebrate his wedding in advanced age with Miyāṇalladevī, daughter of the Karṇāṭa king, Jayakeçin. The story runs that the Cālukya king is to marry Karṇasundarī, daughter of the Vidyādhara king. The minister introduces her into the harem, and the king first sees her in a dream, then in a picture. He falls in love, and the queen is jealous; she breaks in on their meeting, and once assumes Karṇasundarī’s guise to present herself to the king. Next she tries to marry the king to a boy in Karṇasundarī’s clothes, but the minister adroitly substitutes the real for the feigned damsel, and the usual tidings of triumph abroad ends the play, which is a patent jumble of reminiscences of Kālidāsa, Harṣa, and Rājaçekhara.
Madana Bālasarasvatī, preceptor of the Paramāra Arjunavarman of Dhārā, wrote the Vijayaçrī or Pārijātamañjarī,[34] a Nāṭikā in four Acts, of which two are preserved on stone at Dhārā. A garland falls on the breast of Arjunavarman after his victory over the Cālukya king, Bhīmadeva II, and becomes a maiden, who is handed over to the charge of the Chamberlain. She is the daughter of the Cālukya, and the usual sequence of events leads to her wedlock with the king. There is doubtless a historical reference; the date of the play is early in the thirteenth century. [[257]]
Rather less commonplace is Mathurādāsa’s effort in the Vṛṣabhānujā[35] to make a Nāṭikā of the love of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā. He was a Kāyastha of Suvarṇaçekhara on the Ganges and Yamunā, and he uses the motive of the jealousy of Rādhā for a portrait of a lady which Kṛṣṇa has, but which turns out to be one of herself. A philosophic play is Narasiṅha’s Çivanārāyaṇabhañjamahodaya, in honour of a prince of Keonjhor.
The Saṭṭaka with its demand for Prākrit was too exacting for the average poet; we have only the Ānandasundarī[36] of the tedious Ghanaçyāma, minister of the Marāṭha Tukkojī and the Çṛn̄gāramañjarī[37] of the Almora poet Viçveçvara of the eighteenth century.
5. The Prakaraṇa
The example of the Mṛcchakaṭikā induced few imitations, doubtless because would-be imitators had the sense to realize the appalling difficulties of producing anything worthy of setting beside that masterpiece. There is, however, a servile redaction of the same idea as that of the Mālatīmādhava of Bhavabhūti in the Mallikāmāruta[38] of Uddaṇḍin or Uddaṇḍanātha, who has had the quite undeserved honour of being taken for Daṇḍin, but who was really no more than the court poet of the Zemindar of Kukkuṭakroḍa or Calicut in the middle of the seventeenth century. The plot follows that of Bhavabhūti’s play almost slavishly. The magician Mandākinī is eager to arrange a marriage between Mallikā, daughter of the minister of the Vidyādhara king and Māruta, son of the minister of the king of Kuntala. She arranges an interview between the two, who fall in love, but the match is disturbed by the desire of the king of Ceylon for Mallikā’s hand. Māruta’s friend Kalakaṇṭha is also in love with Ramayantikā. In Act III there is the usual temple scene, and a couple of elephants are let loose to frighten the two maidens and cause two rescues. Then Māruta is told by an emissary of the king of Ceylon that Kalakaṇṭha is dead, and is only saved from suicide by his friend’s appearance. In [[258]]Act V Māruta tries conjuring up spirits; he finds Mallikā stolen by a Rākṣasa, rescues her, but is himself stolen, and finally overcomes the demon. But the marriage is to proceed, so that we have the elopement of Māruta and Mallikā, and the usual deception of the bridegroom, while the other couple follow the example set and elope also. The inevitable second abduction of Mallikā takes place, with the necessary search for her, which at last is rewarded; all are united under Mandākinī’s protection, and the king and the parents accord their sanction.
The work is metrically interesting, because the author shows a remarkable preference for the Vasantatilaka (118), and, while he is fond of the Çārdūlavikrīḍita and employs a great variety of metres, he, unlike most later authors, uses freely the Āryā in its different forms (74).
We know also of Prakaraṇas written by Jain writers.[39] Rāmacandra, pupil of the great Hemacandra, who perished under the reign of Ajayapāla, nephew and successor of Hemacandra’s patron, Kumārapāla, between A.D. 1173 and 1176, wrote, besides other plays, the Kaumudīmitrāṇanda[40] in ten Acts. The work is wholly undramatic and is really the working up in the form of a play of a number of Kathā incidents, presenting a result not unlike the plot of a modern pantomime. We first learn of a merchant’s son, Mitrāṇanda, who on the island of Varuṇa attains as wife the daughter, Kaumudī, of the head of a monastery, after he and his friend have freed from durance the Siddha king, cruelly nailed to a tree by Varuṇa. She reveals to him the fact that the ascetics are frauds, and that the fate of her husbands is normally to be flung into a pit under the nuptial chamber; in this case, however, attracted to her husband by the love charm he had received from Varuṇa, she agrees to flee with him and the treasure collected from former spouses to Ceylon. There the pair would have been in evil plight, since Mitrāṇanda is taken for a thief by the police, had he not cured from death by snake-bite the crown prince Lakṣmīpati with the aid of the magic spell given to him to revive the dead by the goddess Jān̄gulī on the occasion of his marriage. The king in gratitude entrusts the pair to the minister, who, however, is enamoured of Kaumudī and anxious to get rid of her husband. The opportunity is given [[259]]by a human sacrifice which a vassal of the king wishes to offer; Mitrāṇanda is sent by the minister with a letter intended to secure his being the victim, but luckily is recognized by Maitreya, his companion, who had won the vassal’s favour by curing him by a magic herb. Kaumudī in the meantime is expelled from the minister’s house by his jealous wife, and wanders until she meets Sumitrā, daughter of a merchant, and her family; all are captured by a prince of the aborigines Vajravarman, to whom also is brought one Makaranda, who turns out to be a friend of Mitrāṇanda. A letter from Lakṣmīpati arrives to ask for the welfare of Mitrāṇanda and Kaumudī, and the latter takes advantage of it to induce Vajravarman to celebrate the marriage of Makaranda and Sumitrā. The three then have an adventure at Ekacakrā with a Kāpālika, who induces the women to go into a subterranean cave, while he asks Mitrāṇanda’s aid against a Vidyādhara, described as eager after women. He breathes life into a corpse which takes a sword in its hand, but Mitrāṇanda by a magic formula induces it to strike the Kāpālika, who disappears. In Act IX Makaranda has to establish before Lakṣmīpati his claim to his own caravan, which a certain Naradatta claims; the dispute is settled by the appearance of Vajravarman and Mitrāṇanda, while Act X disposes of the piece by uniting husband and wife in the abode of the Siddha king. The work is, of course, wholly without interest other than that presented by so many marvels appealing to the sentiment of wonder in the audience. The author refers to Murāri in such a way as to suggest to Dr. Hultzsch[41] his contemporaneity with him, but this is in no wise rendered necessary by the wording of the passage cited, and, secondly, would very badly agree with the fact that Man̄kha knew and cites Murāri about A.D. 1135, for it takes some time for an author to reach the stage of being treated as an authority.
Another Jaina composition is the Prabuddharauhiṇeya[42] of one Rāmabhadra Muni, pupil of Jayaprabha Sūri, of the school of Deva Sūri, the famous writer on Nyāya, who died in A.D. 1169. It was written for performance in a temple of Yugādideva, that is the Tīrthakara Ṛṣabha, on the occasion of a procession [[260]]festival. It is in six Acts. In Act I Rauhiṇeya, who is a bold bandit, steals away Madanavatī, a married woman, while his helper, a Çabara, who speaks Māgadhī, keeps her lover at bay. In the next Act he dresses up as the mother of a youth Manoratha, and abducts him for the sake of his ornaments, terrifying the bystanders with a snake made out of rags. The next three Acts tell of the complaints of these robberies made to Çreṇika of Magadha, and the efforts of his minister Abhayakumāra to find the guilty man, ending ultimately in the arrest of the robber, who, however, stoutly maintains his innocence, though he fails in succeeding in winning his discharge. In Act VI women and musicians under the control of Bharata, a teacher of dancing, endeavour to deceive him into the belief that he is in heaven, and thus to win a confession of his misdeeds from him. But he sees through the play, for he remembers a verse which he had heard spoken by Vardhamāna Svāmin before his captivity, in which the characteristics[43] of the gods, freedom from perspiration, unfaded garlands, and feet that do not touch the ground, were set out. The miscreant thus is pronounced innocent, but, liberated, manifests his penitence by taking the king and the minister to the mount Vaibhāra, in which are the treasures he has stolen and the missing boy and woman. The topic is one handled by Hemacandra in the matter illustrating his Yogaçāstra.
Quite different is the character of the Mudritakumudacandra[44] of Yaçaçcandra, son of Padmacandra, grandson of Dhanadeva of the Dharkaṭa family, who was, it seems, the minister of a prince of Çākambharī in Sapādalakṣa. The play describes the controversy which took place in A.D. 1124 between the Çvetāmbara Jaina teacher Deva Sūri, mentioned above, and the Digambara Kumudacandra, in which the latter was silenced, whence the title of the piece.
6. The Prahasana and the Bhāṇa
Popular as the Prahasana or farce must have been, we have in this period no example preserved certainly older than the Laṭakamelaka,[45] written in the earlier part of the twelfth century under Govindacandra of Kanyakubja by Çan̄khadhara Kavirāja. The [[261]]nature of the play is characteristic; the action passes at the house of the go-between Danturā, to which come all sorts of people anxious to buy the affection of the fascinating Madanamañjarī. Comic relief is further provided by the arrival of doctor Jantuketu to extract a fish-bone from the damsel’s throat. He is perfectly incompetent and his methods absurd, but they affect their purpose indirectly, since, through laughing at his antics, the bone is happily dislodged. The bargaining of the lovers is satirized, and the marriage which is actually arranged is one between the go-between herself and a Digambara, a type doubtless sure to raise a laugh.
Of much later date is the well-known Dhūrtasamāgama[46] of Jyotirīçvara Kaviçekhara, son of Dhaneçvara, grandson of Rāmeçvara, of the family of Dhīreçvara who wrote under the Vijayanagara king Narasiṅha (A.D. 1487–1507), though a Nepalese manuscript makes his father Dhīrasiṅha and his patron Harasiṅha, who has been identified, implausibly, with Harisiṅha of Simraon (A.D. 1324). The first part of the play relates the contest of the religious mendicant Viçvanagara and his pupil Durācāra, whose names are significant, over the beautiful Anan̄gasenā; the pupil has every reason to complain, since it was he who saw the fair one and confided his love to his master, who meanly seeks to secure the damsel’s favour in lieu. She insists on the matter being referred to arbitration, and in the second part the Brahmin Asajjāti, Impure Race, an expert at dealing with delicate matters of casuistry, undertakes the duty, and wisely decides to impound the damsel for himself, though, while he is deliberating, his Vidūṣaka seeks to secure the prize for himself. The case over, the barber Mūlanāçaka, Root Destroyer, turns up to demand payment of a debt from Anan̄gasenā. She refers him to Asajjāti, who pays him with his pupil’s purse; he then demands the barber’s care; the latter ties him up and leaves him to be rescued by the Vidūṣaka.
Very popular is Jagadīçvara’s Hāsyārṇava.[47] The king, Anayasindhu, Ocean of Misrule, is devastated because all goes ill in his realm: Caṇḍālas make shoes, not Brahmins, wives are chaste, husbands constant, and the good respected. He asks his minister where best he can study the character of his people, and is [[262]]advised to go to the house of the go-between, Bandhurā, who presents to him her daughter, Mṛgān̄kalekhā. The court chaplain enters with his pupil, and they are attracted to the damsel. A comic doctor is called in for Bandhurā, who feels ill; his remedies are worse than the disease, and he has to run away. A series of other figures are introduced. Then a barber, who has cut a patient; the latter demands damages, but is non-suited; then comes the chief of police, Sādhuhiṅsika, Terror to the Good, the comic general Raṇajambuka, the astrologer Mahāyātrika, who indicates as the time for a journey the conjunction of stars presaging death. The king disappears at the end of the first Act; the second deals with the efforts of the chaplain and his pupil to obtain the damsel; but rivals come in the form of another man of religion and his pupil; finally the two older reprobates secure the damsel, while the boys content themselves with Bandhurā, who is delighted with the turn of events. But the celebration of these double marriages is left to another holy man, Mahānindaka, who also desires to share the hetaera. The date of the piece is unknown, as is that of the Kautukasarvasva[48] of Gopīnātha Cakravartin, written for the autumn festival of the Durgāpūjā in Bengal. It is more amusing and less vulgar than most of these pieces; the king, Kalivatsala, who is licentious, addicted to every kind of vice, and a lover of hemp juice, ill-treats the virtuous Brahmin Satyācāra, who finds that everything is wrong in the state, even the people being valiant in oppression, skilled in falsehood, and persevering only in contempt for the pious. The general is valiant: he can cleave a roll of butter with his blade, and trembles at the approach of a mosquito. Play is made with the immoralities recounted in the Purāṇas; the objections of the Ṛṣis to vice are put down to the fact that they censured in others what they themselves were too old to enjoy. The king proclaims free love, but becomes himself involved in a dispute over a hetaera. He is summoned back to the queen, which so annoys the hetaera that every one hastens to console her, and the king, obligingly to please her, banishes all Brahmins from the realm.
The Dhūrtanartaka[49] of Sāmarāja Dīkṣita is of the seventeenth century. It deals with one Mureçvara, who, though a Çaiva ascetic, is a devotee of a dancing girl whom he entrusts to his [[263]]pupils on having to go away. They seek to secure the favours of the damsel and, failing in this, denounce him to the king, but Pāpācāra, Bad Conduct, is merely amused and allows the saint to keep the damsel. Rather earlier is the Kautukaratnākara[50] by the chaplain of Lakṣmaṇa Māṇikyadeva of Bhūluyā, which centres in the carrying off of the queen, though the chief of police sleeps beside her to guard her, and the adventures of the hetaera who is to take her place at the spring festival.
The Bhāṇa, despite its antiquity, attested by the theory, is not represented early in the history of the drama. To Vāmana Bhaṭṭa Bāṇa, about A.D. 1500, we owe the Çṛn̄gārabhūṣaṇa,[51] which is typical of the class. The chief Viṭa, Vilāsaçekhara, comes out to pay a visit to the hetaera Anan̄gamañjarī on the evening of the spring festival. He goes into the street of the hetaerae, and takes part in a series of imaginary conversations, giving the answers himself to his own questions, or pretending to listen to some one out of sight and then repeating the answers. He describes the hetaerae, ram-fights, cock-fights, boxing, a quarrel between two rivals, the different stages of the day, and the pleasures of the festival. Much on the same lines is the Çṛn̄gāratilaka[52] or Ayyābhāṇa of Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita, which was written to rival the Vasantatilaka[53] or Ammābhāṇa of Varadācārya or Ammāl Ācārya, the Vaiṣṇava. The play was written for performance at the festival of the marriage of Mīnākṣī, the deity of Madurā. Bhujan̄gaçekhara, the hero, is vexed at the departure of his beloved Hemān̄gī, but is assured of meeting her again, despite her return to her husband. He makes the usual promenade in the hetaerae’s street, has the usual imaginary conversations and describes the ordinary sights, including snake charmers and magic shows of gods and their mountains and so forth. Finally he succeeds in rejoining Hemān̄gī. We have similar lengthy descriptions in the Çāradātilaka[54] of Çan̄kara, who places the scene in the feigned city of uproar, Kolāhalapura, and whose satire extends to the Jan̄gamas or Çaivas and the Vaiṣṇavas. Nallā Kavi (c. A.D. 1700) is responsible for the Çṛn̄gārasarvasva,[55] [[264]]which deals with Anan̄gaçekhara, who has to part from his beloved Kanakalatā, but he is helped to meet her by the advent of an elephant which terrifies all the others in the street, but is worshipped by the lover as Gaṇeça and Çiva’s answer to his prayer for help. A slight variant is presented by the Rasasadana[56] by a Yuvarāja from Koṭilin̄ga in Kerala; the hero here is a chief Viṭa who has promised his friend Mandāraka to look after his loved one for him. He goes about with her to a temple, and then to his house; wanders out into the street, talks and describes at large, and finally, after accepting the invitation of a lady from a neighbouring town to pay her a visit, goes back home to find the lovers united again.
The Prahasanas and Bhāṇas are hopelessly coarse from any modern Europe standpoint, but they are certainly often in a sense artistic productions. The writers have not the slightest desire to be simple; in the Prahasana their tendency to run riot is checked, as verse is confined to erotic stanzas and descriptions, and some action exists. In the Bhāṇa, on the other hand, the right to describe is paramount, and the poets give themselves full rein. They exhibit in this comic monologue precisely the same defects as are seen in the contemporary Nāṭaka; all is reduced to a study of stylistic effects, especially as regards sound. They rejoice in exhibiting their large command of the Sanskrit vocabulary, as obtained from the lexica, and the last thing desired is simplicity or perspicuity. Nothing more clearly indicates the close connexion of the two styles than the fact that we find a type of mixed Bhāṇa in the Mukundānanda[57] of Kāçīpati Kavirāja, who is certainly not earlier than the thirteenth century. The adventures recounted by Bhujan̄gaçekhara, the hero, allude also to the sports of Kṛṣṇa and the cowherdesses, a double allusion which explains the difficulty of the style asserted by the author.
7. Minor Dramatic Types
The Vyāyoga seems not to have been often written, despite the example of Bhāsa. The Pārthaparākrama[58] of Prahlādanadeva falls in the period between A.D. 1163 and half a century [[265]]later, for its author was the brother of Dhārāvarṣa, son of Yaçodhavala, and lord of Candrāvatī, whose reign ranks honourably in the records of the Paramāras of Mount Ābu. It was acted on the occasion of the festival of the investment of Acaleçvara, the tutelary deity of Mount Ābu with the sacred thread, and claims to exhibit the sentiment of excitement (dīptarasa). The story, taken from the Virāṭa Parvan of the Mahābhārata, is the well-known one of the recovery by Arjuna of the cows of Virāṭa, raided by the Kauravas, and the defeat of the raiders. It accords, therefore, well with the definition in the text-books, for the struggle which it describes is not caused by a woman, the feminine interest is restricted to the colourless figures of Draupadī and Uttarā, and the hero is neither a divine being nor a king. The poet, whose fame as a warrior and whose princely generosity are extolled by Someçvara, claims for his poetry the merits of smooth composition and clearness, and these may be admitted, though the play does not rise above mediocrity. Technically the play is of some interest, in so far as after the Nāndī the Sthāpaka enters, recites a couple of stanzas, and then an actor comes on the stage who addresses him, but is answered by the Sūtradhāra; apparently the two terms were here synonymous to the author of the play or the later tradition. Moreover the final benediction is allotted, not to Arjuna, the hero of the play, but to Vāsava, who appears at the close of the play in a celestial chariot in company with the Apsarases to bestow applause and blessing. Prahlādana wrote other works, of which some verses are preserved in the anthologies, and must have been a man of considerable ability and merit.
The Kirātārjunīya[59] is a Vyāyoga based on Bhāravi’s epic by Vatsarāja, who calls himself the minister of Paramardideva of Kālañjara, who reigned from A.D. 1163 to 1203. Vatsarāja is interesting as a good specimen of the poet of decadence; we have from him six plays illustrating each a different type of drama. The Karpūracaritra is a Bhāṇa of orthodox type; the gambler Karpūraka describes in monologue his revelry, gambling, and love. The Hāsyacūḍāmaṇi is a farce in one act which has as its hero an Ācārya of the Bhāgavata school, styled Jñānarāçi, who professes the possession of supernatural knowledge, [[266]]enabling him to trace lost articles and buried treasure, and who carries out his professions by various tricks and fooleries. He has an irresistible pupil, who is sadly lacking in respect for his teacher, and delights in interpreting literally his remarks. The Kirātārjunīya has no special merit, but is technically interesting; after a Nāndī celebrating Çiva’s consort, the Sūtradhāra enters, immediately followed by the Sthāpaka, who insists on his reciting a further Nāndī of the trident of Çiva, on the score that the play is heroic in sentiment and should be appropriately introduced. This play was produced later than the other five, for it came out under Trailokyavarmadeva, successor of Paramardi. The other three plays, an Īhāmṛga, Ḍima, and Samavakāra will be noticed below.
We have also a Vyāyoga by Viçvanātha, the Saugandhikāharaṇa,[60] of about A.D. 1316, which deals with Bhīma’s visit to Kubera’s lake to fetch water-lilies for Draupadī, his struggle first with Hanumant and then with the Yakṣas, and his final victory; the Pāṇḍavas meet at Kubera’s home and Draupadī obtains her desired flowers. Of unknown date is the Dhanaṁjayavijaya[61] of Kāñcana Paṇḍita, son of Nārāyaṇa, which deals with the prowess of Arjuna in the defeat of Duryodhana and the Kauravas when they raid the cattle of Virāṭa, evidently a special favourite of the dramatic authors. The description of the contest in which Arjuna uses magic weapons is given by Indra and a couple of his celestial entourage; the play ends with the giving to Arjuna’s son Uttarā, daughter of the king Virāṭa, in marriage. A manuscript of A.D. 1328 is extant of the Bhīmavikramavyāyoga[62] of Mokṣāditya, while the Nirbhayabhīma[63] of Rāmacandra belongs to the second half of the twelfth century A.D.
Of the type Īhāmṛga we have a specimen by Vatsarāja in the Rukmiṇīharaṇa, which in four Acts deals with the success of Kṛṣṇa in depriving Çiçupāla of Cedi of Rukmiṇī, his promised bride. The play opens with a dialogue between the Sūtradhāra who enters, after a Nāndī in a couple of stanzas has been pronounced, and the Sthāpaka, which tells us that the play was performed at moonrise during the festival of Cakrasvāmin. The action of the play is languid, and the author has had trouble to [[267]]spread it out over four Acts; the characters are conventional; Rukmiṇī the heroine is a nonentity, and neither Çiçupāla nor Rukmin, the objects of Kṛṣṇa’s enmity, has any distinct characterization. Kṛṣṇa goes into a state of trance on the stage in Act IV to produce the presence of Tārkṣya to enable him to complete his victory. The female character, Subuddhi, uses Sanskrit in lieu of Prākrit.
Other dramas of this type[64] are the late Vīravijaya of Kṛṣṇamiçra, and the Sarvavinodanāṭaka of Kṛṣṇa Avadhūta Ghaṭikāçata Mahākavi.
To Vatsarāja also we owe a specimen of the Ḍima, the Tripuradāha in four Acts, which describes the destruction of the capital of Tripurāsura by Çiva. The idea of writing such a piece was doubtless given by the mention of a work of this name in the Nāṭyaçāstra, and the play is extremely insipid; the numerous figures who crowd the stage are lifeless, and the celestial weapons which overcome the Asuras lack reality; the convenances are duly observed; Kumāra in the full flight of his triumph is stayed by his father’s commands, and Çukra delightedly records this act of courtesy on the part of the god, despite his anger with the Dānavas. The play closes with the homage paid by the gods and the seers alike to Maheça, who is bashful, and the benediction is pronounced by Indra, not by the hero of the drama.
Other Ḍimas are late; thus we have one by the ubiquitous Ghanaçyāma, the Kṛṣṇavijaya of Ven̄kaṭavarada, and the Manmathonmathana[65] of Rāma, a drama of 1820.
Vatsarāja is also responsible for a Samavakāra, the Samudramathana, in three Acts, which again owes its existence doubtless to the naming of a work with a kindred title in the Nāṭyaçāstra as the model of a Samavakāra. Here again we find after a Nāndī of two stanzas the Sūtradhāra and the Sthāpaka engaged in conversation. The former and his eleven brothers seek simultaneously to attain wealth; how is this possible? The Sthāpaka suggests either homage to Paramardi or to the ocean, a statement duly caught up by a voice behind the stage, which asserts that from the ocean comes the fulfilment of wishes, followed by the entry of Padmaka. The play is based on the legend of the [[268]]churning of the ocean by the gods and demons with its sequel, the winning by Viṣṇu of Lakṣmī and the gaining of other desired objects by the participators in the enterprise. The treatment fails to rise above the commonplace; Lakṣmī appears in Act I with Lajjā and Dhṛti, her companions, in the normal occupation of gazing on a picture of her beloved, who later appears also on the scene. The artificiality of the type is proved by the absence of other dramas of this kind.
The An̄ka, or one-Act play, is represented by very few specimens. The term is often applied to denote a play within a play, in the Bālarāmāyaṇa the name Prekṣaṇaka is applied generally to such plays. The same name is also given to the Unmattarāghava[66] of Bhāskara Kavi, of unknown date, though the Vidyāraṇya mentioned in it may be Sāyaṇa or his contemporary. The play is a stupid imitation of Act IV of the Vikramorvaçī; while Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa pursue the golden gazelle, Sītā, by the curse of Durvāsas, is changed into a gazelle herself; Rāma returns and wanders miserably in search of her, but finally wins her by the help of Agastya.
The term Prekṣaṇaka is also applied to the Kṛṣṇābhyudaya of Lokanātha Bhaṭṭa, written for the raintime procession of the Lord of Hastigiri, Viṣṇu, in Kāñcī. A number of modern plays, which may be styled An̄kas, are also known, while the Çarmiṣṭhāyayāti in the Sāhityadarpaṇa may be identical with the work of that name by Kṛṣṇa Kavi.[67]
Of the types of Uparūpaka, other than the Nāṭikā and Saṭṭaka, there are very few represented, and these only obviously written in accord with the text-book definitions. Thus Rūpa Gosvāmin has left a Bhāṇikā, the Dānakelikaumudī,[68] among his varied efforts to adapt the drama to the tenets of his faith, and the Subhadrāharaṇa[69] of Mādhava, son of the Maṇḍaleçvara Bhaṭṭa and Indumatī, and brother of Harihara, styles itself a Çrīgadita. As it describes itself in terms similar to those used in the Sāhityadarpaṇa, it is quite possibly posterior to that work, and, on the other hand, there exists a manuscript of A.D. 1610. The story of the play is the old legend of the elopement of Kṛṣṇa’s friend Arjuna with Subhadrā, whom he meets [[269]]by going to her father’s house as a beggar. The presence of a narrative verse has suggested comparison with a shadow-drama, but for this there is inadequate evidence.
8. The Shadow Play
It is extremely doubtful at what date the shadow-drama appeared in India; the first play which we can be certain was represented in this way is the Dharmābhyudaya[70] of Meghaprabhācārya, which in the stage direction mentions once clearly a puppet (putraka) and calls itself a Chāyānāṭyaprabandha. Unluckily the age of this work does not seem to be ascertainable with any certainty.
It is natural to suggest, as did Pischel, that the Dūtān̄gada of Subhaṭa, which is styled a Chāyānāṭaka, really was a shadow play. On the other hand, Rājendralālamitra[71] suggested that the drama was perhaps simply intended as an entr’acte, and this may be justified on the interpretation of the term of drama in the form of a shadow: i.e. reduced to the minimum for representation in such a form. The play itself unluckily contains nothing to help us to a decision as to its real character. It was represented in A.D. 1243 in honour of the dead king Kumārapāla at the court of Tribhuvanapāla, a Caulukya of Aṇahilapāṭaka, and it has come down to us in various forms. A longer and shorter recension may be distinguished, though not very definitely; in the longer form occur epic verses, and an introduction is prefixed in thirty-nine stanzas, partly placed in the mouths of Rāma and Hanumant, describing the finding of Sītā’s hiding-place. The story is the simple one of An̄gada’s mission as an ambassador to Rāvaṇa to demand back Sītā; Rāvaṇa endeavours to persuade An̄gada that Sītā is in love with him. An̄gada is not deceived, and leaves Rāvaṇa with threats, and we learn shortly afterwards that Rāvaṇa has met his doom. The merits of the work are negligible.
We have no other play of which we can say with even the slightest plausibility that it was a real shadow-drama. There are three works by Vyāsa Çrīrāmadeva from the fifteenth [[270]]century, his patrons being Kalacuri princes of Raypur. The first, the Subhadrāpariṇayana, produced under Brahmadeva or Haribrahmadeva, deals with the threadworn topic of the winning of Arjuna’s bride; the second, the Rāmābhyudaya appeared under the Mahārāṇa Meru, and deals with the conquest of Lan̄kā, the fire ordeal of Sītā, and the return to Ayodhyā; the third, the Pāṇḍavābhyudaya, written under Raṇamalladeva, describes in two Acts Draupadī’s birth and marriage. But that these were really shadow-dramas is not indicated by anything save the title, for they resemble ordinary dramas in all other respects. The Sāvitrīcarita of Çan̄karalāla, son of Maheçvara, calls itself a Chāyānāṭaka, but the work, written in 1882, is an ordinary drama, and Lüders[72] is doubtless right in recognizing that these are not shadow dramas at all. On the other hand, he adds to the list the Haridūta, which tells the story given in the Dūtavākya of Bhāsa of the mission of Kṛṣṇa to the Pāṇḍavas’ enemies to seek to attain peace. This drama, however, does not describe itself as a Chāyānāṭaka, and the argument is, accordingly, without value. But what is most significant, there is no allusion to this sort of drama in the theory which suggests that its introduction was decidedly late.
9. Dramas of Irregular Type
Professor Lüders[73] adds to the almost non-existing list of shadow dramas, the Mahānāṭaka. He does this on the strength of the fact that it is written mainly in verse, with little of prose; that the verse is decidedly at times of the narrative as opposed to the dramatic type; there is no Prākrit; the number of persons appearing is large, and there is no Vidūṣaka, and these characteristics are found in the Dūtān̄gada, which is a Chāyānāṭaka in name. The argument is clearly inadequate in the absence of any real evidence, and the Mahānāṭaka can be explained in other ways.
The history of this play is curious. It is preserved in two recensions, one in nine or ten Acts redacted by Madhusūdana and one in fourteen by Dāmodaramiçra. The stories given by the commentator Mohanadāsa and the Bhojaprabandha, agree in effect that the play was put together by order of Bhoja from [[271]]fragments found on rocks, which were fished out of the sea; the tradition was that Hanumant himself wrote the work, which, therefore, is called Hanumannāṭaka, but that to please Vālmīki, who recognized that it would eclipse his great epic, the generous ape permitted his rival to cast into the sea the drama which he had inscribed on the rocks. This certainly suggests that some old matter was embodied in the play, and this view has been strengthened by the fact that Ānandavardhana cites three verses out of the play, but without giving any source, as also do Rājaçekhara in the Kāvyamīmāṅsā and Dhanika in his Daçarūpāvaloka, so that the evidence is not of much worth, for the work, as we have it, plagiarizes shamelessly from the dramas of Bhavabhūti, Murāri, and Rājaçekhara, and even from Jayadeva’s Prasannarāghava, unless we are to suppose that in the latter case the borrowing is the other way. The question which is the earlier of the two recensions is unsolved; the one with fewer Acts has 730 as opposed to 581 verses, and of these about 300 are in common.[74]
There is a brief benediction, but no prologue, and narrative follows down to the arrival of Rāma at Mithilā for the winning of Sītā by breaking the bow of Çiva; this part of the action is given in a dialogue between Sītā, Janaka, Rāma, and others. More narrative leads up to a scene with Paraçurāma, then narrative follow to Sītā’s marriage. Act II is undramatic, being a highly flavoured description of Sītā’s love passages with Rāma. Act III again is mainly descriptive, carrying the story down to the departure of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa in chase of Mārīca in deer shape. Act IV carries the story down to Rāma’s return to the deserted hut; in Act V Rāma seeks Sītā and sends Hanumant to Lan̄kā; in the next Act Hanumant consoles Sītā and returns; in Act VII the host of apes crosses the ocean; in Act VIII, which is much more dramatic than usual, we have An̄gada’s mission to Rāvaṇa; and the rest of the Acts drag out the wearisome details of the conflict, often in so imperfect a manner as to be unintelligible without knowledge of the Rāmāyaṇa and the earlier dramas. The two versions generally correspond, but not with any precision in detail. [[272]]
The exact purpose of such a play is not obvious, but it looks rather like a literary tour de force, possibly in preparation for some form of performance[75] at which the dialogue was plentifully eked out by narrative by the director and the other actors. It is incredible, however, that, as we have it, it can ever have served any practical end, and its chief value, such as it is, is to reflect possibly the form of drama of a period when the drama had not yet completely emerged from the epic condition. We should thus have the old work of the Granthikas reinforced by putting part of the dialogue in the mouths of real actors. But it would be dangerous in so late a production to lay any stress on the possibility of deriving hence evidence for the growth of the early drama. It is, however, legitimate to note that there are similarities between the type and that of the performance of a Tamil version of the Çakuntalā.[76] The curious number of Acts has been suggested as indicating that the original was otherwise divided than a normal drama, but on this it would be dangerous to lay much stress.
The metre of the play exhibits the extraordinary fact of 253 Çārdūlavikrīḍita stanzas to 109 Çloka, 83 Vasantatilaka, 77 Sragdharā, 59 Mālinī, and 55 Indravajrā type. This fact, in the version of Madhusūdana, is sufficient to show how far we are removed from anything primitive.
The type of the Mahānāṭaka may be compared with the Gītagovinda,[77] which, written by Jayadeva under Lakṣmaṇasena in the twelfth century A.D., exhibits songs sung by Kṛṣṇa, Rādhā, and her companion, intermingled with lyric stanzas of the poet, describing their position, or the emotions excited, and addressing prayer to Kṛṣṇa. The work is a poem, and can be enjoyed simply as such, but it is also capable of a quasi-dramatic presentment. It reveals a highly-developed outcome of the simple Yātrās of the Kṛṣṇa religion.
In the Gopālakelicandrikā[78] of Rāmakṛṣṇa of Gujarāt, of unknown date, but certainly later than the Mahānāṭaka and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, we have an irregular drama whose form has [[273]]excited a large number of conjectures, including the inevitable but absurd solution of a shadow play. The nearest parallel of those suggested in this case and in that of the Mahānāṭaka[79] is the Swāng of North-West India, in that the actors recite the narrative parts as well as take part in the dialogue. There seems no special reason to doubt that the same thing might have taken place in this case, though it is conceivable that it was an imitation of the type of entertainment in which a Brahmin says the spoken parts, while his small pupils go through the action of the drama, possibly a far-off parallel to the Çaubhikas as far as the action is concerned. But it is quite possibly no more than a literary exercise, and the same judgement may apply to the Mahānāṭaka. The fact that both talk as if there were action is no sign of real representation. The modern written drama is full of stage directions, though it may never succeed in obtaining a performance on the stage, and we have not the slightest reason to deny the existence of the literary drama in India.[80] The piece is highly stylized, and could only be understood, if at all, by a cultivated audience.
The connexion of the play with the Hanumannāṭaka is expressly admitted in the prologue; the actress, who enters with the usual inquiry in Prākrit as to the business to be undertaken, is informed by the Sūtradhāra that this is not a case for Prākrit, but for Sanskrit, alone worthy of an audience of Viṣṇu devotees. The actress, not unnaturally, asks how a drama is possible without Prākrit, to be comforted by the parallel of the Hanumannāṭaka. This seems a clear enough indication that the work is a literary exercise rather than a genuine stage play representing a living form of dramatic representation. From an ordinary play it is distinguished by the fact that we have stanzas and prose of merely narrative character, and we learn from one passage that these parts are directed by the Sūcaka to the spectator. The Sūcaka may be equated, on the authority of Hemacandra, with the Sūtradhāra, and if we assume that the play was actually [[274]]performed,[81] all we need do is to assume that the director thus intervened from time to time to help on the action of the play. We are, in any case, very far from the primitive drama, as the long compounds of the prose show, reminding us of the worst eccentricities of Bhavabhūti.
The work begins with an act of religious devotion, the performance of the ceremony of the waving of a lamp in honour of Kṛṣṇa, who appears in the vesture of a herdsman, and thus receives in person the worship of his votaries. The play is essentially religious and mystic, despite the fact that the sports of Kṛṣṇa and his comrades, and of Rādhā and her friends, are duly introduced. In Act III we have from the mouth of Vṛndā, that is Lakṣmī, a series of verses setting out the mystic doctrine of the identity of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā; Kṛṣṇa is the highest being, descended to earth in the guise of a herdsman, and Rādhā represents his Çakti. In Act IV we have the usual scene of the theft by Kṛṣṇa of the clothes of the maidens when they bathe in the Yamunā, but the restoration is made a test of their faith; Kṛṣṇa demands their devotion as the price of their garments, and asserts that faith in him is superior to the Vedas, to asceticism, and to sacrifice as a means of securing knowledge of him. In the last Act we find the spirits of the night of full moon and of autumn lamenting that the maidens are not dancing the Rāsa with Kṛṣṇa, who appears, and whom they remind of this duty of his. He summons his magic power (yogamāyā) and bids her proceed to the station of the herders to summon the maidens to the dance. Then it is narrated how he himself goes there, and with his flute draws out the maidens to join him, while the gods come in multitudes to pay him honour. Many verses from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa are here borrowed. Finally the god accepts the homage of the maidens and leads them in the dance, as is described again in narrative, until the director breaks off the piece with the assertion that it is impossible to represent adequately the greatness of the god. We can see at once, even if we were not told, that the author was under the influence of Rāmānuja, and the fact that his father bears the name of Devajī[82] suggests a decidedly modern date. [[275]]
A glimpse into a form of entertainment not represented by any Sanskrit drama so far published is given by the changes made in the fourth Act of the Vikramorvaçī at an unknown date. The Apabhraṅça stanzas introduced into that Act cannot be assigned to the period of Kālidāsa, unless we are to rewrite the history of the language; Apabhraṅça represents not a vernacular but a definitely literary language in which the vocabulary is based on Prākrit, and the inflexions on a vernacular with free use of Prākrit forms as well. Guhasena of Valabhī, of whom we have inscriptions of A.D. 559–69, was celebrated as a composer in Apabhraṅça as well as in Sanskrit and Prākrit, and the new literary form may have arisen in the sixth century A.D. as an effort to produce something nearer the vernacular than Prākrit, but yet literary, much as the modern dialects have evolved literatures largely by reliance on Sanskrit. It can hardly be doubted that the Apabhraṅça stanzas represent the libretto of a pantomime (nṛtya). Such pantomimes are well known as a form of the nautch at Rājput courts; the dancers perform a well-known scene, and sing verses to a musical accompaniment; the chief element, however, is the gestures and postures. In the case of the pantomime based on the Vikramorvaçī, the verses placed in the mouth of the king may have been sung by an actor, while those regarding the forsaken elephant and the Haṅsas may have been sung by singers, male or female, acting under him. There is an introduction in Prākrit for the libretto, which very possibly as inserted in the drama has not come down to us in full, though in any case the libretto in such instances is of only secondary importance and never adequate. It is a plausible suggestion that the introduction of the libretto into the Vikramorvaçī was the outcome of the difficulty felt by the ordinary audience in picking up the sense of the fourth Act of the play, which contains in overwhelming measure Sanskrit stanzas, and, therefore, must have been extremely difficult for the audience to follow. The date of the change is uncertain; on linguistic grounds it has been placed after Hemacandra and before the date of the Prākṛta Pin̄gala.[83] [[276]]
[1] Ed. Bombay, 1894; Poona, 1894; cf. Baumgartner, Das Râmâyaṇa, pp. 129 ff. [↑]
[2] Cf. Peterson, Subhāṣitāvali, pp. 38 f.; Keith, Indian Logic, pp. 33 f. The verses common to the play and the Mahānāṭaka are clearly not evidence of prior date, despite Lévi, TI. ii. 48; Konow, ID. p. 88. He is later than Murāri; Hall’s (DR. p. 36 n.) suggested reference to Jayadeva in comm. on DR. ii. 10 is incorrect. He is known to R. (c. A.D. 1330), iii. 171 f., and the Çārn̄gadharapaddhati. [↑]
[3] Ed. Madras, 1892; trs. by L. V. Ramachandra Aiyar, Madras, 1906. [↑]
[7] Ed. Murçidābād, 1880 f. [↑]
[11] Ed. TSS. 1912 and 1911. [↑]
[13] Kielhorn, Bruchstücke indischer Schauspiele, Berlin, 1901. [↑]
[14] Ed. R. Schmidt, Leipzig, 1917; trs. K. Glaser, Trieste, 1886. Cf. GIL. iii. 248, n. 4. [↑]
[15] Lévi, Le Népal, ii. 242. [↑]
[16] Haraprasād, Nepal Catal., p. xxxvii. [↑]
[17] Ed. KM. 1900; trs. L. H. Gray, JAOS. xxv. 197 ff. [↑]
[18] Ed. Kielhorn, op. cit. [↑]
[20] Ed. Gaekwad’s Oriental Series, no. x, 1920. On the merits of Vastupāla see also Arisiṅha’s Sukṛtasaṁkīrtana and Someçvara’s Kīrtikaumudī. [↑]
[21] Usually Sin̄ghaṇa or Siṅhaṇa. Cf. Bhandarkar, Report (1907), pp. 15 ff., who equates Mīlacchrīkāra with Shamsu-d-din (1210–35). [↑]
[22] We hear of a Rājarājanāṭaka performed annually in a temple of Çiva by order of the Cola Rājarāja I of Tanjore in the eleventh century, but of its content we know nothing; H. Krishna Sastri in Ridgeway’s Dramas, &c., p. 204. [↑]
[23] India Office Catal., no. 4194. [↑]
[26] Ed. Bombay, 1898; trs. J. Taylor, Bombay, 1893. Cf. J. W. Boissevain, Prabodhacandrodaya, Leiden, 1905. [↑]
[27] Ed. Kāñcī, 1914; trs. K. Narayanacharya and D. Raghunathaswamy Iyengar, vol. i. Srirangam, 1917. [↑]
[28] Ed. KM. 1906; analysed by Lévi, TI. i. 237 ff. Date, c. A.D. 1550. [↑]
[29] Ed. KM. 1893. Another imitation is the Amṛtodaya of Gokulanātha, Haraprasād, Report (1901), p. 17. [↑]
[30] Ed. KM. 1891. For the author of the Vidyāpariṇayana (Vedakavi, nominally Ānandarāya) see KM. xliv. Pref. p. 9. [↑]
[31] Ed. Gaekwad’s Oriental Series, no. ix. 1918. [↑]
[32] This is probably the nuance intended, as in saumyatā. [↑]
[33] Ed. KM. 1888. Cf. Keith, Sansk. Lit., pp. 64 ff. [↑]
[34] Ed. E. Hultzsch, Leipzig, 1906; cf. GGA. 1908, pp. 98 ff. [↑]
[35] Ed. KM. 1895. The late Mṛgān̄kalekhā of Viçvanātha son of Trimaladeva, is summarized in Wilson, ii. 390 f. [↑]
[36] Hultzsch, Reports, no. 2142. He wrote a Nāṭaka, a Bhāṇa, a Prahasana, and the Ḍamaruka in ten Alaṁkāras; Madras Catal. xxi. 8403 ff. [↑]
[39] Hultzsch, ZDMG. lxxv. 61 ff. [↑]
[41] ZDMG. lxxv. 63. See above, chap. x. § 2. [↑]
[43] Famous from the Nala onwards. [↑]
[44] Ed. Benares, Vīrasaṁvat, 2432. [↑]
[45] Ed. KM. 1889. R. iii. 271, &c., cites an Ānandakoça. [↑]
[46] Ed. in Lassen’s Anth. Sanscr., Bonn, 1838. Cf. Haraprasād, Nepal Catal., p. xxxvii. [↑]
[47] Ed. Calcutta, 1896. Cf. Wilson, ii. 408 f. [↑]
[48] Ed. Calcutta, 1828; Wilson, ii. 410 f. [↑]
[50] Cappeller, Gurupūjākaumudī, pp. 62 f. [↑]
[51] Ed. KM. 1896. R. iii. 248 gives an unknown Çṛn̄gāramañjarī as a specimen. See p. 185, n. 3. [↑]
[56] Ed. KM. 1893; JRAS. 1907, p. 729. [↑]
[58] Ed. in Gaekwad’s Oriental Series, no. iv. 1917. [↑]
[59] Ed., with the other five plays, Gaekwad’s Oriental Series, no. viii. 1918. [↑]
[60] Ed. KM. 1902. Cf. SD. 514. [↑]
[61] Ed. KM. 1885; Wilson, ii. 374. [↑]
[62] Bendall, Brit. Mus. Catal., no. 273. [↑]
[63] Hultzsch, ZDMG. lxxv. 62 f. [↑]
[65] Schmidt, ZDMG. lxiii. 409 f., 623 f. [↑]
[68] Ed. Murçidābād, 1881 f. [↑]
[70] See above, ch. ii. § 4. [↑]
[71] Bikaner Catal., p. 251. It is trs., Gray, JAOS. xxxii. 59 ff. The play borrows from the Bālarāmāyaṇa (ix. 58 f. = verses 52 f.), and the Mahānāṭaka. [↑]
[72] SBAW. 1916, pp. 698 ff. [↑]
[74] For the slightly different legend of Madhusūdana—current in Bengal—see SBAW. 1916, pp. 704 ff. The number of verses varies greatly in the manuscripts. The apparent citation by name in DR. comm. ii. 1 is only in some manuscripts. [↑]
[75] Lüders’s attempt to read, in Madhusūdana’s recension only, saubhyāḥ, shadow players, is clearly absurd; ZDMG. lxxiv. 142, n. 3. [↑]
[76] Lévi, TI. i. 244; G. Devèze, Çakuntalā, Paris, 1888. [↑]
[77] Lévi, TI. i. 235 ff.; Keith, Sansk. Lit., pp. 121 ff. [↑]
[78] Ed. W. Caland, Amsterdam, 1917. Cf. ZDMG. lxxiv. 138 ff.; IA. xlix, 232 f. [↑]
[79] The Swāng, unlike the play, is metrical throughout; R. C. Temple, Legends of the Panjab, I. viii, 121. [↑]
[80] In Greece, despite the great advantages of a public representation, plays to be read only arose early; Aristotle, Rhetoric, iii. 12. 2. Most of the dramas of the last few years seem literary. [↑]
[81] Cf. perhaps the nineteenth-century Citrayajña, described by Wilson, ii. 412 ff. [↑]
[82] Devajīti as read by the editor and Winternitz is a quaint misreading. [↑]
[83] See Jacobi, Bhavisattakaha, p. 58 n. Influence by the Yātrās is probable; Windisch, Sansk. Phil. p. 407. [↑]
XII
THE CHARACTERISTICS AND ACHIEVEMENT OF THE SANSKRIT DRAMA
The Sanskrit drama may legitimately be regarded as the highest product of Indian poetry, and as summing up in itself the final conception of literary art achieved by the very self-conscious creators of Indian literature. This art was essentially aristocratic; the drama was never popular in the sense in which the Greek drama possessed that quality. From an early period in Indian history we find the distinction of class reflected in a distinction of language; culture was reserved largely for the two higher castes, the Brahmin and the Kṣatriya or ruling class. It was in this rarified atmosphere that the Sanskrit drama came into being, and it was probably to litterati of high cultivation that its creation from the hints present in religion and in the epic was due. The Brahmin, in fact, much abused as he has been in this as in other matters, was the source of the intellectual distinction of India. As he produced Indian philosophy, so by another effort of his intellect he evolved the subtle and effective form of the drama. Brahmins, it must be remembered, had long been the inheritors of the epic tradition, and this tradition they turned to happy use in the evolution of the drama.
The drama bears, therefore, essential traces of its connexion with the Brahmins. They were idealist in outlook, capable of large generalizations, but regardless of accuracy in detail, and to create a realistic drama was wholly incompatible with their temperament. The accurate delineation of facts or character was to them nothing; they aimed at the creation in the mind of the audience of sentiment, and what was necessary for this end was all that was attempted. All poetry was, in the later analysis, which is implicit in the practice of the earlier poets, essentially a means of suggesting feeling, and this function devolved most of [[277]]all on the drama. Nothing, therefore, is of value save what tends to this end, and it is the function of the true dramatist to lay aside everything which is irrelevant for this purpose.
It follows from this principle that the plot is a secondary element[1] in the drama in its highest form, the heroic play or Nāṭaka. To complicate it would divert the mind from emotion to intellectual interest, and affect injuriously the production of sentiment. The dramatist, therefore, will normally choose a well-known theme which in itself is apt to place the spectator in the appropriate frame of mind to be affected by the appropriate emotion. It is then his duty by the skill with which he handles his theme to bring out in the fullest degree the sentiment appropriate to the piece. This is in essentials the task set before themselves by the great dramatists; Kālidāsa makes subtle changes in the story of Çakuntalā, not for the sake of improving the plot as such, but because the alterations are necessary to exhibit in perfection the sentiment of love, which must be evoked in the hearts of the audience. The crudities of the epic tale left Çakuntalā a business-like young woman and Duḥṣanta a selfish and calculating lover; both blemishes had to be removed in order that the spectator might realize within himself, in ideal form, the tenderness of a girl’s first affection, and the honourable devotion of the king, clouded only by a curse against which he had no power.
The emotions which thus it was desired to evoke were, however, strictly limited by the Brahminical theory of life. The actions and status of man in any existence depend on no accident; they are essentially the working out of deeds done in a previous birth, and these again are explained by yet earlier actions from time without beginning. Indian drama is thus deprived of a motif which is invaluable to Greek tragedy, and everywhere provides a deep and profound tragic element, the intervention of forces beyond control or calculation in the affairs of man, confronting his mind with obstacles upon which the greatest intellect and the most determined will are shattered. A conception of this kind would deprive the working of the law of the act of all validity, and, however much in popular ideas the inexorable character of the act might be obscured by notions of [[278]]an age before the evolution of the belief of the inevitable operation of the act, in the deliberate form of expression in drama this principle could not be forgotten. We lose, therefore, the spectacle of the good man striving in vain against an inexorable doom; we lose even the wicked man whose power of intellect and will make us admire him, even though we welcome his defeat. The wicked man who perishes is merely, in the view of the Sanskrit drama, a criminal undergoing punishment, for whose sufferings we should feel no sympathy whatever; such a person is not a suitable hero for any drama, and it is a mere reading of modern sentiment into ancient literature to treat Duryodhana in the Ūrubhan̄ga as the hero of the drama.[2] He justly pays the full penalty for insolence and contempt of Viṣṇu.
It follows, therefore, that the sentiments which are to be evoked by a Sanskrit Nāṭaka are essentially the heroic or the erotic, with that of wonder as a valued subordinate element, appropriate in the dénouement. The wonderful well consorts with the ideal characters of legend, which accepts without incredulity or discomfort the intervention of the divine in human affairs, and therefore follows with ready acceptance the solution of the knot in the Çakuntalā or the Vikramorvaçī. Heroism and love, of course, cannot be evoked without the aid of episodes which menace the hero and heroine with the failure to attain their aims; there must be danger and interference with the course of true love, but the final result must see concord achieved. Hence it is impossible to expect that any drama shall be a true tragedy; in the long run the hero and the heroine must be rewarded by perfect happiness and union. The Nāgānanda of Harṣa illustrates the rule to perfection; the sublimity of self-sacrifice suggests real tragedy, but this would be wholly out of harmony with the spirit of India, and the intervention of Gaurī is invoked to secure that the self-sacrifice is crowned by a complete and immediate reward in this life. The figure of an Antigone might have been paralleled in Indian life; it would not be acceptable to the spirit of Indian drama.
Idealist as it is, the spirit of the drama declines to permit of a division of sentiment; it will not allow the enemy of the hero to rival him in any degree; nothing is more striking than the [[279]]failure to realize the possibility of a great dramatic creation presented by the character of Rāvaṇa as the rival of Rāma for Sītā’s love. Rāvaṇa varies in the hands of the dramatists, but all tend to reduce him to the status of a boastful and rather stupid villain, who is inferior at every point to his rival. Equally effectively the drama banishes from the possibilities the conception of a struggle of conscience in the mind of the hero or the heroin;[3] if this were represented, it would create a similar struggle in the mind of the audience, and destroy the unity and purity of the sentiment, which it is the part of the drama to generate.
The style similarly is explained and justified by the end of suggesting sentiment. The lyric stanzas, at first sight strangely undramatic,[4] find their full explanation when it is remembered how effective each is in exciting the appropriate emotion in the mind of the audience, which, deeply versed in Sanskrit poetry, is keen to appreciate the effect of each stanza. The simplicity or even negligence of the prose of the drama is thus also explained and excused. It is not necessary to excite sentiment; it serves merely as the mode of communicating facts, and of enabling the audience to follow the action, until an opportunity is afforded to excite feeling by the melody of a verse, all the more effective from its sudden emergence from the flatness of its environment. The same consideration explains the importance of those elements of which we can form so faint an impression, the dance, music, song, and the mimetic art. The elaborate code of gestures laid down in the theory, and unquestionably bulking large in practice, was all intended to produce in cultivated spirits the sentiments appropriate to the play.
The ideal character of the heroic drama extends itself even to the Nāṭikā, where a closer approach to real life might be expected. The dramatists, however, make no attempt at realism; they choose their subjects from the legend, and they cast over the trivial amourettes of their heroes the glamour derived from the assurance that the winning in marriage of a maiden will [[280]]assure them universal rule. The action of the play is thus not suffered to degenerate into a portrayal of the domestic difficulties of the harem system under polygamic conditions; the dramatists do not seek realism, but are content to reproduce a stereotyped scheme of love, jealousy, parting, and reunion, a sequence well calculated to evoke the sentiment of love in the mind of the audience. Even in the Prakaraṇa, in which realism might be expected, seeing that it condescends to heroes of less than royal or divine status, there is no actual exception: though the author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā has had the power to infuse a semblance of life and actuality into his characters, Bhavabhūti shows us in the Mālatīmādhava nothing but types suggesting the erotic sentiment. Equally ideal is the Vyāyoga with its suggestion of heroism and its deliberate selection of its subject from the epic tradition.
Tragedy proper is denied us by these conditions of Indian thought, and comedy in any of its higher forms is also difficult; it might legitimately be expected to prevail in the Nāṭikā or the Prakaraṇa, but it is unduly subordinated to the erotic sentiment and, though not absent, is comparatively undeveloped. The Prahasana and the Bhāṇa indeed appeal to the comic sentiment, but only in an inferior and degraded form, a fact expressed in the failure of the classical drama to preserve a single specimen of either form of composition.
Limited by the nature of the intellectual movement which produced it, the Sanskrit drama could never achieve the perfection of Greek tragedy or comedy. Kālidāsa, greatest of Indian dramatists, experiences no uneasiness at the structure of life or the working of the world. He accepts without question or discontent the fabric of Indian society. When Goethe writes of him:
Willst du die Blüthe des frühen, die Früchte des späteren Jahres,
Willst du, was reizt und entzückt, willst du, was sättigt und nährt,
Willst du den Himmel, die Erde, mit einem Namen begreifen,
Nenn’ ich Çakuntalā dich, und so ist alles gesagt,
the praise is doubtless just in a measure, but it may easily be pressed further than is justifiable. For the deeper questions of [[281]]human life Kālidāsa has no message for us; they raised, so far as we can see, no question in his own mind; the whole Brahmanical system, as restored to glory under the Guptas, seems to have satisfied him, and to have left him at peace with the universe. Fascinating and exquisite as is the Çakuntalā, it moves in a narrow world, removed far from the cruelty of real life, and it neither seeks to answer, nor does it solve, the riddles of life. Bhavabhūti, it is true, shows some sense of the complexity and difficulty of existence, of the conflict between one duty and another, and the sorrow thus resulting, but with him also there prevailed the rule that all must end in harmony. Sītā, who in the older story is actually finally taken away from the husband who allowed himself to treat her as if her purity were sullied by her captivity in Rāvaṇa’s hands, is restored to Rāma by divine favour, an ending infinitely less dramatic than final severance after vindication. How serious a limitation in dramatic outlook is produced by the Brahmanical theory of life, the whole history of the Sanskrit drama shows.[5] Moreover, acceptance of the Brahmanic tradition permits the production of such a play as the Caṇḍakauçika, where reason and humanity are revolted beyond measure by the insane vengeance taken by the sage Viçvāmitra on the unfortunate king for an act of charity.
The drama suffered also from its close dependence on the epic, and the failure of the poets to recognize that the epic subjects were often as a whole undramatic. Hence frequently, as in the vast majority of the Rāma dramas and those based on the Mahābhārata, we have nothing but the recasting of the epic narrative into a semi-dramatic form, without real dramatic structure. There was nothing in the theory to hint at the error of such a course; on the contrary, to the poets the subject was one admirably suitable, since in itself it suggested the appropriate sentiments, and therefore left them merely the duty of heightening the effects. This led on the high road to the outward signs of the degradation of the drama, the abandoning of any interest in anything save the production of lyric or narrative stanzas of perfection of form, judged in accordance with a taste which progressively declined into a rejection of simplicity and [[282]]the search for what was recondite. To the later poets the drama is an exercise in style, and that, as contrasted with the highest products of Indian literature, a fantastic and degraded one.
To the Brahmin ideal individuality has no appeal; the law of life has no room for deviation from type; the caste system is rigid, and for each rank in life there is a definite round of duties, whence departure is undesirable and dangerous. The drama likewise has no desire for individual figures, but only for typical characters. The defect from the Aristotelian as from the modern point of view of the Rāma dramas is simply that Rāma is conceived as an ideal, a man without faults, and therefore for us lacking in the essential traits of humanity. Similarly, in the style of the drama we are denied any differentiation of individuals as contrasted with classes. The divergence in the use of Sanskrit or Prākrit, and in the different kinds of Prākrit, marks the essential distinction of men and women, and of those of high and those of humble rank, but beyond this characterization does not go. We are treated to an artificial court speech, which assorts with stereotyped emotions, refined, elegant, sentimental, rich in the compliments of court gallantly, often pathetic, marked with a distinct strain of philosophical commonplace, and fond of suggested meanings and double entendres, hinting at the events yet to come. But the dramatists made no serious attempt to create individual characters, and to assign to them a speech of their own; they vary greatly in merit as regards characterization, but even the best dramas paint types, not individuals.
Indifference to individuality necessarily meant indifference to action, and therefore to plot, and this lies at the basis of the steady progress by which the dialogue was neglected in favour of the stanzas. The latter express the general; they draw highly condensed, but also often extremely poetical, pictures of the beauty of nature in one of its many aspects, or of the charms of the beloved; or they enunciate the Brahmanical solutions of the problems of life and conduct. In them the individual has no place; the beloved may be described, but she is merely typical. These stanzas appealed to the audience; we have no echo in India of the criticisms which were levelled in Greece against Euripides, for the introduction of sentiments unfitted to his characters and the scenes involved, and we have no hint that [[283]]Indian theory ever recognized that the drama by the tenth century A.D. was in a state of decadence.
The peculiar and limited view of the drama was intimately connected with its Brahmanical character. The drama of Greece was popular; it appealed to all free Athenian citizens,[6] an infinitely wider class than that for which the dramas of India in Sanskrit and Prākrit were composed, and it was written in a language easily comprehended by all those who viewed the spectacle. From the period of the earliest dramas known to us the full comprehension of the words can have been confined to a limited section of the audience, which, however, had sufficient pleasure in the spectacle, in the song, the pantomimic dances, and the music, and sufficient general comprehension of the drama to follow it adequately enough. Such an audience, however, acted as a stimulus to refinement and elaboration; the dramatist could neglect the prime necessity of being understood which weighed on the Greek dramatist, and indulge in the production of something recondite, calculated to manifest his skill in metrical form and management of words. The fact that Sanskrit was not a normal living language presented him with the temptation, to which none of the later dramatists rises superior, of the free use of the vast store of alleged synonyms presented by the lexica,[7] freed from any inconvenient necessity, such as exists in every living language, of using words only in that precise nuance which every synonym possesses in a living dialect.
The same tendency to artificiality was undoubtedly stimulated by the fact that plays for their reputation must have depended largely on being read, not witnessed, however important it may have been for the poet to secure the honour of public performance. The popularity and number of the Kāvyas which have come down to us attests the existence of an effective public which, if it did not read the works, at least enjoyed having them read aloud, and the dramatist was thus encouraged, while adhering to the dramatic form, to vie in this genre of literature with the effects produced in the Kāvya. The Kāvya, however, [[284]]was undergoing throughout its history a tendency to seek mere stylistic effects, and this influence must largely have contributed to the elaboration of style of the drama. It is significant that the Kāvyas and dramas of Kālidāsa show a relative simplicity which contrasts effectively with the complexities of Bhavabhūti in drama, and Bhāravi and Māgha in the Kāvya.
To understand the Indian drama we have aid from a work of curious character and importance, the Kāmaçāstra or Kāmasūtra of Vātsyāyana,[8] which was doubtless familiar to the dramatists from Kālidāsa onwards. The world which produced the classical drama was one in which the pessimism of Buddhism, with its condemnation of the value of pleasure, had given way to the worship of the great sectarian divinities Çiva and Viṣṇu, in whose service the enjoyment of pleasure was legitimate and proper. The Buddhists themselves admittedly felt the force of the demand for a life of ease; we have preserved verses satirizing their love of women, wine, soft living, and luxury, and there is abundant evidence of the decline of austerity in the order. The eclecticism of Harṣa is sufficiently significant; the policy which at the great festival at Prayāga reported by Hiuan-Tsang resulted in the dedication of a statue to the Buddha on the first day, to the sun, the favourite deity of his father, on the second, and to Çiva on the third, excludes any possibility of belief in the depth of Harṣa’s Buddhist beliefs. If there were any doubt as to the strange transformation of feeling among Buddhists, it would be removed by the benediction which opens the Nāgānanda, where the Buddha is invoked as rallied on his hardheartedness by the ladies of Māra’s train. The process of accommodation had evidently gone very far. The philosophy of the age shows equally the lack of serious interest in the old tenets of Buddhism; we have the great development of logical studies in lieu of insistence on the truths of misery and the path to its removal, while the chef-d’œuvre of the period outside Buddhist circles is the complicated and fantastic system of the Sāṁkhya philosophy, which adequately reflects the artistic spirit of the time in its comparison of nature with a dancer who makes her début, and gracefully retires from the stage when she has satisfied her audience. The spirit of Açoka has entirely disappeared [[285]]from the royal families of India, and the courts demanded amusement with refinement, just as they sought for elegance in art. The interests of this world are centred in the pleasures of life, the festivals which amused the court and the people by the pomp of their celebration from time to time, and in the intervals the amusements of the palace and the harem, sports in the water, the game of the swing, the plucking of flowers, song, dance, pantomime, and such other diversions as were necessary to while away the endless leisure of princes, who left the business of their realms to ministers and soldiers, while they spared themselves any fatigue more serious than that of love encounters. The manners of their princes were aped by their rich subjects, and there was no dearth of courtiers and parasites to aid them in their diversions. The man about town (nāgaraka) as sketched by the Kāmasūtra[9] is rich and cultivated; devoted to the niceties of attire and personal adornment, perfumed, pomaded, and garlanded; he is a musician, and a lover of books; cage-birds afford him pleasure of the eyes, and diversion in teaching them speech; a lovely garden with an arbour presents facilities for amusement and repose. In the daytime the care of the toilet, cock fights, ram fights, excursions in the neighbouring country, fill his time; while at night, after a concert or ballet, there are the joys of love, in which the Kāmasūtra gives him more elaborate instruction than the Ars Amoris ever contemplated. The luxury of polygamy did not suffice such a man; he is allowed to enjoy the society of courtesans, and in them, as in Athens, he finds the intellectual interests which are denied to his legitimate wives. With them and the more refined and cultured of the band of hangers-on, high and low, with whom he is surrounded, he can indulge in the pleasures of the discussion of literature, and appreciate the fine efforts of the poets and dramatists. From such a nature, of course, anything heroic cannot be expected, and the poets recognize this state of affairs; but it demands refinement, beauty, luxury, and the demand is fully met. Love is naturally a capital theme, but the dramatists suffer from one grave difficulty from the condition of the society which they depict. The ideal of a romantic love between two persons free and independent, masters of their own destinies, is in great measure denied [[286]]to them, and they are reduced to the banality of the intrigue between the king and the damsel who is destined to be his wife, but who by some accident has been introduced into his harem in a humble position.
For the dramatists the favour of a king was the chief object to be aimed at, and kings were evidently very willing to lend their names to dramatic and other compositions, whatever part they actually took in their production. The persistence of the rumour which regards Harṣa as winning his fame in part at the expense of Bāṇa, may be unjust to the king, but at any rate it expresses what was popular belief in the possibility of such a happening in poetical circles, and it is indeed incredible that a king should have been so scrupulous as to refuse any aid in his literary toils from his court poets. Competitions in exhibitions of poetry were in favour with monarchs, but they were not the only patrons; their actions excited imitation,[10] and even in Buddhist and Jain circles the desire to adopt the expedient of drama in connexion with religion was evinced. But even when applied by Brahmins, Buddhists, or Jains to philosophy or religion, the drama bore throughout the unmistakable stamp of its original predominance in circles whose chief interest was gallantry: the Nāgānanda bears eloquent evidence of this for Buddhist ideas, the Prabodhacandrodaya for Brahmin philosophy, and the Moharājaparājaya for Jainism.
A society of this kind was certain to encourage refinement and elegance in poetry; it was equally certain to lead to artificiality and unreality. But we may be certain that true poetic taste existed; it is attested not merely by the existence and fame of such dramas as those of Kālidāsa, but in the kindred sphere of music it has an interesting exposition in the third Act of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, in which, following with slight changes the precedent of Bhāsa, Cārudatta is made to express to the unresponsive ears of Maitreya, his one faithful friend, the effect produced on his ears by the sweet singing of Rebhila, which has come to console him in the midst of his sorrow:[11]
The notes of love, peace, sweetness, could I trace,
The note that thrills, the note of passion too, [[287]]
The note of woman’s loveliness and grace,
Ah, my poor words add nothing, nothing new.
But as the notes in sweetest cadence rang,
I thought it was my hidden love who sang.
The melody of song, the stricken strings,
In undertone that half unconscious clings,
More clearly sounding as the passions rise,
But ever sweeter as the music dies.
Words that strong passion fain would say again,
Yet checks their second utterance—in vain;
For music sweet as this lives on until
I walk as hearing sweetest music still.
To Rājaçekhara[12] we owe a full account of the studies which went to make up the finished poet, who had the choice of Sanskrit, Prākrit, Apabhraṅça, and Paiçācī, or the speech of the goblins (bhūtabhāṣā), as his modes of composition. Knowledge of grammar, of the dictionary, poetics, and metrics are demanded, as well as skill in the sixty-four acts; purity of mind, speech, and body are requisite, as well as most attractive surroundings. The poet’s male attendants are to speak Apabhraṅça, the female Māgadhī, while those within the harem itself are to use Prākrit and Sanskrit, and his friends to exercise themselves in all forms of speech. With pardonable lack of historical truth, we are told anecdotes of kings who forbade the use in their harems of certain letters, and combinations of sounds, on grounds of euphony, and the poet may imitate their usage. We also learn that Sanskrit was affected among the people of Bengal, in Lāṭa Prākrit, in Mārwār, and by the Ṭakkas and Bhādānakas, Apabhraṅça, while in Avantī, Pariyātra, and Daçapura Bhūtabhāṣā prevailed. The people of Surāṣṭra and the Travaṇas are credited elsewhere[13] with intermingling Sanskrit and Apabhraṅça, while unkind comments are made on the mode of pronouncing Sanskrit among the excellent poets of Kashmir, and on the nasal accent of the north as opposed to the music of that in Pañcāla. We learn also[14] that poets were wont to make journeys, and to utilize the knowledge of other places thus gained in their works.
Rājaçekhara[15] is also emphatic regarding the capacity of women: [[288]]daughters of kings or ministers, courtesans, and wives of jesters, were skilled as poets, the capacity which brings about the ability to compose being a matter affecting the soul, and not, therefore, bound up with sex. To Rājaçekhara the ability to write poems is largely due to experiences in previous births, and he logically denies that sex can affect this. But though verses are cited from the poetesses in the anthologies, and not a few names are known, and Avantisundarī, Rājaçekhara’s own wife, appears to have been an authority on poetics, it is certain that no drama of importance has come down to us which is written by a woman. The explanation for this would seem rather to lie in social conventions, as in Greece, for there is no reason to suppose that the clever women mentioned by Rājaçekhara, and doubtless not rare in the courts, could not have composed plays of merit. [[289]]
[1] Contrast Aristotle’s doctrine of plot as the soul of tragedy (Poetics, 1450 a 38). [↑]
[2] See above, pp. 38, 96, 106. [↑]
[3] Contrast Aristotle’s doctrine of ἁμαρτία (Poetics, 1453 a 10 ff.), as in Euripides’s Hippolytos; G. Norwood, Greek Tragedy, pp. 209 f., 213 f. [↑]
[4] Greek tragedy progressively reduced the lyric element in the drama, in harmony with the rhetorical trend of the Greek intellect, and approximated in language to ordinary speech; Aristotle, Poetics, 1450 b 9; Rhetoric, iii. 1 and 2; Haigh, The Tragic Drama of the Greeks, ch. vi, § 3. [↑]
[5] Contrast Greek tragedy; Butcher, Greek Genius, pp. 105 ff.; G. Norwood, Greek Tragedy, pp. 97 f., 114 f., 128 f., 177, 318, 324; W. Nestle, Euripides (1901). [↑]
[6] For its extension and popularity outside Athens, see Haigh, The Tragic Drama of the Greeks, chap. vi, § 4. [↑]
[7] Gawroński, Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 1 ff. [↑]
[8] See also Schmidt’s Beiträge zur indischen Erotik. [↑]
[9] pp. 57 ff.; Keith, Sansk. Lit. pp. 29 ff. [↑]
[10] Man̄kha, Çrīkaṇṭhacarita, xxv; Bhojaprabandha; Vikramān̄kadevacarita; Kāvyamīmāṅsā, pp. 49 ff. [↑]
[11] The translation by Ryder. [↑]
[12] Kāvyamīmāṅsā, pp. 49 ff. [↑]
III
DRAMATIC THEORY
[[290]]
XIII
THE THEORY OF THE DRAMATIC ART
1. The Treatises on Dramatic Art
Pāṇini, whose date falls doubtless before 300 B.C., alludes in his grammar to the Naṭasūtras, books of rules for Naṭas, compiled by Çilālin and Kṛçāçva, and Professor Hillebrandt[1] has suggested that we should recognize in these works the earliest text-books of the Indian drama. But we have no other suggestion that Pāṇini knew of dramatic performances, and the only legitimate conclusion is that these rules were laid down for the guidance of dancers or, perhaps, pantomimes, and with this accords admirably the fact that the dramatic tradition knows nothing of these names, and instead makes the sage Bharata the eponymous hero of the drama. True it was Brahmā, highest of gods, himself who, at the instance of the gods, produced as a counterpart to the four Vedas, which contain the science of religion and magic, the more mundane Nāṭya-Veda, consecrated to the drama, but this Veda is not current among men. Bharata, on the other hand, whose task it was to direct the production by the Apsarases in heaven of plays for the delight of the gods and who thus had practical experience of the art, has set forth for men the principles of the drama in the Nāṭyaçāstra which, if not inspired, has at least a measure of sanctity, and thus supplies an authoritative basis for practice.
The legend is interesting because it precisely interprets the spirit of India towards authority; Bharata occupies in the theory of the drama a place analogous to that of Pāṇini in grammar, but unfortunately the Nāṭyaçāstra has fared badly in comparison with the Aṣṭādhyāyī, which has, through the care of its commentators, come down to us in a form but little changed from that it assumed in the hands of its author. The [[291]]work, which we have under the title Bhāratīya Nāṭyaçāstra,[2] is extremely badly preserved in the manuscript tradition, a fact due in part to the comparatively late date of any commentary upon it. We have only a few references to an exposition of the Nāṭyaçāstra by Mātṛgupta, a somewhat mysterious figure with a more or less legendary connexion with Kālidāsa, with whom he has even been identified;[3] if we are to place any faith in his contemporaneity with Kālidāsa, he may date from the close of the fourth century A.D. It is significant that tradition makes him for a time king of Kashmir, for it is to that country we owe the commentaries of Çan̄kuka, who wrote the epic Bhuvanābhyudaya under Ajitāpīḍa (A.D. 813–50), and of Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, who belongs to the period of Çan̄karavarman (A.D. 883–902). In the same line of tradition is the great work of Abhinavagupta, the Abhinavabhāratī, which has been lucky enough to come to light after long oblivion, and which represents the erudition of the close of the tenth century.
The treatise, as we have it, is elaborate, covering the whole ground connected with the drama. It deals with the architecture of the theatre, the scenery, and the dress and equipment of the actors; the religious ceremonial to be observed at every representation; the music, the dance, the movements and gestures of the actors, and their mode of delivery; the division of rôles; the general characteristics of poetry; the different classes of drama, and the emotions and sentiments which form a vital element in the drama. There is confusion, complexity, and repetition in the work, but that much of it is old cannot be doubted. It appears clearly to be based on the examination of a dramatic literature which has been lost, eclipsed by the more perfect dramas of Kālidāsa and his successors. In the description of classes of drama we seem to have hasty generalizations on insufficient material; the Samavakāra, for instance, is described in terms [[292]]which, with the precise definition of the time to be occupied by the acts, can be interpreted only as based on a single drama, and the Ḍima seems to have a similar origin. The elaborate description of the preliminary scene or Pūrvaran̄ga, which is practically non-existent in the classical drama, suggests a period of a less cultivated taste. A more definite result may be derived from comparison of the Nāṭyaçāstra with the works of Açvaghoṣa and of Bhāsa. The Prākrits recognized by the Nāṭyaçāstra are clearly later than those of Açvaghoṣa and more akin to those found in Bhāsa; again the Nāṭyaçāstra recognizes the use of Ardha-Māgadhī, found in these two dramatists, but not later, while, like them, he ignores the Māhārāṣṭrī of the later dramas. Moreover Bhāsa expressly alludes to a Nāṭyaçāstra[4] and it is most probable that both he and Kālidāsa had knowledge of the prototype of the present text. That Bhāsa by no means slavishly adheres to the rules of the Nāṭyaçāstra, either as regards the formal mode of terminating his dramas or the exclusion of scenes of death from the stage,[5] merely shows that when he wrote the Çāstra had not attained any binding force. There is nothing to contradict the date thus vaguely indicated,[6] for the treatment of poetics in general is simple and early, and it is impossible to draw any conclusion as to date from the remarks on music, apart altogether from the constant possibility that incidental additions and alterations have been made in the work.
It was inevitable that the complicated and confused work of Bharata should be superseded for many purposes by something more accessible and easy to follow, and this need was supplied by the Daçarūpa of Dhanaṁjaya, son of Viṣṇu, and protégé of the ill-fated king Muñja of Dhārā (974–95). The work takes its name from the ten primary forms of drama recognized in the Nāṭyaçāstra, which is followed closely by Dhanaṁjaya, his deviations being unimportant and trivial, such as a new division of types of heroine or of the erotic sentiment. On the other hand, Dhanaṁjaya omits by far the greater part of the topics of [[293]]his model; his four books of wooden verses treat first of the subject-matter and plot; then of the hero, the heroine, and other characters, and the language of the drama; thirdly of the prologue and the different kinds of drama; and lastly of the emotions and sentiments, thus concentrating attention on the essential dramatic features. The text is naturally often unintelligible save in the light of the Nāṭyaçāstra itself and of the commentary, Avaloka, which is ascribed to Dhanika, son of Viṣṇu, and minister of Utpaladeva, a term which is an alias of Muñja. The identity of the two writers is suggested by the fact that later writers ascribe passages of the Daçarūpa itself to Dhanika, and that without the commentary the work is in a sense incomplete. But, on the other hand, in a few passages the commentator more or less distinctly differs from the text, and it seems sufficient to assume that they may have been brothers. The Avaloka must have been completed after Muñja’s death, since it cites Padmagupta’s Navasāhasān̄kacarita, which was written under Sindhurāja, and this throws some doubt on the identification of Dhanika with the Dhanika Paṇḍita to whose son, Vasantācārya, a land grant was made by Muñja in A.D. 974. Dhanika quotes stanzas of his own in Sanskrit and Prākrit and also a treatise, Kāvyanirṇaya, elsewhere unknown.[7]
Of the fourteenth century in all probability are three works of unequal importance and merit. The Pratāparudrīya[8] of Vidyānātha is a mediocre compilation from the Daçarūpa and the Kāvyaprakāça of Mammaṭa, covering the whole field of poetics; it illustrates the formal rules of the drama by the composition of a wretched drama in honour of Pratāparudra of Warangal, whose inscriptions show dates from A.D. 1298 to 1314. Of much greater interest is Vidyādhara’s Ekāvalī;[9] like Vidyānātha, the author celebrates in his illustrations of his text his patron, in this case Narasiṅha II of Orissa, perhaps A.D. 1280–1314; as a poet his merits are negligible, but he shows a lively interest in his subject and intelligence in his views. Of greater popularity than either [[294]]is Viçvanātha Kavirāja, the author of the Sāhityadarpaṇa,[10] a general treatise on poetics. His handling of the drama is based largely on the Daçarūpa and its commentary, but he introduces a good deal of matter from the Nāṭyaçāstra in his sixth chapter, including details of the characteristics and ornaments of the drama, which the Daçarūpa omits. In this Viçvanātha indicates his servile character, which, however, renders his work the more valuable as an exposition of the orthodox doctrine. Of his ancestry and his own works he makes free mention, but the most definite evidence of his date is the existence in the library at Jammu of a manuscript of his work whose date appears to be A.D. 1383. The lack of order and the errors in his work are made the basis of criticism by Rūpa Gosvāmin in the early part of the sixteenth century, but his own Nāṭakacandrikā shows little improvement on the work of his predecessor, whence it draws much of its material; its real purpose is to eulogize the saint Caitanya, whose disciple Rūpa was and in whose honour he composed dramas of no merit. Equally dependent on Viçvanātha and the Daçarūpa is Sundaramiçra, whose Nāṭyapradīpa was composed in A.D. 1613. Many other treatises on drama are known by name or exist in manuscript, but none apparently of any great importance or repute. Of the fourteenth century also is the Rasārṇavasudhākara[11] of Çin̄ga Bhūpāla, lord of Rājācala and the land between the Vindhya and Çrīçaila about A.D. 1330, who cites Vidyādhara.
The development of a theory of drama progressed in the closest relation to the general theory of poetics, for the Indian theory of poetry does not admit any distinction in essence between the aesthetic pleasure produced by the drama and any other form of poetry. Thus we find in Abhinavagupta in full application to the drama the theory of suggestion, Dhvani, as the essence of poetry, which appeared in strength about A.D. 800 and was rendered popular by Ānandavardhana (A.D. 850) and by Abhinavagupta himself in his comment on the Dhvanyāloka of the former. Attacked by Mahiman Bhaṭṭa, author of the Vyaktiviveka (A.D. 1050), the doctrine was again developed with special [[295]]care by the Kashmirian Mammaṭa[12] at the close of the eleventh century. In slightly varied forms it appears in Vidyānātha, Vidyādhara, and Viçvanātha.
Apart from this important development, which, however, has no special application to the drama, there is little progress in the course of the literature. The later authorities are bound by the authority of the Nāṭyaçāstra; they repeat unintelligently its descriptions of literary forms such as the Ḍima, the Samavakāra, the Īhāmṛga, the Vīthī, and the An̄ka, which had ceased to be in popular use, if indeed the definitions of the Nāṭyaçāstra were not merely hasty generalizations from a single play or so in every one of these cases. The most that they do is to omit or to vary details, but not in independence; normally the changes can be traced to variants in the text of the Çāstra or to maxims current under Bharata’s name, though not included in the Çāstra as we have it. Often the authors differ in the definition of terms in the Çāstra which, as often in Sanskrit technical phrases, present ambiguity and admit of various renderings. These divergences are especially frequent in the long lists of characteristics and ornaments or the different means of effecting dramatic results; the Indian love of meaningless subdivision here can indulge itself to its fullest and least profitable extent. A rich variety of such ambiguities is apparent in the verses in which the Agni Purāṇa[13] describes the drama, including dancing and the mimetic art, true to its aim to constitute itself a treasure-house of all learning, popular as well as divine. The chief value of the work is the occasional light which it throws on the variants in the text of the Çāstra, and its comparative antiquity, for it is cited in the Sāhityadarpaṇa and is probably some centuries older.
2. The Nature and the Types of the Drama
A drama is the imitation or representation of the conditions or situations (avasthānukṛti)[14] in which the personages who form the subject of treatment are placed from time to time, by means of gesture, speech, costume, and expression, and, one version of [[296]]the definition adds, the situations must be such as to produce pleasure or pain, that is, they must be tinged with emotion. It is the presence of these ancillaries which distinguishes the drama from an ordinary poem; a poem appeals to the ear only, a drama is also a spectacle to delight the eyes; hence the term Rūpa or Rūpaka as applied generically to the drama, for Rūpa primarily denotes the object of vision, though the Indian tradition gives the artificial explanation that Rūpaka denotes a drama because the actors are credited with different parts.
Further light is shown on the nature of drama (nāṭya) by the discrimination of it from dance (nṛtta) and mimetic art (nṛtya), which united with song and speech serve to make up the drama.[15] The dance is based on time and rhythm; the mimetic art is concerned with representing the feelings or emotions (bhāva), while the essence of the drama is the sentiment (rasa) which it evokes in the spectator, a fact which places it on a higher level than either of its handmaidens. But there may be dramas in which these auxiliaries take first place, and on this fact is based a distinction between the primary forms, Rūpakas, in which the poetry is the dominant element and the secondary forms, Uparūpakas. Of Rūpakas ten are distinguished, Nāṭaka, Prakaraṇa, Bhāṇa, Prahasana, Ḍima, Vyāyoga, Samavakāra, Vīthī, An̄ka, and Īhāmṛga, which vary in regard to subject-matter (vastu), hero or heroine, and sentiment.
3. The Subject-Matter and the Plot
The scene of the plot must be laid in India, and the period must be one of the three ages succeeding the Golden Age, for pleasure and pain, essential elements as we have seen in the drama, cannot be experienced elsewhere than in Bhāratavarṣa, and even there they do not exist in the age of happiness unalloyed.[16] Otherwise the choice is free; the poet may take an incident familiar from tradition (prakhyāta), or may invent his plot (utpādya) or may combine both forms (miçra). But, if he follows a current legend, it is necessary that he shall not ruin the effect of it by incongruous invention; he must confine his ingenuity to episodes, for otherwise the audience will be painfully disturbed [[297]]by departure from tradition. On the other hand, it is not merely legitimate but also necessary that the dramatist should ennoble his hero, if tradition assigns to him deeds incompatible with the character which he normally exhibits.[17] The epic is not encumbered with such considerations; it can represent Duḥṣanta as merely forgetful of his vows to Çakuntalā, but Kālidāsa must clear the character of the king from this seeming baseness by attributing his loss of memory to a curse provoked by a negligence of the heroine herself. The Rāmāyaṇa admits, and seeks to explain, if not convincingly, the death of Vālin, king of the monkeys, at the hands of the virtuous Rāma; Māyurāja in the Udāttarāghava passes over the episode in silence, while Bhavabhūti, with greater boldness, in the Mahāvīracarita perverts tradition to represent Vālin as an ally of Rāvaṇa, and as slain by Rāma in legitimate self-defence, and exonerates Kaikeyī.
The subject-matter takes two forms, the principal (ādhikārika) and the incidental (prāsan̄gika) actions. The first owes its name to the fact that it is connected with the attainment (adhikāra) of the purpose of the hero, whether that be love, or some material interest, or duty, or two or all of these. In the incidental action the end achieved is not that aimed at by the hero, but it serves as a means towards the fruition of his aims.[18] The incidental action may take the dimension of an episode (patākā), as is the case with the exploits of Sugrīva as an ally of Rāma, or it may be a mere incident (prakarī), as in Act VI of the Çakuntalā the scene in which the two attendants converse.[19]
An action, when developed in full, as normally it is in the Nāṭaka, the most perfect of forms of drama, involves of necessity five stages of development (avasthā);[20] there must be as the beginning (ārambha) the desire to attain some end, which leads on to the determined effort (prayatna) to secure the object of desire; this leads to the stage in which success is felt to be possible (prāptyāçā, prāptisambhava) having regard to the means available and the obstacles in the way of achievement; then arrives the certainty of success (niyatāpti), if only some specific [[298]]difficulty can be surmounted; and finally the object is attained (phalāgama). Thus in the Çakuntalā we have the king’s first anticipation of seeing the heroine, then his eagerness to find a device to meet her again; in Act IV we learn that the anger of the sage, Durvāsas, has in some measure been appeased, and the possibility of the reunion of the king and Çakuntalā now exists; in Act VI the discovery of the ring brings back to the king remembrance, and the way for a reunion is paved, to be attained in the following act. The Ratnāvalī, no less perfect an example of the minor type, the Nāṭikā, reveals to us the aims of the minister to secure the union of the heroine and the king; a definite step to this end is taken when the heroine decides to depict the face of Vatsa on the canvas; in Act II the lovers are united for the moment, but subject to the risk of discovery by the queen; then the king recognizes that his success in love depends on winning the queen’s favour, which is successfully accomplished in the last act.
There are also five elements of the plot (arthaprakṛti),[21] which the theory not very accurately parallels with the five stages of the action. The first is the germ (bīja) whence springs the action, as in the Ratnāvalī from Yaugandharāyaṇa’s scheme to secure the princess for the king. The second, with change of metaphor, is the drop (bindu) which spreads out as oil on water; the course of the drama, which has seemed to be interrupted, is again set in activity; thus in the Ratnāvalī, when the festival of the god of love is over, the princess gives a decisive impulse to the motion of the drama by recognizing in him, whom she deemed the god himself, the king for whom she was destined as a bride. The other three elements are the episode, the incident, and the dénouement (kārya).
Based on these parallel sets is a third division of the junctures[22] (sandhi), which carry each of the stages of the action to its natural close. They are the opening (mukha), progression (pratimukha), [[299]]development (garbha), pause (vimarça), and conclusion (nirvahaṇa), corresponding clearly and closely with the stages[23] set out above. Thus in the Çakuntalā the opening extends from Act I to the point in Act II where the general departs; the progression begins with the king’s confession to the Vidūṣaka of his deep love, and extends to the close of Act III. The development occupies Acts IV and V, up to the point where Gautamī uncovers the face of Çakuntalā; at this moment the curse darkens the mind of the king, who, instead of rejoicing in reunion with his wife, pauses in reflection, and this pause in the action extends to the close of Act VI, while the conclusion is achieved in the last Act. In the Ratnāvalī the opening extends to that point in Act II, where Ratnāvalī decides to depict the king as the only means of gazing on him whom she loves, but from whom she is jealously kept by the queen; the progression extends then to the close of the Act; the development occupies Act III, while the pause, due to the intervention of the queen, is brought to an end by the mock fire of the palace in Act IV, and the remaining portion of that Act gives the conclusion.
So far there is obviously force and reason in the analysis, which, if in needless elaboration, recognizes the essential need of a dramatic conflict, of obstacles to be overcome by the hero and heroine in their efforts to secure abiding union. The classification of elements of the plot is perhaps superfluous beside the junctures; its parallelism to the other two divisions is faulty, for it is admitted that the episode is not confined to the development, as it should be, but may extend into the pause and even into the conclusion.[24] The episode again is credited with sub-junctures, to be fewer in number than the junctures, and even the incident is permitted on one view to have incomplete junctures.[25] But far more complex is the insistence on the subdivision of the five junctures into 64 members (12, 13, 12, 13, and 14 respectively). The distribution, however, has no real value, for, though Rudraṭa[26] asserts that the members should only be used [[300]]in the juncture to which they are assigned, other authorities decline to admit this view, on the score of the usage of the dramatists, which is the supreme norm. Not all of these members need be used; it is a fault in the Veṇīsaṁhāra that the poet drags in the separation of Duryodhana from Bhānumatī in Act II for no better reason than to comply with the rules.[27] When used, they should be essentially subservient to the sentiment which the piece seeks to create;[28] they should either treat the subject chosen, expand the plot, increase interest, produce surprise, represent the parties in action, or conceal what should be concealed; the hero or his rival should appear in them, or at any rate they should flow from the germ and lead up to the dénouement. Some must be included in any drama, since one without any would be like a man without limbs, and, adroitly used, they may give merit to a mediocre subject-matter. But the definitions and the classifications are without substantial interest or value.
A distinction must be made between such things as can properly be shown on the stage, and such as must only be alluded to.[29] What is seen should essentially serve to produce the sentiment aimed at, and it must avoid offending the feelings of the audience. Hence it is improper to portray on the stage such events as a national calamity, the downfall of a king, the siege of a town, a battle, killing, or death, all of them painful. It is equally forbidden to depict a marriage or other[30] religious rite, or such domestic details as eating, sleeping, bathing, or anointing the body, amorous dalliance, scratching with nails or teeth, or such ill-omened things as curses. But these rules are not without exception early or late; if Bhāsa does not hesitate as in the Ūrubhan̄ga to depict death on the stage, Rājaçekhara in his Viddhaçālabhañjikā describes the marriage ceremonial in Act III, and in the following Act shows us the wife of Cārāyaṇa asleep, while the author of the Pārvatīpariṇaya does not hesitate to choose as his theme the nuptials of Çiva and Pārvatī. Nor do dramatists decline to represent death if the dead person is restored to life, as in the Nāgānanda.[31] A long journey, or calling [[301]]from a distance,[32] is excluded from representation for obvious reasons of practicability.
Such matters as are appropriate for presentation must be presented in Acts, and each Act must contain only such events as can naturally, or by skilful management, be made to occupy the duration of a single day,[33] a requisite which is obeyed by Bhavabhūti in his Mahāvīracarita and by Rājaçekhara in his Bālarāmāyaṇa despite the difficulties presented by the effort thus to condense the epic. But it is essential that the events described shall not be disconnected; they must flow from the same cause, or issue naturally from one another. There should be an effective development of the plot within the Act; at the time when it comes to an end by the departure of the actors—three or four at most, one of whom should be the hero—at the moment when they seemed to have attained their immediate aims, a new motive should come into play, and a fresh impetus be given to the movement of the drama. But it is neither necessary nor usual that Act should follow Act without interval; on the contrary, anything up to a year may intervene between the action of one Act and that of the next; if the events as recorded in history covered more than that time, as in the case of Rāma’s fourteen years of banishment in the forest, the poet must reduce the period to a year or less. To reveal to the audience the events during such intervals the theory permits a choice of five forms of scenes of introduction (arthopakṣepaka), which serve also to narrate things, whose performance on the stage is forbidden by the etiquette of the drama.[34]
Two of these are the Viṣkambha or Viṣkambhaka and the Praveçaka, which are both explanatory scenes, but between which the theory draws fine distinctions. The Viṣkambhaka is performed by not more than two persons,[35] never of chief rank; it serves to explain the past or the future, and it may be used at the beginning of a drama where it is not desired to arouse sentiment at the outset. It is pure (çuddha) if the performers are of [[302]]middle rank and speak Sanskrit; mixed (saṁkīrṇa) when the characters are of middle and inferior class and use also Prākrit. The Praveçaka cannot be used at the beginning of a drama, and is confined to inferior characters, who use Prākrit. Thus in the Çakuntalā Act III is introduced by a Viṣkambhaka, in which a young disciple of the sage Kaṇva tells us in Sanskrit of the king’s stay at the hermitage, while in Act VI a Praveçaka gives the episode of the fisherman and the police. An abbreviated mode of producing the same result is the Cūlikā,[36] in which a voice from behind the curtain narrates some essential event, as when in Act IV of the Mahāvīracarita we learn thus of the defeat of Paraçurāma by Rāma. In the An̄kamukha, or anticipatory scene, at the close of one Act a character alludes to the subject of the following Act; thus at the end of Act II in the Mahāvīracarita Sumantra announces the arrival of Vasiṣṭha, Viçvāmitra, and Paraçurāma, and these three open Act III. A different view is taken by Viçvanātha, who makes it out to be a part of an Act in which allusion is made to the subject-matter of the following Acts and the whole plot, as is done in the dialogue of Avalokitā and Kāmandakī in Act I of the Mālatīmādhava. This is evidently an attempt to justify the treatment of this form of scene as revealing matters which cannot conveniently be depicted on the stage, as well as to distinguish it from the An̄kāvatāra or continuation scene, in which the action is continued by the characters in the next Act without any break, other than the technical one of the departure of the actors and their return, as at the close of Act I of the Mālavikāgnimitra. Such a scene obviously in no way answers the purpose of explanation, and its assignment to such an end is clearly erroneous.
Various devices are recognized to help the movement of the intrigue, five of which are classed as internal junctures (antarasandhi).[37] The first of these is the dream, as in the Veṇīsaṁhāra where Bhānumatī is terrified by a vision in which she sees an ichneumon (nakula) slay a hundred snakes, dread presage of the fall of the hundred Kauravas before the attack of Nakula and his [[303]]brothers. The letter serves in the Çakuntalā, Act III, to allow the heroine to express her feelings towards the king; she reads it aloud and he overhears it and breaks in upon her; more often it serves the important end of conveying news, leading to dramatic action. A message serves the same end, as when in the Çakuntalā, Act VI, Mātali brings to the king Indra’s message imploring aid against the demons. A voice from behind the scene (nepathyokti) in Act I of that play warns Duḥṣanta not to kill the gazelle of the hermitage, and a voice in the air (ākāçabhāṣita) in Act IV makes known to Kaṇva on his return the important news of Çakuntalā’s marriage and approaching motherhood. The Nāṭyaçāstra[38] ignores the term internal junctures, but has the term special junctures or divisions of junctures (sandhyantara) which includes the dream, the letter, and the message, among many other miscellaneous elements; two of these are akin to those already mentioned. The picture is used in the Ratnāvalī as the mode by which the heroine satisfies her longing for her beloved, while Vāsavadattā discovers Vatsa’s infidelity through seeing the portrait of Sāgarikā, painted beside that of the king by the mischievous Susaṁgatā. Intoxication (mada) may result as in the Mālavikāgnimitra, Act III, in the letting fall of imprudent words by an important character. Other devices might have been included in the list, such as that of assuming a disguise on the stage, a device used by Harṣa in the Ratnāvalī and the Priyadarçikā in order to secure the inconstant king uninterrupted interviews with the objects of his temporary affections. The latter play contains in Act III a good example of the embryo Act (garbhān̄ka),[39] which is recognized by the theory but not classed as a species of juncture; in it Vāsavadattā causes her maids of honour to perform before her a play representing her early adventures with Vatsa. So in the Uttararāmacarita Vālmīki has performed by the Apsarases before Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa the adventures of Sītā since her banishment, and the events of her marriage are described in this form in the Bālarāmāyaṇa, Act III.
Similarly the theory recognizes as a separate element the pro-episode (patākāsthānaka),[40] an equivocal speech or situation which [[304]]foreshadows an event whether near at hand or distant. The Nāṭyaçāstra distinguishes four kinds of equivoke. An ambiguous situation may result in bringing about the aim of the hero; thus in Act III of the Ratnāvalī, when Vatsa hastens to save Vāsavadattā, as he thinks, from hanging herself, he finds to his equal joy and surprise that he has rescued none other than Sāgarikā herself.[41] Or the equivocation may lie in words, whose sense the spectator alone grasps in its deeper application; thus in Act II of the Çakuntalā a voice behind the scene bids the female Cakravāka say farewell to her spouse, a command whose application to the case of the king and the heroine is immediately appreciated by the audience alone. Or the equivocation may be deliberately conveyed in the response of the actor, whose words apply not merely to the immediate matter in hand, but allude to the future; in the Veṇīsaṁhāra, Act II, Duryodhana is told of the mishap of the breaking of his standard by the fierce (bhīma) wind in words which presage his own fall, his thigh broken by Bhīma’s blow. Finally we may have a double entendre which later is destined to find a third application; in the Ratnāvalī Vatsa playfully suggests that his earnest gaze on the creeper, which has borne blossoms out of season, may cause jealousy in the queen; his words apply equally to a maiden, and in the sequel the queen is made furiously angry by his ardent gaze at Sāgarikā. The Daçarūpa contents itself with two species, equivocation of situation and deliberate equivocation of phrase, but there is general agreement that pro-episodes may be used in any part of the play and not merely in the first four junctures.
Importance attaches to the conventions which enable the author to surmount difficulties inseparable from the dramatic form.[42] Normally, of course, the actors speak aloud (prakāçam), to be heard by all those on the stage as well as by the audience, but asides (svagatam, ātmagatam) are frequent, meant to be heard by the audience alone. If the need arises for making a remark to be heard by one actor only, it is made in the form of a confidence (apavāritam, apavārya), while a private conversation (janāntikam) is arranged by the actors holding up three [[305]]fingers, the thumb and ring finger being curved inwards. Or, it is possible to avoid bringing on a person by speaking in the air (ākāçabhāṣita), pretending to hear the reply, and repeating it before answering it, while a similar purpose can be served by a voice from behind the scene.
The number of Acts which a play should contain varies according to the nature of the drama; in the Nāṭaka the number must be at least five, and may be ten; in other cases one Act suffices. Normally the Acts are simply numbered; in some cases, as in that of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, names are given, doubtless not by the poet.
4. The Characters
The hero owes his name, Nāyaka, to the fact that it is he who leads (nī) the events to the conclusion which he has set before him, in so far as such a result is permitted by human frailty and the force of circumstances. His good qualities are innumerable[43]; he must be modest as is Rāma in depreciating his own prowess in comparison with that of Paraçurāma whom he has vanquished; handsome, generous like Jīmūtavāhana, prompt and skilled in action, affable, beloved of his people, of high family, ready of speech, and steadfast. He must be young, and endowed with intelligence, energy, a good memory, skill in the arts, and just pride; a hero, firm, glorious, skilled in the sciences, and an observer of law. More useful is the distinction drawn between types of hero[44]; all are noble or self-controlled (dhīra), a characteristic not universally found in heroines, but they are distinguished as light-hearted or gay (lalita), calm (çānta) exalted (udātta), and haughty or vehement (uddhata).
The light-hearted hero is one free from care, a lover of the arts, and above all a devotee of love; he is normally a king whose public burdens are confided to others, and whose one business it is to secure union with a new favourite by overcoming the obstacles interposed by the not unnatural jealousy of his queen or queens; such beyond all is Vatsa in Bhāsa and Harṣa’s dramas. The calm hero differs primarily from the light-hearted hero by reason of his birth, for he is a Brahmin or merchant, such [[306]]as Mādhava in the Mālatīmādhava and Cārudatta in the Daridracārudatta and the Mṛcchakaṭikā; the hero of the Prakaraṇa, or comedy of manners, normally is of this class. The exalted hero is a character of great strength and nobility, firm of purpose, but free from vanity, forbearing, and without egotism. Of such a type are generals, ministers and high officials, and Jīmūtavāhana in the Nāgānanda. An instructive controversy rages round this description of Jīmūtavāhana; to be exalted, it is argued, implies the desire of superiority, but Jīmūtavāhana renounces every dream of empire and is a model of calm, of boundless pity, and freedom from passion save, indeed, as regards his love for Malayavatī, which is inconsistent with the general nature of his character. He should really be ranked among the calm heroes, with the Buddha himself, disregarding the meaningless convention which excludes kings from that category. Dhanika[45] effectively defends the classification of Jīmūtavāhana by insisting that he is not without desire, namely that of saving others at the cost of his own life; the desires he lays aside are wishes for personal advantage which Kālidāsa rightly censures in a king; his love for Malayavatī is wholly inconsistent with calmness, which, on the contrary, is in fact as in drama a characteristic of Brahmins, and it distinguishes him absolutely from the Buddha, who is exempt from passion. The haughty hero is a victim of pride and jealousy, an adept in magic arts and ruses, self-assertive, fickle, irascible, and boastful; Paraçurāma illustrates this character.
The chief hero in any drama must be essentially true to one or other of those types; any change would spoil the unity of the development of the drama, and, if necessary, changes must be made in the plot, as in the case of Rāma’s dealings with Vālin, to preserve the unity of character. In the case of the secondary hero there is no need for such consistency; he may change in different situations, and his lack of consistency tends merely to heighten the impression caused by the constancy of the hero. Thus Paraçurāma appears in the Mahāvīracarita[46] as exalted in his attitude to the evil Rāvaṇa, as haughty towards the untried Rāma, and as calm when he has experienced the superior prowess of that hero. It is obvious that there is difficulty in conceiving as a chief hero [[307]]one of the haughty type, and the theory does not provide us with one, for Paraçurāma is only a secondary hero.
As the Sanskrit drama deals usually with love, the theory has another division of types of hero based on their attitude to women.[47] The courteous (dakṣiṇa) hero is one who can find room in his heart for more loves than one; he seeks another to the deep grief of the old, but he does not cease to feel affection for his earlier love; such are the heroes of the Nāṭikā, or short heroic comedy, like Vatsa. He may not be regarded as either deceitful (çaṭha), or shameless (dhṛṣṭa), for these two types represent heroes who have ceased to love their former flame, and differ only in so far as they seek to deceive her, or are indifferent to her anger and bear open traces of the new attachment. Men like Vatsa never allow passion to dominate them; if a woman spurns them they are ready to leave her. The fourth type is the loyal (anukūla) lover who is faithful to one woman only, as is Rāma. As these four types are applicable to each class of hero, there are sixteen possible kinds of hero, and the theory adds the further complication that each of these may be a high class, middle class, or inferior person, giving forty-eight types.
As if the enumeration of the general characteristics of the hero were insufficient, a set of eight special excellencies[48] is enumerated separately as springing from his character (sāttvika). These are brilliance (çobhā), including compassion for inferiors, emulation with superiors, heroism, and cleverness; vivacity (vilāsa), including a firm step and glance and a laughing voice; grace (mādhurya) manifested in the display of but slight change of demeanour in trying circumstances; impassivity (gāmbhīrya) or superiority to emotion; steadfastness (sthairya) in accomplishing his object despite obstacles; the sense of honour (tejas) which will punish insult even at the cost of life itself; lightheartedness as grace of deportment; and nobility (audārya) exhibited in sacrifice for the sake of the good.
The enemy of the hero (pratināyaka)[49] is self-controlled and vehement (dhīroddhata); but he is also avaricious, stubborn, criminal, and vicious; such are Rāvaṇa and Duryodhana as contrasted [[308]]with Rāma and Yudhiṣṭhira. On the other hand, the hero of the episode, the companion (pīṭhamarda)[50] of the hero, is to possess, but in a less degree, the qualities of the hero; he is to be intelligent, ever in attendance on the hero, and devoted to his interests, as are Makaranda in the Mālatīmādhava and Sugrīva in the dramas based on the Rāma legend. The term, however, is unknown to these plays, while in the Mālavikāgnimitra the nun Kauçikī is styled a Pīṭhamardikā, and serves as a trusted go-between. The theory here seems to have stereotyped a relationship commoner in an older type of drama.
The heroine, Nāyikā,[51] plays a part in the economy of the drama similar to that of the hero, and not of less importance. The types of heroine depend primarily on her relation to the hero; she may be his wife (svā, svīyā) or belong to another (anyā, anyastrī) or be a hetaera. The hero’s wife must be upright and of good character, but she may be inexperienced (mugdhā), partly experienced (madhyā), or fully experienced and bold (pragalbhā). The inexperienced wife is shy in her love and gentle in her anger with her spouse’s infidelities. The partly experienced is full of the love of youth, and even faints in her passion; when angry, if self-controlled, she chides her husband with double entendres; if but partly controlled, she allows her tears to aid her reproaches; if uncontrolled, she adds harsh words. The bold wife is frantically in love, fainting at the first embrace; when angry, if self-controlled, she adopts an attitude of haughty reserve and indifference to the pleasures of life; if lacking in self-control, she uses threats and blows; if partly self-controlled, she employs the weapons of raillery and equivoke. A further division is possible, for each of these three kinds of heroine may be subdivided according as the lady is the earlier or later of the loves of the husband.
A woman, who is in the power of another, may be the wife of another man or a maiden. An amour with a married woman may not form the subject of the dominant sentiment in the play, but that for a maiden may occur as an element in the principal or the secondary action. Even when a parent or guardian is willing to permit a maiden’s marriage, there may be other obstacles, as in the case of the love of Mālatī and Mādhava and [[309]]in Vatsa’s numerous amours. The woman who is common to all (sādhāraṇī) is a courtesan, skilled in the arts, bold, and cunning; she accepts as lovers the rich, the foolish, the self-willed, the selfish, and the impotent so long as their money lasts, then she has them turned out of doors by her mother, who acts as go-between. If she is a heroine, she must be represented as in love, like Vasantasenā in the Mṛcchakaṭikā, except in a Prahasana or farce, where she can be depicted as fleecing her lovers for comic effect; she must not figure as a heroine if the hero is divine or royal.
The heroine may occupy eight different relations to her lover.[52] She may be his absolute mistress (svādhīnapatikā) and he her obedient slave; she may be awaiting him in full dress (vāsakasajjā); she may be distressed by his involuntary absence (virahotkaṇṭhitā), enraged (khaṇḍitā) at discovering him disfigured by the marks of her rival’s teeth and nails, or be severed from her beloved by a quarrel (kalahāntaritā) and suffer remorse, or be deceived (vipralabdhā) by a lover who fails to meet her at the rendezvous which she has named. Her lover may be absent abroad (proṣitapriyā), or she may have to seek him out or press him to come to her (abhisārikā), giving as meeting-place a ruined temple, a garden, the house of a go-between, a cemetery, the bank of a stream, or in general any dark place. The first two classes of heroine are bright and gay, the others are wearied, tearful, changing colour, sighing, and wear no ornaments as token of their dejection. A woman, who is subject to another, cannot stand in all these relations to a lover; she may be distressed at his absence, deceived, or driven to seek him out, but she cannot be enraged, for she is not the mistress of her lover, and thus the king’s courtesy to Mālavikā in Kālidāsa’s play is not to be treated as an effort to appease an enraged heroine.
The heroine is accorded even a more generous allowance of excellencies than the hero.[53] The first three are physical, the first display of emotion in a nature previously exempt (bhāva), the movement of eyes and brows betokening the awakening of love (hāva), and the still more open manifestation of affection. The next seven are inherent characteristics of the heroine; the brilliance of youth and passion; the added touch of loveliness [[310]]given by love, sweetness, radiance, courage, dignity, and self-control. Then come ten graces; the sportive imitation of the movements or words of the beloved one, the swift change of aspect at his arrival, tasteful arrangement of one’s ornaments to increase radiance of appearance, studied confusion of ornaments, hysteria (kilakiñcita), in which anger, fear, joy, and tears mingle, manifestations of affection (moṭṭāyita) on hearing the beloved mentioned or seeing his portrait, pretended anger (kuṭṭamita) on the lover touching hair or lip, affected indifference (bibboka), born of excess of pride, a graceful pose (lalita), and the bashfulness which forbids speech even when an opportunity presents itself. To these twenty Viçvanātha adds eight more graces; the pride which is vain of youth and beauty, the ennui which besets the maiden in her lover’s absence, the naïveté which displays itself in pretended ignorance and innocence, the distraction evinced by ornaments in disorder, wandering glances, and truant words, curiosity, the meaningless laugh of youth and high spirits, the tremors of fear causeless but common in the presence of the lover, and the sportive play of young affection. The same source gives us in great detail the modes in which the different types of heroine display their affection, in maidenly modesty or in shameless boldness, an analysis showing keen and deep insight into all the outward manifestations of love at an Indian court. Less praiseworthy is the perverse ingenuity which enumerates the different types of heroine, and educes first 128 from the combination of the eight forms of relationship to the lover with the sixteen kinds based on the division of wife, another’s, and hetaera. These are then multiplied by three on the basis of the division of all characters as high class, middle class, and low class.
The same division of classes is applied to all the other characters (pātra) which can appear in a play, but a much more fundamental classification is that by sex, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Most of the rôles are such as are incidental to the life of a palace, for the normal drama deals with the amours of a king, and his entourage and that of the queen account for practically all the normal characters of the drama.
The king’s confidant and devoted friend is the Vidūṣaka,[54] a Brahmin, ludicrous alike in dress, speech, and behaviour. He is a [[311]]misshapen dwarf, baldheaded, with projecting teeth and red eyes, who makes himself ridiculous by his silly chatter in Prākrit, and his greed for food and presents of every kind. It is a regular part of the play for the other characters to make fun of him, but he is always by the king’s side, and the latter makes him his confidant in all his affairs of the heart, while the Vidūṣaka repays him by willing, if frequently incompetent or unlucky, attempts at service. The theorists offer no explanation of the anomaly of a Brahmin in such a curious position, but Açvaghoṣa already has the figure, as has Bhāsa, though not in his epic dramas, and later he is established as almost an essential feature in all dramas not derived from the epic; the chief exception is the Mālatīmādhava, where, however, his place is taken by the hero’s friend in sport (narmasuhṛd).
A much less common, but an interesting character is that of the Viṭa,[55] who resembles, though distantly, the parasite of the Greek drama; he is a poet skilled in the arts, especially music, acquainted au fond with the ways of hetaerae, in short a perfect man of the world with literary and artistic culture to boot. He is an essential figure in the Bhāṇa, or monologue, in which he relates his own shady adventures, but in other forms of drama he plays but a small part; Kālidāsa and Bhavabhūti ignore him, and, while Harṣa depicts him in the Nāgānanda, his position there is episodic; in the Mṛcchakaṭikā alone does he attain full development in his relation to the boastful Çakāra. Both these figures appear also in the Cārudatta, Çūdraka’s model. The Çakāra,[56] brother of a royal concubine, is of low caste, easily angered and appeased, fond of fine raiment, and proud of his office, in which, however, he shows himself corrupt and incompetent. He is found also in an episode of the Çakuntalā, but then fades from the drama leaving, however, a clear suggestion of its early history.
The king requires in his amours the aid of a messenger (dūta)[57] as well as for more serious affairs. The holder of this rôle must be possessed of loyalty, energy, courage, a good memory, and adroitness; he may be given full powers to act as seems best in each emergency, or have limited authority, or be a mere bearer [[312]]of a message. Others intimately associated with the royal household are the servants (ceṭa),[58] the mercenaries, Kirātas or Mlecchas, the chaplain, priest, and other theologians. There are also those employed in the government of the realm, which the king is only too pleased to neglect.[59] The minister (mantrin, amātya) is of good family, of high intelligence, skilled in affairs human and divine, and devoted to the interests of the country. The general (senāpati) is also of high birth, incapable of weakness, skilled in both the theory and the practice of war, and kind of speech; ready to note the weakness of the enemy and to direct at the suitable moment a campaign against him. The judge (prāḍvivāka) must be master of the laws and of judicial procedure, absolutely impartial, devoted to his duty, free from anger or pride, master of himself. The other officers are required to possess high qualities of intelligence, activity, and devotion to duty, while for less important work the king commands the services of foresters, military officers, and soldiers. The prince royal (kumāra) and the friend are also mentioned in the Nāṭyaçāstra, but without detail.
Of women’s rôles[60] the most important in dignity is that of the chief queen (mahādevī), the equal in age and rank of her husband, whose lapses in affection wound her, without robbing her of her sense of self-respect or dignity. In good fortune or evil she is devoted to him and seeks ever his welfare. The queen (devī) is also a daughter of a king, but she is more proud than dignified, and, intoxicated by her youth and beauty, her mind is set on the pleasures of love. The favourite (svāminī) is the daughter of a general or a minister, seductive by her beauty and intelligence, honoured by the king and others. There are other types of concubine (sthāyinī and bhoginī) with characteristics but little distinctive. The harem includes also the chief attendants (āyukta), who are charged with the supreme oversight of some department of the court, the king’s personal attendant who is always with him (anucārikā), the maid who performs his toilet and holds over him the umbrella of state, the women—called sometimes Yavanīs, once Greek maidens—who act as his body-guard, and those aged women who are skilled in political traditions [[313]]and are respected on that score. There are also the princess, ingénue and modest, and the duenna (mahattarā), who among other things sees to the punctual performance of auspicious rites, and the more humble adepts in the dance, in song, in handicrafts, in acting, and in the favourite amusement of swinging the ladies of the harem. The hetaera is painted in attractive colours; she is thoroughly well educated, exempt from the normal defects of women, kind of heart, adroit, active, a born coquette, and seductive in every way. Special importance among these feminine rôles attaches to that of the heroine’s messenger, the counterpart of the hero’s agent. She may be a friend, a slave, a foster-sister, a neighbour, a workwoman, or an artiste, or strangely enough, a nun, usually of Buddhist connexions, a curious and interesting sidelight on Indian views of the devotees of that faith. The doorkeeper (pratīhārī) has the function of announcing to the king such political events as the declaration of war and the conclusion of peace.
The neuter rôles[61] are filled by men who have either taken vows of chastity, or have been deprived of virility in order to permit of their employment in the harem. The Snātaka is a Brahmin, who has completed his course of religious study, is familiar with religious and social affairs; he resides within the palace. The chamberlain (kañcukin) is an old Brahmin, worn out in the service of the king, but still mentally alert and skilled in his business of conveying the royal orders in the palace. The eunuchs (varṣadhara, nirmuṇḍa, upasthāyika) are effeminate and cowardly but not lacking in savoir faire; they find employment in the king’s amours.
The nomenclature[62] of the characters is in some measure regulated by rule; the name of a hetaera should end in dattā, senā, or siddhā, as does that of Vasantasenā in the Cārudatta; that of a merchant in datta as in Cārudatta; that of the Vidūṣaka from spring or a flower, but in the Avimāraka he is styled Saṁtuṣṭa; that of a servant, male or female, should be derived from some object, which occurs in descriptions of the seasons, &c., as in the names Kalahaṅsa and Mandārikā in the Mālatīmādhava; those of Kāpālikas, a species of ascetics, should end in ghaṇṭa as in Aghoraghaṇṭa in the same play. [[314]]
There is also an elaborate etiquette[63] as to the mode of addressing the diverse personages. A king is styled thus by ascetics, but Deva or Svāmin by his courtiers; his charioteer and Brahmins generally hail him as Āyuṣmant, ‘long-lived’, while inferiors style him Bhaṭṭa, ‘master’. The crown prince is styled Svāmin, like his father; the other princes of the blood (bhartṛdāraka), but also common people, Bhadramukha or Saumya, preceded by he in the latter case, terms designed to conciliate by attributing to those addressed the qualities they are desired to show.[64] The style Bhagavant, ‘blessed’, is appropriate to the gods, to great sages and saints; Ārya, ‘noble’, is appropriate to Brahmins, ministers, and elder brothers, while a wife should address her husband as Āryaputra. Sages address an ascetic as Sādhu; ministers are styled Amātya or Saciva; the king calls his Vidūṣaka, and is called by him, Vayasya, ‘friend’. Sugṛhītābhidha, ‘well named one’, is the address[65] of a pupil to his master, a son to a father, or a younger to an elder brother, while the latter in return uses Tāta or Vatsa, both affectionate and condescending terms, suitable also for use to a son, or any person who owes one respect. Heretics should be given the styles they affect, thus a Buddhist should be hailed as Bhadanta; Çakas should be styled by such terms as Bhadradatta. The interjection Haṅho may be used between men of middle rank, Haṇḍe between common people. The Vidūṣaka addresses the queen and her ladies as Bhavatī; otherwise the queen is styled Bhaṭṭinī or Svāminī, a wife as Āryā, a princess Bhartṛdārikā, a hetaera Ajjukā, a go-between or aged dame Ambā; Halā is used between friends of equal rank, Hañjā is addressed to a servant.
5. The Sentiments
The most original and interesting part of dramatic theory is the gradual definition of the nature of the sentiment which it is the aim of the performance to evoke in the mind of the audience.[66] [[315]]The statement of the Nāṭyaçāstra is simple. Sentiment is produced from the union of the determinants (vibhāva), the consequents (anubhāva), and the transitory feelings (vyabhicārin). The determinants fall in the later classification into two divisions, the fundamental determinants (ālambana) and the excitant determinants (uddīpana); fundamental determinants comprise such things as the heroine or the hero, for without them there can be no creation of sentiment in the audience; excitant determinants are such conditions of place and time and circumstance as serve to foster sentiment when it has arisen, for instance the moon, the cry of the cuckoo, the soft breeze from Malaya, all things which foster the erotic sentiment. The consequents are the external manifestations of feeling, by which the actors exhibit to the audience the minds and hearts of the persons of the drama, such as sidelong glances, a smile, a movement of the arm, and—though this is but slightly indicated in later texts—his words.[67] A special class is later made of those consequents, which are the involuntary product of sympathetic realization of the feeling of the person portrayed, and hence are called Sāttvika, as arising from a heart which is ready to appreciate the sorrows or joys of another (sattva); these are paralysis, fainting, horripilation, perspiration, change of colour, trembling, weeping, and change of voice. The transitory or evanescent feelings are given as thirty-three; they are discouragement, weakness, apprehension, weariness, contentment, stupor, joy, depression, cruelty, anxiety, fright, envy, indignation, arrogance, recollection, death, intoxication, dreaming, sleeping, awakening, shame, epilepsy, distraction, assurance, indolence, agitation, deliberation, dissimulation, sickness, insanity, despair, impatience, and inconstancy. But these factors are not sufficient to account for sentiment, nor does the Nāṭyaçāstra intend this. It recognizes that an essential element in the production of sentiment is the dominant emotion (sthāyibhāva) which persists throughout the drama amid the variations of the transitory feelings; it stands to the other factors in the position of the king to his subjects or a master to his pupils, as the Çāstra says; it is, says the Daçarūpa, the source of delight, and brings into harmony with itself the transitory states of feeling. [[316]]
It is the dominant emotions which in some fashion determine or become sentiments even in the view of the Nāṭyaçāstra, though in it there is clearly difficulty in conceiving the precise signification of the process, a fact revealed in a tendency to confuse the terms emotion and sentiment, Bhāva and Rasa. In Bhaṭṭa Lollaṭa[68] we have a determined effort to make clear the implication of the doctrine. The dominant emotion of love, for instance, generated by a fundamental determinant such as a maiden, inflamed by an excitant determinant such as a pleasant garden, made cognizable by consequents such as sidelong glances and embraces, and strengthened by transitory feelings such as desire, becomes the erotic sentiment first of all in the hero of the drama, e.g. Rāma. The sentiment is subsequently attributed to the actor who imitates the hero in form, dress, and action, and so it becomes the source of charm to the audience. The fatal objection to this theory is clear; it fails to recognize that the sentiment must be that of the spectator himself; he cannot have enjoyment of a sentiment which exists merely in the actor as a secondary outcome of its existence in Rāma. Moreover, the actor whose chief aim is to please the audience and earn money need not feel at all the emotions of Rāma, while, if he does so, he is then in the same position as a spectator.
The view of Lollaṭa, which is classed as one of the production (utpatti) of sentiment and regarded as that of the Mīmāṅsā school, is opposed by the doctrine of Çrīçan̄kuka, regarded as the Naiyāyika view, which interprets the manifestation of sentiment as a process of inference. The emotions, love, &c., are inferred to exist in the actor, though not really present in him, by means of the determinants, &c., cleverly exhibited in his acting; the emotion thus inferred, being sensed by the audience, through its exquisite beauty, adds to itself a peculiar charm and thus finally develops into the state of a sentiment in the spectator. This view, however, is open to the fatal objection that it is commonly admitted that it is not inference, or any other derivative mode of knowledge, which produces charm, but perception alone, and no adequate ground exists for disregarding this general truth in this case. [[317]]
In Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka[69] we find yet a different point of view, which denies either the production (utpatti) of sentiment, its perception or apprehension (pratīti) or its revelation (abhivyakti). If sentiment is perceived as appertaining to another, then it cannot personally affect oneself. But it cannot be perceived as present in oneself as a result of study of a work about Rāma; there are no factors present in the self to produce any such result; it is impossible to hold that an emotion dormant in oneself is called to life by seeing or reading the story of Rāma; experience shows that one’s own beloved does not come up to one’s mind to raise love, nor could a tale of a goddess evoke the picture of a mortal amour; again, such marvellous deeds as Rāma’s have nothing common to mortal efforts so as to be able to awake conceptions of acts of our own. Thus sentiment cannot be apprehended. Nor is it a case of production; if so, no one would go twice to a play of a pathetic type, since one would experience actual misery as the result, in lieu of a pleasant melancholy; again the sight of lovers united does not in real life produce sentiment. Nor is a case of the revelation of something existing potentially (çaktirūpa). If this were so, then, when the potential emotions were let loose, they would occupy their field of action in diverse degrees—thus contradicting the nature of sentiment as one; moreover there would be the same difficulties as in the case of apprehension as to whether revelation applied to the hero or oneself. The true solution, therefore, is to ascribe to a poem a peculiar threefold potency of its own, the power of denotation (abhidhā), which deals with what is expressed, the power of realization (bhāvakatva), which relates to the sentiment, and the power of enjoyment (bhojakatva), which has regard to the audience. If denotation were all, there would be no difference between poetic figures and manuals, there would be absence of the distinctions produced by divergence of literal and metaphorical sense, and the avoidance of harsh sounds would be needless. As it is, we have the second function of realization of sentiment, which causes the expressed sense to serve as the basis of the sentiment, and confers on the determinants, &c., the essential feature of being appropriated by the audience as universal. From this comes the appreciation by the audience [[318]]of the sentiment, an appreciation consisting in a mental condition made up entirely of the element of goodness or truth (sattva), uninfluenced by the other elements of passion (rajas) and dullness (tamas), that is, entirely free from desire, comparable with meditation on the absolute. This condition is the vital element; the enjoyment ranks above the aesthetic equipment[70] which renders it possible. To this theory which is sometimes ascribed to the Sāṁkhya,[71] and called the Bhuktivāda, doctrine of the enjoyment of sentiment, the objection is made that the two powers ascribed to poetry, realization, and enjoyment, have no legitimate foundation.
The view finally adopted by the theorists is that defended, but not first enunciated, by Abhinavagupta, based on the general doctrine of suggestion (vyañjanā) as lying at the basis of all poetic pleasure. The spectator’s state of mind must be considered; it is in him that from experience of life there come into being emotional complexes, which lie dormant, ready to be called into activity by the reading of poems or by seeing plays performed. Those whose life has left them barren of impressions of emotions are, accordingly, incapable of relishing dramas, a fate which awaits men whose minds are intent merely on grammar or on the complexities of the Mīmāṅsā. The sentiment thus excited is peculiar, in that it is essentially universal in character; it is common to all other trained spectators, and it has essentially no personal significance. A sentiment is thus something very different from an ordinary emotion; it is generic and disinterested, while an emotion is individual and immediately personal. An emotion again may be pleasant or painful, but a sentiment is marked by that impersonal joy, characteristic of the contemplation of the supreme being by the adept, a bliss which is absolutely without personal feeling. There is in fact a close parallel between the man of taste (sahṛdaya)[72] and the adept (yogin); both have in them the possibility of attaining this bliss, and, to make it real, the one must investigate the determinants, &c., while the other must apply himself to concentration on the absolute. It is [[319]]this peculiar nature of sentiment which forbids it being created as the result of denotation or indication by speech, of perception, inference, or recollection. It cannot exist without determinants, &c., but these are not in the normal sense causes; an effect can exist when its causes have disappeared, but sentiment exists only while the determinants, &c., last; the terms used in this regard are one and all distinct from the normal terminology of causation. Sentiment is something supernatural (alaukika); its relations to the factors may be compared with that of a beverage to the black pepper, candied sugar, camphor, &c., which compose it, but of which as such no trace remains in the liquor as produced. This characteristic enables us to understand how it is that the list of sentiments includes that of horror or odium (bībhatsa) and that of fear (bhayānaka), as well as the pathetic sentiment. These are awakened into life by things which cause disgust, fear, and grief in ordinary life, and these emotions in real life are far from pleasant in any sense of that term. But, conveyed as ideal and generic, they produce this supernatural pleasure or happiness, which is not to be compared with normal pleasure, just as the joy of the contemplation of the absolute is not to be described as pleasure in the ordinary sense. Bhānudatta, in his Rasataran̄giṇī, a work composed before A.D. 1437, distinguishes Rāsa as natural (laukika) and supernatural or transcendental; the former is the emotion experienced in ordinary life—which may more conveniently be distinguished as Bhāva,—the latter includes the emotion experienced in dream experiences, in the building of castles in the air, and in the appreciation of poetry, and he is careful to emphasize the totally different nature of the natural and the transcendental emotion.[73]
The doctrine set out in Abhinavagupta is also that of the Daçarūpa, although it is rendered more obscure there by the brevity of its exposition. The process of transformation of an emotion to a sentiment is formally described; ‘a dominant feeling or emotion becomes a sentiment when it is transformed into an object of enjoyment through the co-operation of the determinants, the consequents, including the involuntary manifestations of feeling, and the transitory feelings’.[74] The sense is made [[320]]further precise by the assertion[75] that the dominant emotion becomes a sentiment, because it is enjoyed by the spectator of taste, and he is actually at present in existence; the sentiment is not located in the hero whose actions are represented, for he belongs to the past, nor does it appertain to the poem, for that is not the object of the poem—its function being to set out the determinants, &c., through which the dominant emotion is brought out and generates the sentiment,—nor is sentiment the apprehension by the spectator of the emotions enacted by the actor, since in that case spectators would feel not sentiment, but an emotion varying in the different individuals, just as in real life from seeing a pair in union those who see them feel according to their nature shame, envy, desire, or aversion. The position of the spectator is compared to that of the child which, when it plays with its clay elephants—the ancient equivalent of our tin soldiers—experiences the sensation of its own energy as pleasant; the deeds of Arjuna arouse a like feeling in the spectator’s mind. This experiencing sentiment is a manifestation of that joy which is innate as the true nature of the self, and this manifestation comes into being as the result of the pervasion of the mind of the spectator with the dominant emotion and the determinants, &c., in combination.
An effort is made to describe the precise nature of the mental activity involved in the enjoyment of sentiment, and to base upon it a division of the sentiments. The four sentiments of love, heroism, horror, and fury are taken as primary, and brought into connexion with mental conditions described as the unfolding (vikāsa), expansion (vistara), agitation (kṣobha), and movement to and fro (vikṣepa) of the mind.[76] These are evidently mental conditions, believed to be reached by introspection, and they have the merit of giving a quasi-psychological rationale for the doctrine of four primary and four secondary sentiments found in the Nāṭyaçāstra.[77] But there was no early agreement on this piece of psychology; Abhinavagupta,[78] with Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, accepts only three aspects of mental condition as involved, the melting (druti), expansion, and unfolding, a division which is applied also in the theory of poetics to justify the doctrine of the [[321]]existence of three qualities only of words.[79] On Dhanaṁjaya’s view the sentiment of calm which he denies for drama,[80] if it exists at all, must be regarded as combining all the four mental aspects above distinguished.
It is now possible to understand clearly the essential relation of the spectator to the actors; we see on the stage, for instance, Rāma and Sītā, who excites his affection, aided by suitable circumstances of time and place; this affection is intimated by speech and gesture alike, which indicate both the dominant emotion of love and its transient shapes in the various stages of love requited. The spectacle evokes in the mind of the spectator the impressions of the emotion of love which experience has planted there, and this ideal and generic excitation of the emotion produces in him that sense of joy which is known as sentiment. The fullness of the enjoyment depends essentially on the nature and experience of the spectator, to whom it falls to identify himself with the hero or other character, and thus to experience in ideal form his emotions and feelings. He may even succeed in his effort to the extent that he weeps real tears, feels terror and sorrow, but the sentiment is still one of exquisite joy. We may compare the thrill of pleasure which the most terrifying narration excites in us, and we are all conscious of the sweetness of sad tales.
Viçvanātha insists very strongly on the necessity of the identification of the spectator with the personages depicted, a process which enables him to accept without any difficulty such episodes of extraordinary character as Hanumant’s leap over the ocean.[81] He must not treat the emotion of love as his own, for in that case it would never become a sentiment; it would remain a feeling, and in the case of fear, for instance, it would cause pain, not joy. Nor must he regard it as belonging solely to the hero, for then it would remain his feeling, and in no wise affect the spectator or become a sentiment. Similarly, the determinants, &c., are not to be treated as pertaining to the hero alone; they must be felt as generic. This generic action (sādhāraṇī kṛti) is the essential feature, replacing the generic power which Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka attributes to poetry. We can now [[322]]see clearly the position of the actor; the Nāṭyaçāstra[82] bids him as far as possible to assume the emotions of the person whom he represents, and to depict them by costume, speech, movements, and gestures as his own, but Viçvanātha[83] is more anxious to insist that the sentiment is not necessarily to be found in the actor, who often merely performs mechanically his part according to rote and rule; if he actually does experience the feelings he portrays, then he becomes in so far a spectator.[84] Further, he points out the simultaneous presence of all the factors is by no means essential, for the existence of one will revive the others by force of the association of ideas. He insists also on the necessity of experience and cultivation of the power of imagination in one who seeks to enjoy sentiment; as we are by virtue of the doctrine of transmigration—or if we prefer to modernize, by heredity—endowed with the germs of the capacity of appreciation, we can normally by study of poetical works develop the capacity, but, if we devote ourselves to the study of grammar or philosophy, we shall certainly deaden our susceptibilities. The difficult problem, why much study of poetry leaves some still unable to relish the sentiment, is explained by the convenient hypothesis that demerit in a previous birth intervenes to frustrate present effort. He refutes at length the effort of Mahiman Bhaṭṭa[85] to destroy the whole doctrine of suggestion in poetry by the doctrine of inference; doubtless by inference we could arrive at a belief in the existence of an emotion in the hero’s mind but that inference would not produce any effect in us or arouse sentiment; a logician might make the inference and draw the correct conclusion, but would remain cold and unmoved. Suggestiveness, he shows, is absolutely essential as a function of words and as the characteristic of poetry, giving it power to create sentiment. What is expressed may be understood by every one; the man of taste alone appreciates the suggestion and enjoys the flavour resulting.
Now sentiment is one, it is a single, ineffable, transcendental joy, but it can be subdivided, not according to its own nature, [[323]]but according to the emotions which evoke it. Thus the Nāṭyaçāstra recognizes the existence of eight emotions or dominant feelings; love (rati), mirth (hāsa), anger (krodha), sorrow (çoka), energy (utsāha), terror (bhaya), disgust (jugupsā), and astonishment (vismaya), and corresponding to these eight emotions we have eight forms of sentiment. The erotic sentiment (çṛn̄gārarasa) is of two kinds, the union (sambhoga) or sundering (vipralambha) of two lovers, according to the Çāstra and the great mass of theorists, but the Daçarūpa[86] distinguishes three cases, privation (ayoga), sundering (viprayoga), and union. Privation denotes the inability of two young hearts to secure union, because of obstacles to their marriage; such love passes through ten stages,[87] longing, anxiety, recollection, enumeration of the loved one’s merits, distress, raving, insanity, fever, stupor, and death. Sundering may be due to absence or resentment, and this in its turn may be caused by a quarrel between two determined lovers, or indignation at finding out, by sight, hearing or inference, that one’s lover is devoted to another. The hero may counteract anger by conciliation, by winning over her friends, by gifts, by humility, by indifference, and by distracting her attention. Absence again may be due to business, to accident, or a curse; if the reason is death the love sentiment cannot, in Dhanaṁjaya’s view, be present, though others allow of a pathetic variety of this sentiment.[88] In union the lover should avoid vulgarity or annoyance.
The heroic (vīra) sentiment corresponds to the emotion of energy; it may take the three forms of courage in battle as in Rāma; compassion as in Jīmūtavāhana; and liberality as in Paraçurāma. Assurance, contentment, arrogance, and joy are the transitory states connected with it. The sentiment of fury (raudra) is based on anger; its transitory states are indignation, intoxication, recollection, inconstancy, envy, cruelty, agitation, and the like. The comic (hāsya) sentiment depends on mirth, which is caused by one’s own or another’s strange appearance, speech, or attire.[89] The transitory states in connexion with it are [[324]]sleeping, indolence, weariness, weakness, and stupor. The sentiment of wonder (adbhuta) is based on astonishment; the transitory states are usually joy, agitation, and contentment. The sentiment of terror (bhayānaka) is based on terror; the states associated with it are depression, agitation, distraction, fright, and the like. The pathetic (karuṇa) sentiment is based on sorrow; its associated states are sleeping, epilepsy, depression, sickness, death, indolence, agitation, despair, stupor, insanity, anxiety, and so forth. The sentiment of horror or odium (bībhatsa) is based on disgust; its associated states are agitation, sickness, apprehension, and the like. In each case the theorists give in full the determinants and the consequents of each emotion, which becomes a sentiment, and a special colour is ascribed to each; it is not surprising to find that red is associated with fury, black with fear; whiteness may, in association with the comic sentiment, be explained by the flashing teeth of a laughing maiden, and the dark (çyāma) colour of the erotic sentiment is a reflex of the favoured hue of the beloved; grey accords with pathos, but the connexion of yellow with wonder, dark blue with horror, and orange with heroism is not obvious. It is also artificial to find four primary and four secondary sentiments laid down; the erotic, the furious, the heroic, and that of horror, whence in order are supposed to develop the comic, the pathetic, that of wonder and that of terror. The Nāṭyaçāstra recognizes these eight only,[90] but later authorities add the sentiment of calm (çānta) based on indifference to worldly things (nirveda), although this is in the Çāstra merely a transitory feeling. Those who follow the Çāstra contend that there is no such sentiment, for it is impossible to destroy utterly love, hatred, and other feelings, which have been operative from time without beginning; others admit the existence of the sentiment, as does Mammaṭa, but not in drama, on the ground that indifference to all worldly things is incapable of being represented. But this also is erroneous; the actor’s power of representing indifference is not in point, as it is the spectator who is to feel the sentiment, and the fact that the Çāstra places it first in the list of transitory states, though that would normally be an inauspicious beginning, indicates that it was meant to serve both as an emotion and a transitory feeling, [[325]]and it is fully recognized by Vidyādhara, Viçvanātha, and Jagannātha, though Dhanaṁjaya barely admits it.[91] The interrelations of the sentiments, their possible combinations, their harmonies and conflicts, are detailed at length.
The sentiments may all be employed in drama, but there are rules affecting their use. In each play there should be a dominant sentiment; in the Nāṭaka it should be the erotic or the heroic; other sentiments are merely auxiliary, but that of wonder is especially appropriate in the dénouement; indeed something in the way of supernatural intervention is often convenient to extricate the plot. An excess of sentiments is as bad as a defect; if there are too many they destroy the unity of the whole and detach it into a series of ill-connected fragments, while the excessive use of action and of rhetorical display is equally destructive to the merit of a piece.
The Çakuntalā illustrates excellently the sentiment of love as the ruling motive of the play; the heroic sentiment appears in the verses in Act II in which the hermits extol the king; the horrible in Act VI in the scene in which Mātali menaces the Vidūṣaka; terror is evoked by the description of the dusk at the close of Act III; the whole play from the arrival of Kaṇva in Act IV to the departure of Çakuntalā produces the sentiment of pathos, while that of fury is called into being by the close of Act VI from the despairing cries of the Vidūṣaka to the entry of Mātali; finally wonder is aroused by the strange incident at the close when the king picks up the bracelet fallen from the arm of the child which, unknown to him, is his own son by the wife whom he has in ignorance repudiated. The Nāṭikās afford excellent examples of the erotic sentiment; Harṣa, in complete accord with the rules of the drama, helps out his plot in both the Ratnāvalī and the Priyadarçikā by the use of incidents evoking the sentiment of wonder; the imprisonment of Sāgarikā in the former play evokes the sentiment of pathos, while terror is excited by the description in Act II of the wild confusion caused by the monkey’s escape from the royal mews. The sentiment of fury is frequently evoked in the Mahāvīracarita and the [[326]]Veṇīsaṁhāra; the Mālatīmādhava affords excellent illustrations evoking horror, while the Mahāvīracarita is permeated by the sentiment of heroism. The Nāgānanda reveals heroism in another aspect, that of the perfection of compassion and nobility, for, as we have seen, Jīmūtavāhana is not to be regarded as a hero in whom calm prevails.
There is doubtless pedantry in the theory of sentiment; the choice of eight emotions, the subordination to them of transitory states, the enumeration of determinants and consequents, are largely dominated by empiricism, and not explained or justified. But in its essentials the theory may be admitted to be a bold and by no means negligible attempt to indicate the essential character of the emotional effect of drama.
6. The Dramatic Styles and Languages
Plot, characters, and sentiment are not the only constituent elements of drama; the poet must be an adept in adopting the appropriate manner[92] or style (vṛtti), for each action of the hero; the style adds to the play the indefinable element of perfection which is present in the highest beauty of feature or dress. The manners allowed by the Nāṭyaçāstra are four, the graceful (kaiçikī), the grand (sāttvatī), the violent (ārabhaṭī), and the verbal (bhāratī), which owes its name to the fact that, unlike the others, it depends for its effect on words, not action.
The graceful manner is appropriate to the erotic sentiment; it employs song, dance, and lovely raiment, admits both male and female rôles, and depicts love, gallantry, coquetry, and jesting. It admits of four varieties. The first is pleasantry (narman), which is based on what is comic in speech, dress, or movement in the actors; the pleasantry may be purely comic, or be mingled with love, or even with fear, as when Susaṁgatā makes fun of Sāgarikā and adds that she will tell the queen of the episode of the picture.[93] When love is mingled, it may serve to evince affection, or to ask for a response, or to impute a fault on the lover’s part. A comedy of costume is seen in the Nāgānanda where the Viṭa, misled by his [[327]]garments, mistakes the Vidūṣaka for a woman; a comedy of action in the Mālavikāgnimitra where Nipunikā punished the Vidūṣaka by dropping on him a stick which he takes, naturally enough, for a snake. The second form is the outburst of affection (narmasphūrja)[94] at the first meeting of lovers, which ends in a note of fear, as in the meeting of the king and Mālavikā in Act IV of the Mālavikāgnimitra. Thirdly, there is the manifestation of a recent love by physical signs (narmasphoṭa),[95] and, fourth, the development of affection (narmagarbha), illustrated by the adoption of a disguise by the hero to attain his end, as when Vatsa in the Priyadarçikā comes on the scene in the garb of Manoramā.[96]
The grand manner is appropriate to the sentiments of heroism, wonder, and fury, and in a less degree to the pathetic and erotic. Virtue, courage, self-sacrifice, compassion, and righteousness are its subjects, not sorrow. Its divisions are the challenge (utthāpaka), as in the Mahāvīracarita, Act V, Vālin defies Rāma; breach of alliance (saṁghātya) among one’s foes, which may be brought about by deliberate stratagem, as in the Mudrārākṣasa, or by fate, as in the Rāma dramas Vibhīṣaṇa severs himself from Rāvaṇa; change of action (parivartaka) as when in the Mahāvīracarita Paraçurāma offers to embrace Rāma, whom he came to overthrow; and the dialogue (saṁlāpa) of warriors such as that of Rāma and Paraçurāma in the same play.
The violent manner accords with the sentiments of fury, horror, and terror. It employs magic, conjuration, conflicts, rage, fury, and underhand devices. Its elements include, first, the almost immediate construction (saṁkṣipti) of some object by artificial means, such as the elephant of mats made to contain Udayana’s men in the lost Udayanacarita; but others interpret this member as a sudden change of hero, whether real, as in the substitution of Vālin for Sugrīva, or merely a change of heart on the hero’s part, as in Paraçurāma’s submission to Rāma; in either case only a secondary hero can change or be changed, else the unity of the drama would disappear. The other elements are the creation of an object by magic means (vastūtthāpana); the angry meeting of [[328]]two persons who end by fighting (sampheṭa), as do Mādhava and Aghoraghaṇṭa in the Mālatīmādhava; and a scene of tumultuous disturbance (avapāta), such as that when the monkey escapes in the Ratnāvalī or of the attack on Vindhyaketu in the Priyadarçikā, Act I.
The verbal manner is based on sound, as the other three are on sense. The voice only is its means of expression; women may not use it, and the men must speak Sanskrit; these actors bear the name Bharata, which is appropriated to this manner. It is adapted to all the sentiments, or, according to the Nāṭyaçāstra, only to those of heroism, wonder, and fury. Its elements are, in true scholastic fashion, likewise reckoned as four; two of them, the propitiation (prarocanā), and the introduction (āmukha, prastāvanā), essentially belong to the prologue of the drama, and will be considered in that connexion; the other two are given as the garland (vīthī) and the farce, which are species of drama. But the theorists agree that the elements (an̄ga) of the garland[97] are applicable in any part of the drama, especially the first juncture, and they are evidently an essential part of the verbal manner.
The first element is the abrupt dialogue (udghātya), which takes either the form of a series of questions and answers in explanation of something not at once understood, or a monologue of question and reply. The second is continuance (avalagita) of one section by another in substitution, as where, when Sītā has decided to go to the forest for pleasure, Rāma is persuaded to let her go indeed, but into exile, or, according to Dhanaṁjaya alone, where there is a sudden turn in an event in progress.[98] The third is the Prapañca, which passes for a comic dialogue, in which two actors frankly set out each other’s demerits,[99] or, according to Viçvanātha, such a clever ruse as that of Nipuṇikā in the Vikramorvaçī, Act II, where she worms out from the Vidūṣaka the king’s infatuation. The triple explanation (trigata), a term which is used in a different sense in the rule regarding the prologue, seems to denote guesses made at the cause of a sound, which in its character is ambiguous and may be, e.g. the hum of the bees, the cry of the cuckoo, or the music [[329]]made by celestial maidens.[100] Cheating (chala) denotes the use of words of seeming courtesy but boding ill, as in the inquiry for Duryodhana, their foe, by Bhīma and Arjuna in the Veṇīsaṁhāra, Act V. The repartee (vākkelī) produces comic effect in a series of questions and answers; but the same term is applied to the interruption of a sentence by Dhanaṁjaya, and by Viçvanātha to a single reply to many questions. Outvying (adhibala or atibala) applies to a dialogue in which those conversing vie with one another in violence, as in the discussion of Arjuna, Bhīma, and Duryodhana in the Veṇīsaṁhāra, Act V. The abrupt remark (gaṇḍa) is one which intervenes vitally in the tale; thus in the Uttararāmacarita Rāma has just declared that separation from Sītā would be unbearable, when the porteress announces Durmukha, the spy of the king, who comes to destroy the king’s happiness. Reinterpretation (avasyandita) is the taking up of an expression which has escaped one in a different sense; thus in the Chalitarāma, Sītā carelessly tells her sons to go to Ayodhyā and greet their father, and seeks to remedy this slip by insisting that the king is father of his people. The enigma (nālikā) conceals the sense under joking words. Incoherent talk (asatpralāpa) is the speech of one just awake, drunk, asleep, or childish; such are the hero’s words in Vikramorvaçī, Act IV. In another sense, admitted by Viçvanātha, it denotes good advice thrown away, as in the Veṇīsaṁhāra, Act I, Gāndhārī’s admonition of Duryodhana. Humorous speech (vyāhāra) is a remark made for the sake of some one else, which provokes a laugh, as when the Vidūṣaka in the Mālavikāgnimitra, Act II, by his chatter makes the damsel laugh, and permits the king longer to gaze on her charms. Mildness (mṛdava) denotes the turning of evil into good, or vice versa, as when in the Çakuntalā, Act II, the virtues of hunting, a vice in the eyes of the sacred law, are extolled.
It is an essential defect of Indian theory in all its aspects that it tends to divisions which are needless and confusing. Besides the elements of the garland we find thirty-three dramatic ornaments (nāṭyālaṁkāra)[101] and thirty-six characteristics or beauties (lakṣaṇa),[102] which cannot be distinguished as two classes on any [[330]]conceivable theory,[103] for both consist largely of modes of exposition and figures of thought and diction, while they also contain, as recognized by Dhanaṁjaya, a number of feelings which fall within the sphere of sentiment and its discussion. Thus we find as ornaments the benediction, the lamentation, raillery, the use of argument to support a view (upapatti), the prayer, the expression of resolution, the reproach, the provocation, the adduction of a common opinion in order to administer covertly a rebuke, the request, the narrative, reasoning, and the telling of a story. The beauties again include the combination of merits of style with poetic figures; the grouping of letters to make up a name; the use of analogy and example; the citation of admitted facts to refute incorrect views; the fitting of expression to the sense; the explanation by reasoning of a fact which is not capable of sense perception; the description of an object from the point of view of place, time, or shape; the indication of a characteristic which serves to distinguish two objects otherwise alike; the allusion to the truth of the literal meaning of a name; the use of the names of famous persons in a eulogy of some living being; the expression unconsciously, under the influence of passion, of the contrary of what one means; the statement in succession (mālā) of several means to attain a desired object; the expression of two different views, one of which in reality strengthens the other; the reproach; the question; the use of commonplaces; eulogy; the employment of a comparison to convey a sense which it is not desired directly to express; the indirect expression of desire; the veiled compliment; and the address of gratitude. Unfortunately no scientific attempt at orderly arrangement or examination of the principles on which these matters are based is attempted.
The Nāṭyaçāstra[104] adds an account of four ornaments of the drama (nāṭakālaṁkāra), which the Daçarūpa ignores, doubtless for the adequate reason that these matters appertain to poetics in general, and they are treated of in vast detail by the text-books of that science. The first is simile, defined as a comparison based on the similarity of characteristics in two objects; there [[331]]are five kinds, the simile which extols, that which condemns, that with an imagined thing, as when the elephant is likened to a winged mountain, that based on similarity, and that on partial similarity, as in ‘Her face is like the full moon, her eyes like the blue lotus’. The metaphor is an abridged comparison which unites the two objects so as to efface their distinction, as ‘The fisher Love casts on the ocean of this world his lure, woman’. The illuminator (dīpaka) is the figure of speech, which uses but one verb to express the connexion between a subject series and a string of qualifications. Of forms of alliteration (yamaka), the repetition of vowels and consonants forming different words and meanings, there are enumerated ten kinds, a striking proof of the importance attached to these verbal jingles in early poetics.
The Çāstra[105] adds some vague and valueless suggestions as to the use of these ornaments and metrical effects in connexion with the expression of the sentiments. The erotic sentiment demands metaphors and Dīpakas, and prefers the Āryā metre. The heroic affects short syllables, similes, and metaphors; in passages of lively dialogue the metres[106] Jagatī, Atijagatī, and Saṁkṛti; in scenes of battle and violence, the Utkṛti. The sentiment of fury adopts the same metres, and also favours short syllables, similes, and metaphors. The Çakvarī and Atidhṛti metres are appropriate to the pathetic sentiment; it prefers long syllables, a liking shared by the sentiment of horror.
An effort is made by later writers on poetics to apply to the doctrine of the sentiments the theory of excellencies (guṇa), which is laid down generally in Daṇḍin, Vāmana, Bhoja, and other writers. In Daṇḍin[107] we find assigned to the Vaidarbha style a miscellaneous number of qualities, ten in all, which are defined in terms sometimes vague and unsatisfactory; these qualities include both those of sense and sound (artha and çabda). They include strength or majesty (ojas), elevation (udāratva), clearness (prasāda), precision of exposition (arthavyakti), beauty or attractiveness (kānti), sweetness or elegance (mādhurya), metaphorical language (samādhi), and in the use and combination of sounds homogeneity (samatā), softness (sukumāratā), and a natural flow (çleṣa). The chief opponent of the Vaidarbha style is given as the Gauḍa; it is vaguely credited with the possession [[332]]of features the opposite of those of its rival; more specifically, we find it credited with the fondness for the use of long compounds both in prose and verse, while the Vaidarbha objects to such compounds in verse at least, and with affecting alliterations. Vāmana[108] develops the doctrine by distinguishing ten qualities of sense and ten of sound, and he ascribes all the qualities to the Vaidarbha style; to the Gauḍa he allots reliance on force and beauty, to the exclusion of sweetness and softness, while he recognizes as a third style the Pāñcāla, which is marked with sweetness and softness, and therefore is rather feeble. In Mammaṭa[109] and later we find a new view of the qualities; those of sense are explained away as being rather the absence of defects (doṣa), so that the qualities are reduced to the sphere of sound alone. In this regard they are further reduced from ten to three, sweetness, strength, and clearness, and these are now brought into effective connexion with the sentiments.
Sweetness, the source of pleasure, causing as it were the melting of the heart, is appropriate in the sentiments of love in enjoyment, pathos, love in separation, and calm; it is normal in love in union, and rises in degree successively in the other three forms of sentiment; unmixed in the others, in that of calm it is combined with a small degree of strength, because of the relation of the sentiment of calm to the emotion of disgust. Strength causes the expansion of the heart; it rises in vehemence in the sentiments of heroism, horror, and fury, and it is found also in that of terror. The quality of clearness is appropriate to all the sentiments, and is that which causes the sense to become intelligible, pervading the mind as fire does wood or water a cloth, as the outcome of merely hearing the words. The precise mode in which sweetness is produced is by the use of mutes other than cerebrals, with their appropriate nasals, r and ṇ with short vowels, and no compounds or short compounds; strength results from the use of compound letters, doubled letters, conjunct consonants of which r forms part, cerebrals other than ṇ, palatal and cerebral sibilants, and long compounds. The older names, Vaidarbha, Gauḍa, and Pāñcāla are now given up in favour of refined (upanāgarikā), [[333]]harsh (paruṣā), and soft (komalā). But Mammaṭa reminds us that in drama very long compounds are undesirable, a rule ignored largely by the later dramatists.
More important than these technical details, which are illustrated often enough in the verses composed by the later dramatists, and no doubt possess considerable antiquity, is the changed view[110] which brings the qualities in the new sense into relation with the sentiment. Sentiment is the very soul of poetry, and the relation of the qualities to it may be most effectually compared with that of such virtues as heroism to the soul of man. They serve to heighten the effect of the sentiment, and therefore they cannot be considered save in close relation to that sentiment. However soft and sweet the verbal form of a work, none the less it cannot be said to possess the quality of sweetness, unless it has a sentiment to which sweetness is appropriate. To give it the name of sweet, if the sentiment is incompatible with sweetness, is compared with regarding a tall man as brave on the strength of his appearance only. The sounds, therefore, produce the qualities only as instruments, for the real cause is the sentiment, even as the soul is the true cause of the heroism and other qualities of a man.
The case of figures, whether of sound or sense, is somewhat similarly handled; the figures are compared with the ornaments which, placed on a man’s body, and through this union with him, gratify the soul; the figures adorn words and meanings which are parts of poetry by their union with them, and thus serve to heighten the sentiment, provided one exists. If there is no sentiment, through the defective ability of the poet, then the figures serve merely to lend variety to the composition, and even when sentiment exists the figures may fail to be appropriate to it. Both figures and qualities thus are in a very intimate relation with the sentiment, but that does not mean that the two are identical.
From this doctrine, which makes sentiment essentially the main element in poetry, the view of Vāmana,[111] who laid down that style was the soul of poetry and that the qualities give the essential beauty or distinction (çobhā) to a poem, while the figures [[334]]increase such distinction, is necessarily regarded as inadequate. If the doctrine is interpreted to mean that it is the possession of all the qualities which makes a poem, then all compositions in the Gauḍa and Pāñcāla styles would be denied the rank of poetry; if the presence of a single quality gave the right to the style of poem, then a perfectly prosaic verse passage containing the quality of strength would have to be dubbed a poem, while a stanza containing elegant figures, but no qualities, would be denied that style, which in point of fact is regularly accorded by usage and must be recognized as valid.
As regards language we have, as often in the theory, no explanation of a principle which is laid down as accepted, the divergent use of Sanskrit and Prākrit in the same play. Yet it cannot be held that, when the theory was developed in such works as the Daçarūpa, and very possibly in the Nāṭyaçāstra itself, the usage of the plays could be put down simply to the copying of the actual practice in real life. That such was its origin we may believe in the general way; the Vidūṣaka in the Mṛcchakaṭikā derides a woman using Sanskrit as resembling a young cow with a rope through her nose; but there is evidence that already in the time of the Kāmaçāstra[112] the use of Prākrit was artificial. We are there told that the cultured man about town (nāgaraka) in social meetings (goṣṭhī), should neither confine himself to Sanskrit nor to the vernacular (deçabhāṣā) if he is to win repute for good manners. We have here a sign that matters were already, at the time of the Kāmaçāstra, much in the same condition as in modern India, where the use of Sanskrit terms with the vernacular is a regular sign of education. Now Vātsyāyana tells us clearly that those who frequent such gatherings are hetaerae, Viṭas, Vidūṣakas, and Pīṭhamardas, in short the wits of the court, and to them in the theory is assigned Çaurasenī and kindred Prākrit dialects. We are justified, therefore, in assuming that at Vātsyāyana’s epoch in actual life, as opposed to the conventional existence of the stage, Prākrits were definitely out of employment. The same text includes in the requisites of the knowledge of a hetaera the knowledge of the local speech, and, as there is no doubt of the knowledge of the Andhras as kings by Vātsyāyana, it is interesting to note that in the famous passage [[335]]in which Somadeva tells of the reason why the Bṛhatkathā[113] was written in Paiçācī he treats as the three forms of human speech contemporaneous with Sātavāhana, whose name shows his connexion with the Andhras, Sanskrit, Prākrit, and the vernacular.
The date of Vātsyāyana thus becomes of interest, but unluckily it is still undefined with any precision.[114] It certainly seems, however, that Kālidāsa was familiar with a text very similar to and perhaps identical with the Kāmaçāstra, and this reasonably may be regarded as giving A.D. 400 as the lower limit of date. That the Kauṭilīya Arthaçāstra has been used by Vātsyāyana gives no precise result, in view of the difficulty of dating exactly that text. But the mention by Vātsyāyana of the Ābhīras[115] and Andhras certainly suggests, taken into conjunction with his silence as to the Guptas, that he wrote before the power of the latter had established itself in western India, and we may assign his work to approximately A.D. 300. If so we must believe that already in Kālidāsa’s age the Prākrits of his characters were more or less artificial, and with this well accords his introduction of Māhārāṣṭrī for the verses of those to whom Çaurasenī is assigned in prose, an obviously literary device.
Elaborate rules for the use of language[116] by the characters are given in the Nāṭyaçāstra and, in much less detail, by the Daçarūpa. The use of Sanskrit is proper in the case of kings, Brahmins, generals, ministers, and learned persons generally; the chief queen is assigned it, and so also ministers’ daughters, but this rule is not in practice observed. On the other hand, it is used by Buddhist nuns, hetaerae, artistes, and others on occasion. It is a rule that in the description of battles, peace negotiations, and omens Sanskrit shall be resorted to, and this is done by Bṛhannalā in Bhāsa’s Pañcarātra. The use of Sanskrit by allegorical female types is also found both early and late.
The general rule for women and persons of inferior rank[117] is [[336]]the use of Prākrit, but it may be resorted to as a means of self-aid by persons of higher position. The types of Prākrit to be used are described with much confusion in the Nāṭyaçāstra, and the amount of variation contemplated is large. Thus the use of Çaurasenī is permitted in the Çāstra in lieu of the dialect of the Barbara, Andhra, Kirāta, and Draviḍa, though these may be used. The Çāstra gives seven different Prākrits as in use. Çaurasenī is the speech of the land between the Yamunā and the Gan̄gā or Doab; it is to be used by the ladies of the play, their friends and servants, generally by ladies of good family and many men of the middle class. Prācyā is assigned to the Vidūṣaka, but in fact he speaks practically Çaurasenī, and therefore the term can only denote an eastern Çaurasenī dialect. Āvantī is ascribed to gamblers or rogues (dhūrta), but is only an aspect of Çaurasenī, as spoken at Ujjayinī, and the Prākrit grammarian Mārkaṇḍeya calls it a transition between Çaurasenī and Māhārāṣṭrī. Māhārāṣṭrī is unknown to the Çāstra; it is assigned to the verses of persons who use Çaurasenī by the Daçarūpa, while the Sāhityadarpaṇa limits it to the verses of women; normally, but not absolutely, it is used in all verses,[118] though Çaurasenī verses occasionally occur, and possibly were more frequent originally. The earlier drama of Açvaghoṣa and Bhāsa has no clear evidence of Māhārāṣṭrī at all. Ardha-Māgadhī is prescribed for slaves (ceṭa), Rājaputras and guildsmen (çreṣṭhin) by the Çāstra, but, save in Açvaghoṣa and possibly the Karṇabhāra of Bhāsa, it is unknown to our dramas. Māgadhī, on the other hand, is important in theory, and of some consequence in practice; it is ascribed to all those men who live in the women’s apartments, diggers of underground passages, keepers of drink shops, watchers, and is used in time of danger by the hero, and also by the Çakāra, according to the Çāstra. The Daçarūpa assigns it and Paiçācī to the lowest classes, which accords with facts as regards Māgadhī, but Paiçācī is not found clearly in the dramas.
The Nāṭyaçāstra provides for the use of Dākṣiṇātyā in the case of soldiers (yodha), police officers (nāgaraka), and gamblers (dīvyant), and there are slight traces in the Mṛcchakaṭikā of the existence of this dialect. Bālhīkā is assigned by the same [[337]]authority to the Khasas and the northerners, but has not yet been traced in any drama.
We learn also from the Çāstra and from Mārkaṇḍeya in special of a number of Vibhāṣās,[119] which seem to be modified forms of the more normal Prākrits, as stereotyped for use by certain characters in the drama. Thus the Çāstra attributes Çākārī to the Çakas, Çabaras, and others, while the Sāhityadarpaṇa accords Çābarī to these persons. The Çāstra ascribes Çābarī to charcoal-burners, hunters, wood-workers, and partly also to forest dwellers in general, and Ābhīrī is ascribed with the option of Çābarī to herdsmen, Cāṇḍālī to Caṇḍālas, and Drāviḍī to Draviḍas, while Oḍri, mentioned by the Çāstra, is left unascribed; presumably it was assigned to men of Orissa. Something of this is seen in the Mṛcchakaṭikā, where Çākārī, Cāṇḍālī, and a further speech Ḍhakkī or Ṭākkī appear. They all have nothing very marked as to their characteristics; the first two may be allied to Māgadhī, the last is more dubious.
The addition of Chāyās or translations in Sanskrit to explain the Prākrit is normal in the manuscripts of the dramas, and it is certain that it is old, for it is alluded to by Rājaçekhara in his Bālarāmāyaṇa. Evidently, even so early as A.D. 900, there was no public which cared for Prākrit without a Sanskrit explanation.
On the subject of the use of stanzas, as opposed to prose, the text-books are curiously and unexpectedly silent.[120] This indicates how entirely empirical they are in these matters. The use of Prākrits in the dramas obviously varied, and something had to be said regarding this point, but the alternation of prose and verse is accepted as something established, on which comment is unnecessary. The fact is recognized, but its implications and purpose remain unexplored. In the stanzas themselves, it is clear, we must distinguish between those which were sung and those which were simply recited; recitation must clearly have been the normal form of use, and as sung we have normally at any rate only some of the stanzas in Māhārāṣṭrī which are placed in the mouths of women. Çaurasenī stanzas, on the other hand, [[338]]we may assume to have been recited, but the distinction has practically vanished from the texts preserved.
7. The Dance, Song, and Music
Of the part played by the song, dance, and music in the drama the theorists curiously enough tell us comparatively little of interest, though it is certain that both were most important elements in the production of sentiment. The types of dance recognized in the Nāṭyaçāstra are two, the violent dance of men, invented by Çiva himself, the Tāṇḍava, and the tender and voluptuous dance of Pārvatī, the Lāsya. The latter alone, by reason of its special importance, is carefully analysed into ten parts by the Çāstra,[121] which shows the essential union of song and dance. The first is the song proper, which is sung by one seated, to the accompaniment of a lute, without dancing; the recitation standing (sthitapāṭhya) is a declamation in Prākrit by a woman pacing rapidly under the influence of love, or it may also mean, according to Abhinavagupta, a declamation by a woman in anger. The recitation sitting (āsīna) is performed by a woman lying down, under the stress of sorrow, without musical accompaniment. In the Puṣpagaṇḍikā various metres are used; Sanskrit may be employed; men act as women and vice versa, and there is a musical accompaniment. In the Pracchedaka a woman sings to the lute her grief at her lover’s infidelity. The Trigūḍha is the acting of a man in woman’s dress, as of Makaranda in the Mālatīmādhava, Act VI. The Saindhava is a song to a clear accompaniment of a lady whose love has failed to keep his tryst. The Dvigūḍhaka is a harmonious song, full of sentiment, in dialogue form. The Uttamottaka is a song filled with the bitterness of a troubled love. The Uktapratyukta is a duet, in which one lover addresses to the other feigned reproaches. These divisions, of course, appear to ignore their nature as parts of a dance, but it must be remembered that the motions of the performers are essential in the performance. [[339]]
The music of the drama is not described at length in the later theorists; what is clear is that each sentiment has its special appropriate music, and each action its special accompaniment. Thus the Dvipadikās accompanied the performance of the rôles of persons distressed, unwell, and unhappy; the Dhruvās were chosen so as to intimate at once to the audience the quality of the new arrival on the stage.[122]
8. The Preliminaries and the Prologue
The Nāṭyaçāstra[123] prescribes an elaborate series of preliminaries (pūrvaran̄ga) which must be performed before the actual drama begins; they are intended to secure divine favour for the performance, each act having a definite share in the result, and doubtless they present us with a reminiscence of the early theatre in the mingling of music, dance, and song. First there is the beat of drum (pratyāhāra) announcing the beginning of the performance, and the carpet is spread out for the orchestra; the singers and the musicians then enter and take their places (avataraṇa): then the chorus try their voices (ārambha); the musicians try their instruments (āçrāvaṇā); they tune up their wind and string instruments, and manipulate their hands to make them ready for the work; then an instrumental concert follows, succeeded by the appearance and practice steps of the dancers.[124] A song follows, to please the gods; then the Tāṇḍava is performed, increasing in violence as it proceeds; then a song accompanies the raising by the Sūtradhāra of the banner (jarjara) of Indra; he scatters flowers and purifies himself with water from a pitcher borne by an attendant, while another carries the banner; there follows a perambulation of the stage, the praise of the world guardians, and homage to the banner. Then comes the Nāndī or benediction; it is followed by the recitation by the Sūtradhāra of a verse in honour of the god whose festival it is, [[340]]or the king or a Brahmin; then comes the Ran̄gadvāra, which is said to mark the beginning of the dramatic action (abhinaya), the Sūtradhāra reciting another verse, and bowing before the banner of Indra. There follow steps and movements of erotic character (cārī) in honour of Umā, and more violent movements of the same kind in honour of the Bhūtas. A discussion (trigata) between the Sūtradhāra, the Vidūṣaka, who talks nonsense, and an attendant follows. Finally the Prarocanā announces the content of the drama, and the Sūtradhāra and his two attendants leave the stage, and the preliminaries are ended.
Immediately after, according to the Nāṭyaçāstra, another person, similar in appearance and qualities to the Sūtradhāra, is to enter and introduce the play, a function which gives him the style of introducer, Sthāpaka.[125] His costume should indicate the nature of the drama, as dealing with divine or human affairs. An appropriate song greets his entrance, he dances a Cārī, praises the gods and Brahmins, propitiates the audience by verses alluding to the subject of the play, mentions the name of the author and the play, and describes some season in the verbal manner, thereby opening the prologue (prastāvanā, āmukha, sthāpanā)[126] of the play. The essential feature of the prologue is an address by the director with an attendant (pāripārçvika) or an actress or the Vidūṣaka on some personal business which indirectly hints at the drama. The mode of connexion is given by Dhanaṁjaya as threefold, as in the Nāṭyaçāstra; the words of the director may be caught up (kathodghāta) by a character in the drama, entering from behind the curtain, as in the Ratnāvalī Yaugandharāyaṇa catches up the consolation offered to the actress which is applicable to his own scheme, and in the Veṇīsaṁhāra Bhīma brusquely denounces the benediction of his adversaries. Or a person may enter (pravṛttaka), who has just been mentioned by the director in a comparison with the season of the year, as in the Priyadarçikā. Excess of representation (prayogātiçaya) is taken in the Daçarūpa as applying to a case where the director actually mentions the entry of a character of the drama, as at the beginning of the Çakuntalā, where he assures the actress that her song has enchanted him, as the [[341]]gazelle enchants Duḥṣanta, who just then enters. Viçvanātha, on the other hand, treats this form as an instance of continuance (avalagita), and interprets the phrase as denoting the supersession of the director’s action; thus, in the lost Kundamālā, about to call on the actress to dance, he hears the word, ‘Lady, descend’, and realizes that it is a reference to Sītā, who is being led into exile. He admits also the abrupt dialogue (udghātya) as a means of connexion; thus in the Mudrārākṣasa the director alludes to the demon of eclipse as eager to triumph over Candra, the moon, and Cāṇakya behind the scenes calls out, ‘Who then while I live claims to triumph over Candragupta?’ and enters a moment later. The theorist Nakhakuṭṭa is also credited with the view that a voice behind the scenes or from the air may be used to introduce the chief personage.
This account of the preliminaries and the prelude presents obvious difficulties both in itself and in connexion with the actual specimens of the Sanskrit drama. The Daçarūpa and Viçvanātha alike give no details of the preliminaries, and the Nāṭyaçāstra indicates that, in addition to the complete form of Pūrvaran̄ga, there might be an abbreviated form and also an extended form with additional ceremonials. There is an obvious overlapping between the Pūrvaran̄ga and the rest of the performance, for the last element of the former, the giving the content of the drama in the Prarocanā, is essentially an element in the latter. We are quite definitely told by Viçvanātha that in his time there was not a complete performance of the preliminaries; when, therefore, we find in Bhāsa’s dramas that there is no mention of the name of the author or the drama in the prologue, we may safely assume that it was after his time that the practice grew up of transferring from the preliminaries, which were not a matter for the poet, the substance of the Prarocanā, and embodying it in the poet’s own work. In Viçvanātha’s time also we are told that the Sūtradhāra or director performed the whole of the work assigned in the theory to him and the Sthāpaka. But it is extremely difficult to say how far back this goes; the extant dramas with occasional exceptions,[127] such as Rājaçekhara’s Karpūramañjarī [[342]]and Mādhava’s Subhadrāharaṇa mention only the Sūtradhāra, and Pischel[128] suggested that it was Bhāsa who banished the Sthāpaka, in view of the reference in Bāṇa to his dramas as begun by the Sūtradhāra. It is uncertain, however, what precisely the sense of this reference is. The Daçarūpa expressly provides for the activity of the Sthāpaka, but then proceeds to style him Sūtradhāra, and there is agreement that he is to have the attributes of the Sūtradhāra, so that the use of the name may merely be explained by this reason. This is certainly supported by the express reference in the Sāhityadarpaṇa to the transfer of his functions to the Sūtradhāra and the silence of the Daçarūpa on this head. The point would be of importance only if it meant that Bhāsa dropped the Pūrvaran̄ga as part of the drama; nothing, however, even hints at this; as we have seen, his omission to name himself or his play in the prologue tells strongly in favour of the view that the old Prarocanā was still in use.
More complex still is the question of the Nāndī or benediction. Most Sanskrit dramas open with a verse or verses of this type, followed by the remark, ‘At the close of the Nāndī the Sūtradhāra enters,’ but in Bhāsa’s dramas, in old manuscripts of the Vikramorvaçī, and now and then in South Indian manuscripts of such plays as the Nāgānanda, the Mudrārākṣasa, and other more modern dramas,[129] we find the play begun with these words, and a verse or verses following. We have also the direct testimony of Viçvanātha, who tells us that some authorities held that the introductory verse in the Vikramorvaçī which normally passes for the Nāndī was not that at all, but was the Ran̄gadvāra, with which, according to the Nāṭyaçāstra, the play properly begins, as in it we first find acting in the shape of a combination of speech and action; that verse, they argued, could not be reconciled with the definition of the extent of the Nāndī given in the Nāṭyaçāstra; others, however, on the authority of Abhinavagupta repelled this objection. Viçvanātha adopts as the definition of Nāndī what is recited in praise of a deity, Brahmin, king [[343]]or the like, and is accompanied by a benediction, consisting of twelve inflected words (with nominal or verbal endings) or eight lines (quarter-verses); this would exclude the beginning of the Vikramorvaçī, but Abhinavagupta permits of a greater variety of forms. In Viçvanātha’s view the Nāndī is part of the preliminaries, which must be preserved, however much these are shortened. It is clear, therefore, that gradually the benediction, like the Prarocanā with its appeal to the benevolence of the audience,[130] came to be worked into the play by the author himself, though the period when the custom became normal cannot be stated with any precision, and in the south of India, at any rate, the older practice of leaving the benediction to the Sūtradhāra seems to have been sometimes followed. There can, indeed, be little doubt that the extent to which the preliminaries were retained differed from time to time; Viçvanātha evidently contemplates their almost total disappearance, but the Amṛtodaya of Gokulanātha in the sixteenth century assumes their presence; the authority of the Nāṭyaçāstra told heavily in their favour, and the stock phrase, ‘Enough of this ceremony,’ which occurs frequently at the opening of the plays, doubtless refers to the dance, song, and music with which the drama was prefaced.[131]
These facts explain the confusion[132] of the notices of the theorists as to the actor by whom the benediction is to be recited. We find ascribed to Bharata the view that a special actor, the Nāndī, should recite it, or that duty should be performed by the Sūtradhāra; another authority permits the Sūtradhāra or any other actor to recite it. The situation is complicated by the rule that at the end of the preliminaries the Sūtradhāra is supposed to leave the stage and the Sthāpaka to come on, while our dramas, as a rule, have the benediction followed by the entry of the Sūtradhāra, or rarely, as in the Pārthaparākrama, the Sthāpaka. The theory, therefore, suggests that the benediction is recited by the Sūtradhāra or [[344]]Sthāpaka (called Sūtradhāra by reason of similarity of function and character) behind the curtain, and then he enters on the stage. The matter is not cleared up by the practice followed in the embryo dramas introduced into others: in that included in the Bālarāmāyaṇa the Sūtradhāra recites a benediction of twelve inflected words, and then proceeds with the prologue without a break; in the Jānakīpariṇaya it is one of the actors who does so, as in Ravivarman’s Pradyumnābhyudaya, the director then beginning the play; in the Caitanyacandrodaya the benediction is recited behind the curtain, but that is stated to be because the piece to be acted is a Bhāṇa or Vyāyoga, implying that in other cases it normally was recited on the stage, presumably by an actor other than the director.
The extent of the benediction was, as we have seen, disputed.[133] Bharata’s rule of eight or twelve Padas does not stand alone, for he is credited with mentioning four or sixteen as possible numbers, and Pada may mean inflected word, line, or proposition. Abhinavagupta allows three, six, or twelve Padas in a benediction of three times; four, eight, or sixteen in one of four times; and definitely takes Pada as proposition; illustrations of eight- and twelve-Pada benedictions of this type are given by Abhinavagupta and Bharata. The dramas differ; the Çakuntalā has one of eight propositions or four lines; the Ratnāvalī four stanzas; the Mālatīmādhava and the Mudrārākṣasa eight lines each; the Uttararāmacarita twelve words.
Harmony between the benediction and the character of the drama is naturally demanded by the theory, and is observed largely in practice; thus the Prabodhacandrodaya, a philosophic drama, begins with an adoration of the sole reality, the Mudrārākṣasa, a drama of political intrigue, with a verse as tortuous as the diplomacy of Cāṇakya. It is a characteristic of the determination to carry matters to extremes which distinguishes Indian theory that attempts are made to extract from the benediction not merely a general harmony with the theme, but also a reference both to the main characters and to the chief events.[134] [[345]]
9. The Types of Drama
The types of drama are distinguished by the theorists according to the use which they make of the various dramatic elements enumerated. The highest of the ten main forms, Rūpakas, is the Nāṭaka or heroic comedy. The term is generic; it may denote any representation whether by pictures or dumb show, but it has also the more important specific sense of the drama proper.
The subject of a Nāṭaka[135] should be drawn from tradition, not invented; the hero should be a king, royal sage, or god, who may appear in human form; the dominant sentiment must be the heroic or the erotic, but all may be illustrated, and that of wonder is well suited for the dénouement, which should be led up to through the whole series of stages of the action and junctures. The end must be happy; tragedy is forbidden, though the prohibition is unexplained. The prose should be simple without elaborate compounds; the verses clear and sweet; the Prākrits should be varied; the whole style noble and harmonious, with full use of all the beauties and the adventitious attractions of the song and the dance as well as music. The number of acts should be from five to ten; if a play contains every kind of episode, it is styled a Mahānāṭaka, if it has ten acts. The rule is generally obeyed, but late dramas styling themselves Nāṭakas are known of one (Ravidāsa’s Mithyājñānaviḍambana), two (Vedāntavāgīça’s Bhojacarita), three, or four acts,[136] and one comparatively early work exists in one version of fourteen acts, without any passage in Prākrit, the Mahānāṭaka; the Adbhutārṇava of a Kavibhūṣaṇa has twelve acts. The name of a Nāṭaka should be derived from the hero or the subject-matter, and this is regularly the case. Four or five is the number of chief personages permitted.
The bourgeois comedy, Prakaraṇa,[137] is a comedy of manners of a rank below royalty, which in the main follows the laws of construction of the Nāṭaka. The subject-matter is to be framed at his good pleasure by the poet. The hero should be [[346]]a Brahmin, minister, or merchant, who has fallen on evil days and is seeking through difficulties to attain property, love, and the performance of duty, in which he at last succeeds. The heroine may be of three types, a lady of good family, as in the lost Puṣpadūṣita (°bhūṣita); a hetaera as in the lost Taran̄gadatta; or a lady of good family may share the honours with a hetaera, with whom, however, she may not come in contact, as in the Cārudatta and the Mṛcchakaṭikā. The drama offers an appropriate place for slaves, Viṭas, merchant chiefs, and rogues of various kinds. The erotic sentiment should dominate, though Dhanaṁjaya allows also the heroic, and the structure should include all five junctures. The number of acts should be as in the Nāṭaka, and the name be derived from the hero or heroine or both, as in the Mālatīmādhava and the Çāriputraprakaraṇa of Açvaghoṣa. It must, however, be noted that the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa has but four acts, and the Mṛcchakaṭikā, unlike the Cārudatta, does not follow the rule as to name.
The supernatural drama, Samavakāra,[138] is described in our sources obviously on the basis of a single play, the Amṛtamanthana, the churning of the ocean to obtain the ambrosia, at which all participants attained their desires. The precise duration of each of its three acts is given, at twelve, four, and two Nāḍikās (of forty-eight minutes). The subject must be taken from a tale of the gods and demons. The juncture, pause, is omitted, and the expansion (bindu) as an element of the plot. The number of heroes may reach twelve, each pursuing an object which he attains. The heroic sentiment dominates. Each act exhibits one type of cheating, tumultuous action, and love. The graceful manner is excluded, or but faintly developed; the Uṣṇih, Kuṭila, and Anuṣṭubh metres are appropriate. The description fits but loosely Bhāsa’s Pañcarātra, the only old drama to which that name may plausibly be applied.
The Īhāmṛga,[139] of which no old example is known, owes its name, according to the Daçarūpāvaloka to the fact that in it a maiden as hard to attain as a gazelle (mṛga) is sought after (īhā). The subject is one partly derived from legend and partly [[347]]the poet’s imagination; in special, if the legend relates the death of a great man, this result must be avoided. The essence of the drama is that some one seeks to deprive the hero, who on one view may be divine or human, on another divine only, of a heavenly maiden; the result is a conflict of wills, but actual fighting is to be avoided by artifice. The hero and his rival must both be of the noble and haughty type; the latter must do wrong in error. Only the first two and the last junctures are allowed, and the graceful style is excluded. There are four acts, but Viçvanātha mentions a view which allows one act only and makes the hero a god, or six rivals for a divine maiden’s hand.
The Ḍima[140] is also little known, though the Nāṭyaçāstra cites a Tripuradāha as a specimen. Its subject is to be legendary; there is to be no pause juncture. The heroes are sixteen gods, demi-gods, and demons, all of the haughty type; magic, sorcery, combats, eclipses of the sun and moon are in place. The erotic and comic sentiments are excluded, that of fury is predominant. There are four acts without introductory scenes of any kind, but the late Manmathonmathana of Rāma has them. The graceful manner is forbidden. It is clear that the type is described on the basis of inadequate material; it may represent a popular form of entertainment which did not attain full recognition. The origin of the name is unknown, for no root ḍim, to wound, is found in the language, though Dhanika asserts its existence.
The Vyāyoga[141] is, as its name suggests, a military spectacle. Its subject must be legendary, its hero a god or royal sage, but Dhanaṁjaya allows a man. It is in one act, the action not extending over a day, and it is filled with strife and battle, the intervention of women as the cause of battle being excluded. The first two and last junctures alone are permitted, the erotic and comic sentiments are barred, and the graceful manner. The type is old, for it is found in Bhāsa and revives later.
The Act or Isolated Act (An̄ka, Utsṛṣṭikān̄ka)[142] is a single-act piece, whose longer style serves to discriminate it from an act of [[348]]a normal drama. Its subject is taken from legend, but may be developed by the poet; the first and last junctures alone are permitted. The hero should be human, of the common folk, according to the later theory. The sentiment should be the pathetic, and the style the verbal. The laments of women should accompany the description of battles and fights, but these should not take place on the stage. Viçvanātha gives the Çarmiṣṭhāyayāti as an example, but the type is not represented by any early play.
The farce, Prahasana,[143] on the other hand, has every sign of popular origin and vogue. The subject is the poet’s invention; it deals essentially with the tricks and quarrels of low characters of every kind. There is but one act, and only the first and last junctures; the comic sentiment predominates. The Daçarūpa recognizes three kinds; the pure is that in which heretics, Brahmins, men- and maid-servants and parasites are represented in appropriate costume and language; the modified represents eunuchs, chamberlains, and ascetics in the garb, and with the speech, of lovers; and the mixed is styled so because it contains the elements of the Vīthī, and is filled with rogues. Only the first and last are recognized by the Nāṭyaçāstra, the second being included in the third, while Viçvanātha recognizes the possibility of there being only one hero or several, and allows the use of two acts in such a case, as in the Laṭakamelaka. The graceful and violent manners are excluded.
The monologue, Bhāṇa,[144] has also an obviously popular character and origin. The subject-matter is invented by the poet; a parasite sets forth his own or another’s adventures, appealing to both the heroic and the erotic sentiments by descriptions of heroism and beauty in the verbal manner. There are only the first and last junctures, and but one act. The actor speaks in the air, repeating answers supposed to be received. The elements of the Lāsya are specially in place, a fact which shows that we have here a formal version of a primitive mimetic performance. Viçvanātha gives as example the Līlāmadhukara; the Çāradātilaka is one of the best known. [[349]]
The garland, Vīthī,[145] has a certain similarity to the Bhāṇa in that it includes frequent speeches in the air, and is in one act. But it is played by one or two actors, or, according to Viçvanātha on one view found in the Nāṭyaçāstra, by three, one of each station in rank. The leading sentiment is the erotic, but others are hinted at. The graceful manner is forbidden by the Nāṭyaçāstra, but enjoined by the other authorities, and the elements of the garland are available. Only the first and last junctures are employed, but all the elements of the plot are present. The theorists are sadly at a loss to explain the name garland; it is suggested that the several sentiments are gathered into it as into a garland, or the meaning ‘way’ or ‘road’ is accepted in lieu. The only example given by Viçvanātha is the Mālavikā, which is not the Mālavikāgnimitra; the first act of the Mālatīmādhava is styled Bakulavīthī, but is in no sense even taken by itself an example of this type.
The later theory as seen in Viçvanātha[146] adds descriptions of eighteen minor forms of drama, Uparūpakas, which represent refinements on the original scheme. Needless to say, though omitted in the Nāṭyaçāstra, quotations are found ascribing to Bharata the doctrine, though he mentions in them but fifteen with several variations of name;[147] the Agni Purāṇa[148] mentions eighteen with some variants of name, while a verse cited by Dhanika[149] names seven forms of mimetic dramas, which it classes in conjunction with the Bhāṇa. The age of these divisions is, therefore, uncertain; the Daçarūpa condescends to mention only the Nāṭikā, but obviously knows of the existence of others, confining its scope to the main forms, as its title indicates.
The Nāṭyaçāstra[150] mentions, in a passage suspected of interpolation, but without special cause, a type of dramas Nāṭī, which later is styled Nāṭikā, or lesser heroic comedy. The subject-matter in this view may be either legendary or invented; the later opinion requires it to be invented as in the Prakaraṇa, which is the model for the Nāṭikā in this regard. The hero is to be [[350]]that of the Nāṭaka, a gay king, and the intrigue consists of his efforts to attain marriage with the heroine, who is an ingénue of royal family, whom he is destined to marry, but who by some accident or design has been introduced into the harem in an inferior capacity. The lovers have to strive against the jealousy of the queen, a lady of mature character and devotion to the king, who at last is induced to sanction the nuptials. The life of the court gives opportunity for introducing music, song, and the dance as elements in the entertainment. The graceful manner is appropriate, and the erotic sentiment is prescribed; by an excess of zeal, when the drama as usual has four acts, they are in theory to contain each one of the four members of the graceful style. A lesser number of acts is allowed by Dhanaṁjaya. There is certainly not much difference between such a Nāṭaka as the Mālavikāgnimitra and the normal Nāṭikā, save the length, as expressed in the number of the acts, but it would be unwise to assert that the distinction is based on this alone. It is a fact that both in the Priyadarçikā and the Ratnāvalī the poet has freely enough invented his episodes, and this is a fact justifying the discrimination.
The little bourgeois comedy, the Prakaraṇikā,[151] is precisely of the same character as the Nāṭikā, save that its hero and heroine are of the merchant class. It is clear that it is due merely to a false desire for symmetry, as it is merely a Prakaraṇa when judged by the three determinants of plot, character, and sentiment, and Dhanika rightly rejects it as a species, though Viçvanātha admits it.
A variant of the Nāṭikā is the Saṭṭaka,[152] which differs from it merely by being all in Prākrit, in having no introductory scenes of any kind, and in having the acts called Javanikāntara. As the name denotes a form of dance, it is quite possible that it owes its origin as a species to the use of such dances in these plays. We have an example in Rājaçekhara’s Karpūramañjarī.
The Troṭaka[153] or Toṭaka is merely a variant of the Nāṭaka; the Bengālī recension of the Vikramorvaçī which contains Apabhraṅça verses and an appropriate dance of the distracted [[351]]king alone gives the name. The term denotes both a dance and confused speech, and the origin of the species need be sought only in this peculiarity. The other manuscripts call it a Nāṭaka.
The other species enumerated have no representatives in the old literature, nor is this wonderful, for they show the character rather of pantomime with song, dance, and music than of serious drama; the Goṣṭhī[154] has nine or ten men and five or six women as actors; the Hallīça[155] is clearly a glorified dance; the Nāṭyarāsaka[156] a ballet and pantomime; the Prasthāna,[157] in which hero and heroine are slaves, is based on a mimetic dance; so also apparently are the Bhāṇikā,[158] or little Bhāṇa, and the Kāvya, both one-act pieces; the Rāsaka, of the same general type, includes dialect in its language. The Ullāpya may have one or three acts, and its hero is of high rank, while battles form part of its subject, as they do also in the Saṁlāpaka, which may have one, three, or four acts. The Durmallikā has four acts, a hero of low rank, and a precise time-table of duration of acts. The Vilāsikā has one act, but is interesting in that the hero has, to support him, not only the Vidūṣaka, but also the parasite and a friend (pīṭhamarda); the sentiment is erotic. The Çilpaka is mysterious, for it has four acts, allows all the manners, has a Brahmin as hero with a man of lower rank as secondary hero, excludes the calm and comic sentiments, and has twenty-seven most miscellaneous constituents; if a pantomime, it was clearly not amusing. The Pren̄khaṇa, or Prekṣaṇa, is a piece in one act, with a hero of low birth, full of combats and hard words; it has no introductory scenes, and both the benediction and the Prarocanā are performed behind the scenes, but none of the late works which bear approximately this title conforms to type. The Çrīgadita is in a single act, the story legendary, the hero and heroine of high rank, the manner verbal; the word Çrī is often mentioned, or the goddess is presented seated and singing some verse. The only play known of that name is the Subhadrāharaṇa of Mādhava before A.D. 1600, which is much like an ordinary play, but contains a narrative verse, suggesting connexion with the shadow-drama. It is characteristic that the theory ignores wholly this type. [[352]]
10. The Influence of Theory on Practice
Though we cannot say precisely at what date the Nāṭyaçāstra obtained definite form, we can be assured that by the time of Kālidāsa it was not merely known, but its authority was already accepted as binding on poets. The mere fact that Kālidāsa’s dramas exhibit a marvellous fidelity to the rules of the Çāstra might be explained by the theory that it drew its principles from them rather than vice versa. But in his epics Kālidāsa, in due accord with the duty of a poet to display every form of his erudition, has emphatically shown a far-reaching competence in the terminology of the Çāstra. In the Kumārasambhava[159] Çiva and Pārvatī watched the performance in honour of their nuptials of a Nāṭaka in which the different dramatic manners were combined with the junctures, the modes of the music corresponded with the sentiments, and the Apsarases displayed their grace of form. There are similar references in the Raghuvaṅça.[160] The knowledge of the Çāstra by later writers goes without saying. The author of the Mudrārākṣasa[161] depicts Rākṣasa as comparing political combinations with the work of a dramatist and giving a brief plan of the structure of the drama, and Bhavabhūti[162] and Murāri[163] alike show familiarity with the terminology of the Çāstra as well as with its rules. The most complete proof, however, of the domination of the theory is the absence of any original creations in dramatic form. There must, it is certain, have been a time when the genius of Indian poetry was active in trying and developing the new instrument of drama, but with the appearance of the Nāṭyaçāstra this creative epoch came to all intents and purposes to a close, and the writers of the classical drama accept without question the forms imposed upon them by authority, although that authority rests on no logical or psychological basis, but represents merely generalizations, often hasty, from a limited number of plays.
The Nāṭaka, accordingly, remains the form of drama par excellence, a pre-eminence due to its comparative freedom from narrow [[353]]restrictions as well as to the submissive spirit of the dramatists. The form serves very different purposes; it accommodates itself not only to the grace and charm of Kālidāsa, but to the unmeasured and irregular genius of Bhavabhūti; it permits of the political drama of Viçākhadatta, as well as the philosophical disquisitions of Kṛṣṇamiçra and the devotional fervour of Kavikarṇapūra’s Caitanyacandrodaya.
The Prakaraṇa is essentially similar to the Nāṭaka save in the social status of the hero and heroine; the distinction between the Mālatīmādhava and a Nāṭaka is far less important than the similarity. The Mṛcchakaṭikā, indeed, departs from type, but that is not surprising now that it is known that it is based on Bhāsa’s Cārudatta, which is not merely the work of a man of unusual talent, but came into being before the rules of the drama had attained the binding force they later achieved. The Nāṭikā, however, which is likewise closely allied to the Nāṭaka, became stereotyped at an early stage, leaving no room for serious innovation; the charms of the song and dance appear to have prevailed, and to have dissuaded efforts at originality of plot. The Vyāyoga is hardly more than an aspect of the Nāṭaka; the spirit of such works as those of Bhāsa in this genre is reflected in many passages of the Mahāvīracarita and the Veṇīsaṁhāra.
The farce and the monologue, of which we have many specimens in the later drama, are confined to representations of the lower and coarser side of life, but curiously enough they fail entirely to achieve what might have seemed the legitimate aim of a vivid portrayal of the lives and manners of contemporary society; tradition has proved too strong for the dramatists whose works deal with types, not individuals. On the other hand, we find practically no living tradition of the construction of dramas of the other five classes of the theory, Ḍima, Samavakāra, Īhāmṛga, Vīthī, and Utsṛṣṭikān̄ka. We may legitimately assume that these were types erected on little foundation of fact, and that, while the theory could restrict enterprise, it could not induce life in forms which had no real vitality of their own. The mere fact that later poets occasionally patronize these forms is sufficient evidence of the strength of the authority of the Çāstra. It is amazing, however, that we find no serious effort to produce [[354]]pure comedy; the farce and the monologue may hover on the borders of that form; they certainly never attain it.
To the force of the tradition is presumably to be ascribed the absence of any effort at tragedy, though its absence undoubtedly coincides with the mental outlook of the Indian people and their philosophy of life. Bhāsa has indeed been claimed as a tragedian, but with complete disregard for the facts; there is in fact in his dramas disregard of the rule which objects to death on the stage, but the slain are always evil men, whose death is just punishment; the Ūrubhan̄ga may to us be tragic, but that is because we are not adorers of Viṣṇu who regard with relish the fate of the enemy of that god, the evil Duryodhana. The tragic sentiment is nowhere recognized, for the term (raudra), which is unhappily often so rendered, is the sentiment which is based on anger, and has nothing truly tragic in it. The idea is, indeed, entirely wanting in the theory as it is in the practice.
To the developed thought of India, as it existed during the vogue of the drama, there was little possibility of a realization of the elements of which Greek tragedy is composed. The conception of human activity striving with circumstance, endeavouring to assert itself in the teeth of forces superhuman in power and uncontrollable, and meeting with utter ruin, but yet maintaining its honour, which affords the spring of tragedy in Greece, is alien to Indian thought. Fate is nothing outside man; he is subject to no alien influences; he is what he has made himself by acts in past lives; if he suffers evil he has deserved it as just retribution, and to sympathize with him, to feel the pathos of his plight, is really unthinkable. Death, therefore, by violence is merely a just punishment of crime, and it is a more refined taste than that of Bhāsa which bids us banish from the stage the spectacle of what is no more than an execution, a scene as ill-suited to the decorum and good taste of the serious drama[164] as to the rude merriment of the farce or monologue. [[355]]
11. Aristotle and the Indian Theory of Poetics
It is natural that contemporaneously with the effort to prove the Greek origin of the Indian drama efforts[165] should have been made to establish the indebtedness of the Nāṭyaçāstra to Aristotle’s theory of drama.[166] There is no doubt of the many parallels between the two theories. The unity of action is fully recognized in the Çāstra, and the rule which insists that the events described in an Act shall not exceed in duration a day has a certain similarity to the unity of time in Aristotle,[167] and is much more significant than such agreement as there is as to unity of place. The doctrine that the drama is an imitation (anukṛti) does not differ from the doctrine of Mimesis, but there is an essential distinction in what is imitated or represented; in the Çāstra it is a state or condition, in Aristotle it is action, a distinction absolutely in accord with the different geniuses of the two peoples. The importance of acting is common in both schemes, but Aristotle makes little of the dance. Both stress the plot, which the Çāstra recognizes as the body of the drama. The Indian division of characters as high, middle, and low has a certain parallelism to the Aristotelian distinctions of modes of depicting character as ideal, real, and inferior. The Çāstra, like Aristotle, shows appreciation of the distinction between male and female characters. To some degree we find in the Çāstra the recognition of the necessity of conflict in drama, and of the emotions of pity and fear in the sentiment of pathos and in the element of the development known as Vidrava. The Çāstra also touches on the relation of the feelings aroused in the actor and in the audience as in the Poetics. Both recognize the use of significant names, and deal with the linguistic aspects of style.
Other suggestions of Greek influence may also be adduced; thus we have the mention of what seems a derivative of the Greek caryatides in the description of the theatre; the monologue may be based on the Greek Mime, and we have the actual [[356]]mention in a passage of the Çāstra of Yavanas, while the description of the Viṭa suggests derivation from the Greek parasite. But it is impossible to take these pieces of evidence as conclusive proof of borrowing; we are, in fact, faced with the usual difficulty that, if there were borrowing, the Indian genius has known how to recast so cleverly and to adapt what it borrowed so effectively that the traces which would definitely establish indebtedness cannot be found. In all the instances enumerated there is no doubt similarity, but there is also essential difference such as renders independent development of the Indian doctrine at least as probable as borrowing. [[357]]
[1] AID., pp. 3 ff.; above, p. 31. [↑]
[2] Ed. KM. 1894, i–xiv; by J. Grosset, Paris, 1898; xviii–xx, xxxiv in F. Hall’s Daçarūpa; xv–xvii (xiv–xvi), in Regnaud, Annales du Musée Guimet, i and ii; xxviii in Grosset’s Contribution à l’étude de la musique hindoue, Paris, 1888; vi and vii in Regnaud, Rhétorique sanskrite. [↑]
[3] Bhau Daji, JBRAS. vi. 218 ff. Lévi (TI. ii. 4) suggests that the Çāstra is largely made out of a versified comment on original Sūtras. For various guesses as to Mātṛgupta, cf. JRAS. 1903, p. 570; see Peterson, Subhāṣitāvali, p. 89. It is probable that the Çāstra is related to an original Sūtra in the same way as the Kāmandakīya Nītiçāstra to the Arthaçāstra. Cf. S. K. De, SP. i. 27 ff. [↑]
[4] Avimāraka, ii. A treatise on drama is also attributed to him; Arthadyotanikā, 2. [↑]
[5] That in the Çāstra itself there is contradiction in this regard between x. 83 f. and xviii. 19 f. is shown by Lindenau, BS., p. 34. [↑]
[6] Cf. Jacobi, Bhavisattakaha, pp. 83 ff., who suggests the third century; the Prākrit seems anterior to Māhārāṣṭrī in development; Jacobi suggests Ujjayinī as a possible location in view of the affinity to Māhārāṣṭrī and Çaurasenī. Cf. GIL. iii. 8. [↑]
[7] Ed. F. Hall, Calcutta, 1865; trs. G. C. O. Haas, New York, 1912. Jacobi (GGA. 1913, p. 301) presses for the identity of the writers, but the difference of the name is fatal. [↑]
[8] Ed. K. P. Trivedī, Bombay, 1909. [↑]
[9] Ed. K. P. Trivedī, Bombay, 1903; cf. R. G. Bhandarkar, Report (1897) pp. lxviii f. [↑]
[10] Ed. BI. with trs., 1851–75; in part by P. V. Kane, Bombay, 1910. [↑]
[11] Ed. TSS. no. L, 1916. It freely uses the Daçarūpa. Cf. Seshagiri, Report for 1896–97, pp. 7 ff. Many verses by the author are cited. [↑]
[12] For the authorship of the Kāvyaprakāça see Hari Chand, Kālidāsa, pp. 103 ff. [↑]
[13] cc. 337–41. On Dhvani see Keith, Sansk. Lit. ch. x. [↑]
[14] Bharata cited in Rucipati’s comm. on Anargharāghava, 9. Cf. DR. i. 7; SD. 274. [↑]
[15] Cf. Hall, DR. pp. 6 f. [↑]
[16] N. xviii. 89; xix. 1; AP. cccxxxvii. 18, 27. [↑]
[17] DR. i. 15; iii. 20–22. [↑]
[18] N. xix. 2–6, 25 f.; DR. i. 11, 12, 16; SD. 296 f., 323. [↑]
[19] N. xix. 23; DR. i. 13; SD. 320–3; R. iii. 13 f. [↑]
[20] N. xix. 7–13; DR. i. 18–20; SD. 324–9; R. iii. 22–5. [↑]
[21] N. xix. 19–21; DR. i. 16 f.; SD. 317–19. The parallelism is faulty: neither episode nor incident is necessary nor corresponds to Prāptyāçā and Niyatāpti nor Garbha and Vimarça; Dhanika, DR. i. 33, admits this in effect; there is no episode in Ratnāvalī, III. Cf. R. iii. 22. [↑]
[22] N. xix. 16, 35 ff.; DR. i. 22 ff.; SD. 330 ff. Hali (DR., p. 11 n.) suggests nibarhaṇa as correct (N. xix. 36), wrongly. Cf. R. iii. 26–74. The precise parallelism of the Sandhis and Avasthās in the Bālarāmāyaṇa is given in R. iii. 23–5. [↑]
[23] Abhinavagupta (Dhvanyāloka, p. 140) frankly treats the Avasthās as the Sandhis as parts of the story, and distinguishes the Arthaprakṛtis. DR. is responsible for the doctrine that each Sandhi rests on an Avasthā and an Arthaprakṛti, accepted in Pratāparudrīya, iii. 3; GGA. 1913, pp. 306–8; R. iii. 26 f. [↑]
[25] N. xix. 28; DR. i. 33. [↑]
[26] N. xix. 103; SD. 406. [↑]
[27] N. xix. 50 f.; SD. 407. [↑]
[29] N. xviii. 16 ff.; DR. i. 51; iii. 31 f.; SD. 278. [↑]
[30] The rule is dubious; see Dhanika on DR. iii. 32, where he allows the performance of essential religious rites. [↑]
[31] Jackson, AJP. xix. 247 ff. [↑]
[32] SD. 278, no doubt by misreading. [↑]
[33] N. xviii. 14 f., 22–4; DR. iii. 27, 32–4; SD. 278; R. iii. 205; JAOS. xx. 341 ff. [↑]
[34] N. xviii. 28, 34 f.; xix. 109–16; DR. i. 52–6; SD. 305–13; R. iii. 178 ff. [↑]
[35] Bhāsa has three in several cases; Lindenau, BS. p. 40 says Prākrit is never used alone, as stated by Lévi, TI. i. 59, and Konow, ID. p. 13, but see Vatsarāja’s Tripuradāha, II. [↑]
[36] R. iii. 185 f. calls Khaṇḍacūlikā an exchange of words between one on and one off the stage at the beginning only of an act; e.g. Bālarāmāyaṇa, VII. [↑]
[37] Mātṛgupta in Arthadyotanikā, 20. [↑]
[38] xix. 53–7, 105–9; R. iii. 95; 79–92. [↑]
[40] N. xix. 30–4; DR. i. 14; SD. 299–303; R. iii. 15–17, where N. is cited with variant readings. [↑]
[41] This is differently taken by R. iii. 16 as an allusion to Vāsavadattā’s anger to come. [↑]
[42] DR. i. 57–61; SD. 425; R. iii. 200 ff. [↑]
[43] DR. ii. 1; SD. 64; R. i. 61 ff. [↑]
[44] N. xxiv. (Hall, xxxiv.) 4–6; DR. ii. 3–5; SD. 67–9; R. i. 72–8. [↑]
[47] DR. ii. 6; SD. 71–5; R. i. 80–2. R. i. 79, 83–8 has a division into husbands, adulterers (upapati), and the connoisseur of hetaerae (vaiçika). For the courteous lover, see p. 205. [↑]
[48] DR. ii. 9–13; SD. 89–95; R. i. 215–19; 64, 69. [↑]
[50] DR. ii. 7; SD. 76. Cf. Kāmasūtra, p. 60; R. i. 89, 90. [↑]
[51] DR. ii. 14 f.; SD. 96–100; R. i. 94–120, who takes the unusual view that Irāvatī in the Mālavikāgnimitra is a hetaera. [↑]
[52] N. xxii. 197–206; DR. ii. 22–5; SD. 113–21; R. i. 121–51. [↑]
[53] N. xxii. 4–29; DR. ii. 28–39; SD. 126–55; R. i. 190–214, with Bhoja’s views. [↑]
[54] N. xii. 121 f.; xxi. 126; xxiv. 106; DR. ii. 8; SD. 79; R. i. 92. [↑]
[55] N. xii. 97; xxiv. 104; DR. ii. 8; SD. 78; Kāmasūtra, p. 58; Schmidt, Beiträge zur indischen Erotik, pp. 200 ff. [↑]
[56] N. xii. 130; xxiv. 105; DR. ii. 42; SD. 81. [↑]
[58] N. xxiv. 107; DR. ii. 41; SD. 82. [↑]
[60] N. xxiv. 15 ff. The Kāmasūtra, of course, covers much the same ground. [↑]
[62] SD. 426. R. iii. 323–38 gives very elaborate details. [↑]
[63] N. xvii. 73 ff.; DR. ii. 62–6; SD. 431 ff.; Lévi, TI. i. 129, corrected JA. sér. 9, xix. 97 f.; R. iii. 306–22. [↑]
[64] A child may thus be addressed by persons of low rank, SD. 431; cf. Mṛcchakaṭikā, x. p. 160. [↑]
[65] For another style, cf. Hāsyacūḍāmaṇi, p. 124; Upādhyāya, R. iii. 309. [↑]
[66] P. Regnaud, Rhétorique Sanskrite, pp. 266 ff.; Jacobi, ZDMG. lvi. 394 f.; M. Lindenau, Beiträge zur altindischen Rasalehre, Leipzig, 1913. See N. vi. and vii.; DR. iv.; SD. iii.; R. i. 298–ii. 265. [↑]
[67] Mātṛgupta (Hall, DR., p. 33) subdivides sentiment as vācika, produced by words; nepathya, generated by appropriate garlands, ornaments, clothes, &c.; svābhāvika, produced by such natural excellencies as beauty, youth, grace, firmness, courage, &c. [↑]
[68] Ekāvalī, iii, pp. 86 ff.; Kāvyaprakāça (ed. 1889), pp. 86 ff. Cf. R., pp. 173–5. [↑]
[69] See also Abhinavagupta, Dhvanisaṁketa, pp. 67 f.; Alaṁkārasarvasva, p. 9. [↑]
[70] The term is vyutpatti; it is explained by Abhinavagupta, op. cit., p. 70; GGA. 1913, p. 305, n. 1. [↑]
[71] The reference to Brahman shows that we have here the same fusion of doctrine as in Sadānanda’s Vedāntasāra. [↑]
[72] In the same sense we have rasika and bhāvaka (e.g. R., p. 170). [↑]
[73] vi. 7 ff.; Huizinga, De Vidūṣaka in het indisch tooneel, pp. 67 ff. [↑]
vibhāvair anubhāvaiç ca sāttvikair vyabhicāribhiḥ
ānīyamānaḥ svādyatvaṁ sthāyī bhāvo rasaḥ smṛtaḥ. (iv. 1.) Cf. R. ii. 169.
[76] iv. 41; R., p. 175, l. 1. [↑]
[78] Dhvanisaṁketa, pp. 68, 70. [↑]
[80] iv. 33. Cf. R., p. 171. [↑]
[81] SD. 41. This possibility is denied by Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka. [↑]
[82] xxvi. 18 f. Cf. Aristotle, Poetics, xvii. 1455 a 30. [↑]
[83] SD. 50 ff. So such a great actress as Sarah Bernhardt might feel emotion in acquiring her part, but not in the daily performance. [↑]
[84] Ekāvalī, p. 88; DR. iv. 40. [↑]
[85] Vyaktiviveka (Trivandrum Sanskrit Series, no. v). [↑]
[86] iv. 47 ff. Cf. R. ii. 170 ff. [↑]
[87] Cf. Haas, DR., pp. 133, 150; R. ii. 178–201, where a list of twelve, with desire and eagerness prefixed, is rejected. [↑]
[89] Cf. Aristotle, Poetics, v. 1449 a 36. [↑]
[90] Save for a late reading in vi. 15. [↑]
[91] See Dhanika, DR. iv. 33; SD. 240; Ekāvalī, pp. 96 ff. Other sentiments are sometimes recognized, such as friendship, faith, and devotion; cf. Rasagan̄gādhara, p. 45. Bhoja admits love only. An example of calm is the Prabodhacandrodaya. Cf. Jacobi, ZDMG. lvi. 395; R., p. 171. [↑]
[92] N. xx. 25–62; DR. ii. 44–57; iii. 5; SD. 285, 410–21; R. i. 244–94, which expressly denies a fifth manner composed of the four. [↑]
[93] Ratnāvalī, ii. R. i. 275 gives pā pā pāhi hi hīti as an instance of comic fear exhibited in speech. [↑]
[95] An alternative is love enjoyment interrupted, as in the Ratnāvalī, ii. 17; R. i. 278. [↑]
[96] A variant ascribed to Bharata is given in R. i. 279, where a hero dies and another fills his place, e.g. Rāvaṇa replaced by Vibhīṣaṇa. [↑]
[97] N. xviii. 106–16; DR. iii. 11–18; SD. 289, 293, 521–32; R. i. 164–74. [↑]
[98] The first kind is illustrated by Uttararāmacarita, i; the second by a citation from the Chalitarāma. [↑]
[99] As in the Vīrabhadravijṛmbhaṇa, R. i. 168. [↑]
[100] As in the Abhirāmarāghava. [↑]
[102] N. xvii. 6–39; SD. 435–70; 36 bhūṣaṇāni, R. iii. 97–127. [↑]
[103] The Saṁgītadāmodara merges them in one (Lévi, TI. i. 104). Cf. DR. iv. 78. [↑]
[104] xvii. 40 ff. The Alaṁkāra doctrine later develops enormously; cf. Jacobi, GN. 1908, pp. 1 ff. [↑]
[106] See Weber, IS. viii. 377 ff. [↑]
[108] iii. i and 2; cf. Regnaud, Rhétorique Sanskrite, ch. v. [↑]
[109] Kāvyaprakāça, pp. 542 ff.; Ekāvalī, pp. 147–9; Alaṁkārasarvasva, pp. 20 f. R. i. 229–43 has the ten Guṇas and komalā, kaṭhinā, and miçrā as the three names. [↑]
[110] Mammaṭa, Kāvyaprakāça, viii. 1 ff.; Ekāvalī, v.; Sāhityadarpaṇa, viii; Alaṁkārasarvasva, p. 7. [↑]
[112] pp. 57, 60. Cf. Jacobi, Bhavisattakaha, pp. 68. [↑]
[113] vi. 147. Cf. Kāvyamīmāṅsā, pp. 48 ff. [↑]
[114] Jacobi, GN. 1911, pp. 962 f.; 1912, p. 841 f. [↑]
[115] Jacobi, Bhavisattakaha, pp. 74, 76. Cf. Haranchandra Chakladar, Vātsyāyana (1921). [↑]
[116] N. xvii. 31 ff.; DR. ii. 58–61; SD. 432; R. iii. 299–305. [↑]
[117] Including, of course, persons assuming such rôles, e.g. in the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa and Mudrārākṣasa. For the use of Sanskrit by women, usually in verse, as by Vasantasenā in the Mṛcchakaṭikā, and by inferior characters, see Pischel, Prākrit Grammatik, pp. 31 f. [↑]
[118] R. iii. 300 assigns it as Prākṛta to low persons and Jains. He assigns Apabhraṅça to Caṇḍālas, Yavanas, &c., but admits that others give Māgadhī, &c. [↑]
[119] Grierson, JRAS. 1918, pp. 489 ff. Cf. R. i. 297 which has seven; Çabara, Dramiḷa, Andhraja, Çakāra, Abhīra, Caṇḍāla, foresters. [↑]
[120] Contrast the Aristotelian doctrine as to the use of the lyric choruses; Poetics, 1456 a 25 ff.; G. Norwood, Greek Tragedy, pp. 75–80; Haigh, The Tragic Drama of the Greeks, ch. v, § 6. [↑]
[121] xviii. 117–29; DR. iii. 47 f.; SD. 504–9. On gesture see the Abhinayadarpaṇa of Nandikeçvara, trs. Cambridge, Mass., 1917. R. iii. 236–48 gives other details of the Lāsya from the Çṛn̄gāramañjarī; dialect is allowed in the Saindhava. He follows N. in having Trimūḍhaka as expressing male emotions in smooth words, and has Dvimūḍhaka. [↑]
[122] Lévi, TI. ii. 18 f. For N. xxviii see J. Grosset, Contribution à l’étude de la musique hindoue, Paris, 1888. The hints as to musical accompaniment in Vikramorvaçī iv. and the Gītagovinda are unfortunately largely unintelligible. Cf. also Çivarāma on Nāgānanda, i. 15. [↑]
[123] v. 1 ff.; Konow, ID., pp. 23 ff. [↑]
[124] These nine acts gratify the Apsarases, Gandharvas, Daityas, Dānavas, Rakṣases, Guhyakas, and Yakṣas. They are performed behind the curtain according to Konow, but cf. Lévi, TI. i. 376. [↑]
[125] N. v. 149 ff.; DR. iii. 2 ff.; SD. 283 ff. Cf. R. iii. 150 ff. [↑]
[126] An effort to discriminate Prastāvanā and Sthāpanā is made, R. iii. 158. [↑]
[127] These are more common than formerly thought; the Sthāpaka is found in various connexions in the Pārthaparākrama of Prahlādana, and Vatsarāja’s Kirātārjunīya, Rukmiṇīharaṇa, Samudramathana. But the Rasārṇavasudhākara ignores him. [[342]]Çivarāma’s comm. on Nāgānanda, i. 1 shows that great doubt then existed both as to the preliminaries (p. 2), and the Sūtradhāra, Sūcaka, or Sthāpaka (pp. 6, 7). Cf. p. 273. [↑]
[128] GGA. 1883, p. 1234; 1891, p. 361. Bhāsa’s use of Sthāpanā for the prologue suggests accord with the Daçarūpa. [↑]
[129] E.g. Tapatīsaṁvaraṇa and Subhadrādhanaṁjaya, where Sthāpanā is used. [↑]
[130] A classification of poets on the basis of their confidence in themselves as expressed in this place is given in R. i. 246 f.; Kālidāsa is elevated (udātta) in the Mālavikāgnimitra; Bhavabhūti haughty (uddhata) in the Mālatīmādhava; self assertion (prauḍha) is seen in the Karuṇākandala; modesty (vinīta) in the Rāmānanda. [↑]
[132] Lévi, TI. i. 135, 379; ii. 26 f., 64, 66. Cf. Harivaṅça, ii. 93; Kuṭṭanīmata, 856 ff. [↑]
[133] Lévi, TI. i. 132 f.; ii. 24 f.; Hall, DR., pp. 25 f. The Veṇīsaṁhāra has six stanzas. R. iii. 137 f. takes Pada as word, giving the Mahāvīracarita, Abhirāmarāghava, and Anargharāghava as examples of 8, 10, and 12 Padas. [↑]
[134] For a general reference see Pañcarātra, i. 1. In a Jain drama like the Moharājaparājaya, the benediction is addressed to the three Tīrthakaras; in the Nāgānanda to the Buddha. [↑]
[135] N. xviii. 10 ff.; DR. iii. 1–34; SD. 278, 433, 510; R. iii. 130 ff. [↑]
[136] Ghanaçyāma’s Navagrahacarita has three acts; Madhusūdana’s Jānakīpariṇaya (A.D. 1705) has four. [↑]
[137] N. xviii. 41 ff.; DR. iii. 35–8; SD. 511 f.; R. iii. 214–18, who gives Kāmadatta as the name of a hetaera drama. [↑]
[138] N. xviii. 57–70; xix. 43 f.; DR. iii. 56–61; SD. 515 f.; R. iii. 249–64. [↑]
[139] N. xviii. 72–6; xix. 44 f.; DR. iii. 66–8; SD. 518; R. iii. 284–8 (type Māyākuran̄gikā). [↑]
[140] N. xviii. 78–82; xix. 43 f.; DR. iii. 51–3; SD. 517; R. iii. 280–4 (type Vīrabhadravijṛmbhaṇa). [↑]
[141] N. xviii. 83–5; xix. 44 f.; DR. iii. 54 f.; SD. 514; R. iii. 229–32 (type Dhanaṁjayajaya). [↑]
[142] N. xviii. 86–9; xix. 45 f.; DR. iii. 64 f.; SD. 519; R. iii. 224–8 (type Karuṇākandala) who differs. [↑]
[143] N. xviii. 93–8; xix. 45 f.; DR. iii. 49 f.; SD. 534–8; R. iii. 268–79 (type Ānandakoça). [↑]
[144] N. xviii. 99–101; xix. 45 f.; DR. iii. 44–6; SD. 513; R. iii. 232–5. [↑]
[145] N. xviii. 102 f.; xix. 45 f.; DR. iii. 62 f.; SD. 520. Konow (ID. p. 32) is in error as to N. R. iii. 265–70 has Mādhavī-Vīthikā. [↑]
[148] cccxxxvii. 2–4. R. iii. 218–23 denies the separate character of the Nāṭikā or Prakaraṇikā. [↑]
[150] xviii. 54–6; DR. iii. 39–43; SD. 539. [↑]
[152] SD. 542. Cf. the Bharhut bas-relief of a dance, Sāḍika; Hultzsch, ZDMG. xl. 66, no. 50. [↑]
[154] SD. 541. Cf. Hall, DR., p. 6. [↑]
[158] SD. 556; for the others see 546 ff. Names of plays are given, but they are lost, and were probably late. [↑]
[162] Mālatīmādhava, p. 79. [↑]
[163] vi. 48, and see pp. 108 f.; Lévi, TI. ii. 38. [↑]
[164] Cf. the later view in Rome, which forbids death on the stage, Horace, Ars Poetica, 183 ff., with Aristotle, Poetics, 1452 b 10 ff., which approves the presentation of death and other acts on the stage. [↑]
[165] M. Lindenau, Festschrift Windisch, pp. 38 ff. [↑]
[166] Poetics, 1449 b sq. with Butcher’s trs. and Bywater’s notes. [↑]
[167] Poetics, 1449 b 13. For time analysis in Kālidāsa, see Jackson, JAOS. xx. 341–59; in Harṣa, xxi. 88–108. [↑]
IV
DRAMATIC PRACTICE
[[358]]
XIV
THE INDIAN THEATRE
1. The Theatre
The Sanskrit drama of the theorists is, despite its complexity, essentially intended for performance, nor is there the slightest doubt that the early dramatists were anything but composers of plays meant only to be read. They were connoisseurs, we may be certain, in the merits which would accrue to their works from the accessories of the dance, music, song, and the attractions of acting; the Vikramorvaçī must, for instance, have had much of the attraction of an opera, and as a mere literary work loses seriously in attraction.
On the other hand, the existence of regular theatres for the exhibition of drama is not assumed in the theorists. A drama was, it is clear, normally performed on an occasion of special rejoicing and solemnity, such as a festival of a god, or a royal marriage, or the celebration of a victory, and the place of performance thus naturally came to be the temple of the god or the palace of the king. We learn often in the drama and tales of the existence of dancing halls and music rooms in the royal palace where the ladies of the harem were taught these pleasing arts, and one of these could easily be adapted for a dramatic performance. But we have from the second century B.C. the remains of a cave which seems to have been used, if not for the performance of plays, at any rate for purposes of recitation of poems or some similar end; it is found in the Rāmgarh hill[1] in Chota Nagpur, and, although it is quite impossible to prove that it had anything to do with plays, it is interesting to note that the Nāṭyaçāstra states that the play-house should have the form of a mountain cave and two stories. [[359]]
According to the Çāstra,[2] the play-house as made ready for performance may be of three types, the first for the gods, 108 hands (18 inches) long; the second rectangular, 64 hands long and 32 broad; the third triangular, 32 hands long, the second being praised on acoustic grounds. The house falls into two parts, the places for the audience and the stage. The auditorium is marked off by pillars, in front a white pillar for the seats for the Brahmins, then a red pillar for the Kṣatriyas, in the north-west a yellow pillar marks the seats for the Vaiçyas, while the Çūdras have a blue-black pillar in the north-east. The seats are of wood and bricks, and arranged in rows. In front beside the stage is a veranda with four pillars, apparently also for the use of spectators. In front of the spectators is the stage (ran̄ga), adorned with pictures and reliefs; it is eight hands square in the second form of play-house; its end is the head of the stage (ran̄gaçīrṣa), decorated by figures, and there offerings are made.[3]
Behind[4] the stage is the painted curtain (paṭī, apaṭī, tiraskaraṇī, pratisīrā), to which the name Yavanikā (Prākrit, Javanikā) is given, denoting merely that the material is foreign, and forbidding any conclusion as to the Greek origin of the curtain itself or the theatre. When one enters hastily, the curtain is violently thrown aside (apaṭīkṣepa). Behind the curtain are the actors’ quarters (nepathyagṛha) or tiring rooms. Here are performed the sounds necessary to represent uproar and confusion which cannot be represented on the stage; here also are uttered the voices of gods and other persons whose presence on the stage is impossible or undesirable.
The colour of the curtain is given in some authorities as necessarily in harmony with the dominant sentiment of the play, in accordance with the classification of sentiments already given, but others permit the use of red in every instance. Normally the entry of any character is effected by the drawing aside of the curtain by two maidens, whose beauty marks them out for this [[360]]employment (dhṛtir yavanikāyāḥ). The term Nepathya has suggested an erroneous deduction as to the relative elevation of the stage and the foyer, for it is conceivable that it denotes a descending (ni-patha) way, and it has been concluded[5] that it was, therefore, below the level of the stage. But the regular phrase of the entry of an actor on the stage (ran̄gāvataraṇa) would suggest exactly the opposite, a descent from the foyer to the stage. In the case of stages hastily put together, often for merely very temporary aims, it would clearly be absurd to expect any fixed practice, nor can we say what was the normal height of the stage platform. In the case of a play within a play, in the Bālarāmāyaṇa of Rājaçekhara, we find that both a stage and a tiring room are erected on the original stage, though we may assume that these were of a very simple structure.
The number of doors leading to the tiring room from the stage is regularly given as two,[6] and apparently the place of the orchestra was between them.
2. The Actors
The normal term for actor is Naṭa, a term which has the wider sense of dancer or acrobat; terms like Bharata, or Bhārata, Cāraṇa,[7] Kuçīlava, Çailūṣa, or Çaubhika have interest practically only for the history of the drama. The chief actor, whose name Sūtradhāra doubtless denotes him as primarily the architect of the theatre, the man who secures the erection of the temporary stage, is occasionally styled ‘troop-head of actors (naṭagāmaṇi)’,[8] and he is essentially the instructor of the other actors in their art (nāṭyācārya), so that his title Sūtradhāra can be used topically as equivalent to Professor. For this high position his qualifications were to be numerous; he was supposed to be learned in all the arts and sciences, to be acquainted with the habits and customs of all lands, to combine the completeness of technical knowledge with practical skill, and to be possessed of all the [[361]]moral qualities which an Indian genius can enumerate. To him falls not merely the very important function of introducing the play, but also of taking one of the chief parts; thus he plays Vatsa in the Ratnāvalī, and in the Mālatīmādhava Kāmandakī, the nun, who powerfully affects the current of the drama. He is normally the husband of one of the actresses (naṭī), who aids him in the opening scene, and who is compelled, poor woman, to combine the arduous life of an actress with the domestic duty of looking after her husband’s material wants. She is represented as devoted to him, fasting to secure reunion in another life, preparing his meal and seeking to remove by her good works the dangers which threaten him, and compelled to play her parts, although anxious, as in the Ratnāvalī, over the difficulty of securing the marriage of her daughter to a fiancé who has gone overseas, or, as in the Jānakīpariṇaya, over the wickedness of another actor in seeking to take her daughter from her.
The Sthāpaka, according to the theory, is to resemble in his attributes the Sūtradhāra; as we have seen, to what extent he really in the dramas known to us was employed as distinct from the Sūtradhāra, it is impossible to say; the name suggests that he aided him in the structure of the stage, and then in his actor’s duties. But there is no ground to assume that he really had disappeared as a living figure before the classical drama; the occasional mention of him in actual dramas as well as in the theory need not be artificial. We have, however, a much more common attendant of the Sūtradhāra in the Pāripārçvika, who appears in the prologue of many plays, and in addition acted the parts of persons of middle rank. He receives the orders of his master and passes them on to the other actors, and directs the operations of the chorus, as in the Veṇīsaṁhāra. He is addressed by his master as Mārṣa, and he greets him as Bhāva.
The other actors, of whom there must often have been many in pieces with crowds introduced, are to have the qualities of the Sūtradhāra in as generous a measure as may be; they are divided, however, according to their qualifications into superior, medium, and third-rate actors.[9] The principal parts in any drama are, however, few; the king, the Vidūṣaka, the parasite, the heroine, and a companion are stock types. The division of [[362]]rôles is seldom shown in the prologues, whence are derived most of the details of our knowledge of actual performances. The Sūtradhāra in the Ratnāvalī and the Priyadarçikā plays the part of Vatsa, his younger brother that of Yaugandharāyaṇa in the former play and that of Dṛḍhavarman in the latter; the Sūtradhāra and the Pāripārçvika take in the Mālatīmādhava the rôles of Kāmandakī and her pupil Avalokitā respectively. This taking of women’s parts by men is not by any means the normal practice; the Naṭī normally plays an important female part;[10] in the embryo drama in the Priyadarçikā we find that the heroine’s part is played by Āraṇyikā, and the hero’s part was to have been performed by another girl Manoramā, but Vatsa, without the queen’s knowledge, insinuated himself into the scene in propria persona. In the legend of Bharata’s exhibition of the Lakṣmīsvayaṁvara the nymph Urvaçī is represented as playing the chief rôle, and in Dāmodaragupta’s Kuṭṭanīmata, where an actual representation of the Ratnāvalī is described, we find a woman in the rôle of the princess. The Nāṭyaçāstra[11] expressly admits of three modes of representation; the rôles may be filled by persons of appropriate sex and age; the rôles of the old may be taken by the young and vice versa; and the rôles of men may be played by women and vice versa. The taking of women’s parts by men has, curiously enough, a very early piece of evidence, for the Mahābhāṣya mentions the word Bhrūkuṅsa, which was used to denote a man who made up as a female.[12]
We are, it is clear, to conceive of the troupe of actors under the Sūtradhāra as ready to wander hither and thither in search of a favourable opportunity of exhibiting their powers as interpreters. The performance of a drama became, it is clear, in later times at any rate, a worthy adornment of a festive occasion such as a religious festival, the consecration of a king, a marriage, the taking possession of a town or a new estate, the return of a traveller, and the birth of a son. The best patrons of the actors might be kings, but there was evidently no lack of appreciation of their services among men of lesser rank but of large means. The later prologues give us details of the rivalry between different troupes. In the Anargharāghava the actor declares that [[363]]he has come to exhibit a superior sort of drama to that played by a rival, and asserts that the dearest desire of a player is to satisfy the public and to win back the favour he has lost. Rājaçekhara twice introduces the motive of a competition between actors to win the hand of an actress who has been offered by her father in marriage to the most adept of her suitors. Jayadeva invents a pleasing tale of an actor who won great success and reputation, inducing a comedian of the south to claim his name and steal his renown. The actor in revenge went south, and, striking up a partnership with a singer, won both repute and profit in the courts of the Deccan.
The reputation of actors and actresses was low and unsavoury; they are reputed to live on the price of their wives’ honour (jāyājīva, rūpājīva), and Manu imposes only a minor penalty on illicit relations with the wife of an actor on the score of their willingness to hand over their wives to others and profit by their dishonour.[13] The Mahābhāṣya gives equally clear testimony of the lack of chastity among the actresses or their predecessors.[14] The law book of Viṣṇu[15] treats them as Āyogavas, a mixed caste representing the fruit of alliances, improper and undesirable, between Çūdras and the daughters of the Vaiçya; to be an actor or a teacher of the art is ranked as a lesser sin in Baudhāyana.[16] The Kuçīlava is described as a Çūdra, who ought to be banished;[17] his evidence, and indeed that of any actor, is not to be accepted in law,[18] and Brahmins may not accept food offered by an actor,[19] a fact attested by the Sūtradhāra in the prologue to the Mṛcchakaṭikā who can find no one in Ujjayinī to accept his hospitality. Actors again are classed in Manu with wrestlers and boxers. An actress was often, if not necessarily, one of the great army of courtesans; Vasantasenā, the hetaera of the Cārudatta and Mṛcchakaṭikā, is herself skilled in acting, and has in her household maidens learning to act, and Daṇḍin includes lessons in this art in his account of the education of the perfect courtesan in the Daçakumāracarita.
On the other hand, we have traces of a higher side of the [[364]]profession, which doubtless can quite fairly be connected with the gradual elevation of the drama from humble origins to the rank of an elaborate and refined poetry. Bharata, the alleged founder of the Nāṭyaçāstra, ranks as a Muni, or holy sage, and Urvaçī, a divine nymph, is treated as an actress. What is more important is that Bāṇa definitely enumerates in the Harṣacarita among his friends an actor and an actress; Bhartṛhari[20] refers to their friendship with kings, which is also attested in the legend of Vasumitra, son of Kālidāsa’s hero Agnimitra, who was slain amidst his actors by his enemy. Kālidāsa himself represents Agnivarṇa, king of Raghu’s line, as pleased to compete with actors in their own speciality. Vatsa, in the Priyadarçikā, is prepared to play a part without question, and Bhavabhūti in two of his prefaces asserts his friendship with his actors. In truth, men who could effectively declaim the stanzas of Bhavabhūti must have possessed both education and culture in a high degree, and have been very different from the acrobats and jugglers, dancers, and others whose humble occupations account for the censures of the law books and the Arthaçāstra.
3. The Mise-en-scène and Representation of the Drama
We have no trace in the drama of any attempt to introduce scenery into the representation. The curtain remained as a background throughout the entertainment, and it was in the main left to the imagination of the spectator, aided by the descriptions of the poet, to conceive the beauties of the situation supposed to be presented to his eyes. We have for this conclusive proof, if any were needed beyond the silence of the text-books, in the abundant stage directions which accompany the text of our dramas, and are found even in the fragments of Açvaghoṣa. When actions such as watering a plant were ascribed to an actress, no serious effort was made to bring in plants and perform the ceremonial of watering; on the contrary, she went through a mimicry of the process, which was enough to satisfy the audience. The king may mount a chariot, but no effort is made to bring one for this purpose; he merely goes in [[365]]elaborate pantomime through the action of getting up off the ground, and the audience, trained and intelligent, realizes what has happened. At the beginning of the Çakuntalā the gazelle which Duḥṣanta follows is not a real animal, but the Sūtradhāra tells us that the king is pursuing a gazelle, and the actor, who represents the monarch, by his eager gaze and his gestures reveals himself as in the act of seeking to shoot the deer. To pluck flowers is merely to imitate the movements of one who really does so, and an actress with any skill has no difficulty in persuading an audience by her marks of agitation that she is escaping from the attacks of a bee.
There is thus no tedious attempt at realism, though the dramatists vary in the care with which they avoid the absurd in their use of conventions; the works of Bhāsa show doubtless an excessive tendency to allow of strain being placed on the credulity of the audience. The exits and entrances of the characters are often abrupt and unnatural, but the drama was not primarily intended as a realistic copy of events, and doubtless was not felt unsatisfactory by the audience. Nor, it may be remembered, has perfection in detail in any form of ceremonial ever made a strong appeal to Indian minds; in the most gorgeous celebrations there will occur, without exciting surprise or comment, strange deviations from western canons of good taste and elegance.
To a limited extent, however, use was made of minor properties, which are classed under the generic style of model work (pusta).[21] The Nāṭyaçāstra distinguishes three forms of such objects; they may be made up (sandhima) from bamboos covered with skins or cloths; or mechanical means might be employed (vyājima); or merely clothes (veṣṭita) used. We hear of the making of an elephant in the Udayanacarita; the Mṛcchakaṭikā owes its name to the toy cart which appears in it; the Bālarāmāyaṇa has mechanical dolls, and doubtless there were represented houses, caves, chariots, rocks, horses, and so on; monsters with animal heads and many arms could be made of clay and bamboos, and covered with cloths; we are expressly told that weapons must not be made of hard material, but that [[366]]stocks of grass, bamboos, and lac may be made to serve, and naturally gestures served in lieu of hard blows.
The dress[22] of the actors is carefully regulated, especially as regards colour, which evidently was regarded as an important item in matters of sentiment. Ascetics wear garments of rags or bark; those in charge in the harem red jackets, kings gay garments or, if there are portents described, garments without colour. Ābhīra maidens wear dark blue clothes; in other cases dirty or uncoloured garments are prescribed. Dirty clothes indicate madness, distraction, misery, or a journey; uncoloured garb, one engaged in worship or some solemn religious service, an interesting survival of antique custom, while gods, Dānavas, Gandharvas, Uragas, Yakṣas, and Rakṣases, as well as lovers and kings, normally wear gay clothing.
Colour,[23] however, is by no means confined to garments; the actors are expected to adorn themselves with paint of hues appropriate to the rôles they play. There are, on one theory, four fundamental colours, white, blue-black, red, and yellow, from which others are developed, for instance pigeon colour by mixing the first two; a reddish yellow (gaura) from mixing the last two is also recorded. It or dark (çyāma) is given as suited for kings, while happiness is indicated by it. Kirātas, Barbaras, Andhras, Draviḍas, the people of Kāçi and Kosala, Pulindas, and the people of the Deccan are to be black (asita); the Çakas, Yavanas, Pahlavas, and Bālhikas[24] are to be reddish yellow; Pāñcālas, Çūrasenas, Māhiṣas, Uḍras, Māgadhas, An̄gas, Van̄gas, and Kalin̄gas are to be dark (çyāma), as also Vaiçyas and Çūdras in general, while Brahmins and Kṣatriyas are to be reddish-yellow.
Naturally the hair[25] attracts attention; Piçācas, madmen, and Bhūtas wear it loose; the Vidūṣaka is bald; boys have three tufts of hair, and so also servants if it is not cut short; the maidens of Avantī, and usually those of Bengal, wear ringlets, in the case of women of the north it is worn high on the head, and otherwise plaits are usual. The beard may be bright in hue, dark, or bushy. There is also the same tendency to stereotype [[367]]the ornaments, made out of copper, mica, or wax, and the garlands carried by the various personages; Vidyādharīs, Yakṣīs, Apsarases and Nāgīs carry pearls and jewels, while the latter are at once recognizable by the snake’s hood rising over their heads, as are Yakṣas by a large tuft of hair.
The dress and appearance of the actor thus serve in some measure to carry out his duty of representation (abhinaya), of presenting before our eyes the states or conditions of the personage for whom he stands. This is the Āhāryābhinaya, the first of the four agencies enumerated by the Nāṭyaçāstra. He has also to perform the duty of representation by speech (vācika), using his voice to convey the dramatist’s words, and by exhibiting in propria persona the appropriate physical counterparts of the feelings and emotions of the characters (sāttvikābhinaya). Finally, he has specially to concentrate on the expression by gesture (ān̄gikābhinaya) of the feelings which he is supposed to experience. In this regard most detailed rules are given, doubtless from the technique of a period when more importance attached to gestures than later seems natural. Each member of the body is singled out for description; deep significance lies in the mode in which the head is shaken, the eyes glance, the brows move; cheek, nose, lip, chin, and neck can all be used to convey subtle senses. The hands are invaluable for this purpose; the different manœuvres with the fingers can convey almost any possible combination of meanings to the person sufficiently acquainted with the Nāṭyaçāstra to understand them. But other parts of the body down to the feet are valuable; great care is bestowed on their postures, and the gait is invaluable in distinguishing classes of persons and their deeds. Darkness need not artificially be induced; movements of hands and feet to indicate groping are enough; one set of movements shows the mounting of a chariot, another the climbing up to the top of a palace; if the garments are pulled up, the crossing of a river is plainly shown; if the motions of swimming are mimicked, clearly the river is too deep to wade; a dexterous movement of the hands shows that one is driving, and similarly one can mount an elephant or a horse.[26] [[368]]
It is characteristic of the nature of the Indian theory that, while it descends into enormous detail, it leaves alone to all intents and purposes the obvious duty of defining precisely the relation of the varieties of representation described as Sāttvika and Ān̄gika. The true relation is that under the head of Sāttvika are described the physical states, which are deemed appropriate to feelings and emotions, while the Ān̄gika prescribes the precise physical movements which express most effectively both psychic states and physical movements, which cannot be conveniently presented on the stage. The division accordingly is unscientific, and, acute as is the investigation of the Nāṭyaçāstra in detail, it is far from satisfying as a whole.
The importance of such accessories to the representation as garlands, ornaments, and appropriate garments, is emphasized by Mātṛgupta, who admits a specific form of sentiment styled Nepathyarasa, a fact which illustrates the effect produced in the mind of the spectator by the details of the mise-en-scène. The same impression may be derived from the elaboration of the stage directions in the dramas, comparable only to such as are given, for instance, in Mr. Bernard Shaw’s productions. It is clear that they were intended not only for the direction of the actors in actually performing one of the pieces, but as instruments to aid the reader of the drama in realizing mentally the form of the representation and in appreciating, therefore, the dramatic quality of what he studied. Moreover, we have independent evidence which aids us in seeing how complete these directions are. A fortunate chance has preserved in Dāmodaragupta’s Kuṭṭanīmata,[27] written in the reign of Jayāpīḍa of Kashmir in the eighth century A.D., an account of the performance of the Ratnāvalī of Harṣa. The description is incomplete, but it is perfectly clear that it was played exactly in accordance with the stage directions which have come down to us, embedded in the text of the drama as we have it.
The actual performance of the play was preceded, as we have seen in describing the theory of the drama, by preliminaries, the essential aim of which was the securing of the favour of the gods for the play to be represented. Of the varied elements of the preliminaries special importance seems to have attached to the [[369]]praise of the world guardians (dikpālastuti), and the reverence paid to Indra’s banner. A reed with five knots is selected which is called Jarjara; the five sections are painted white, blue-black, yellow, red, and a mixture of hues; banners of every colour are tied to it, and the supplication is made to Gaṇeça, the god who removes obstacles and favours literature, and to the guardians of the quarters of the world.
A religious aspect is given also to the mingling of the pigments, the materials employed being yellow arsenic, lamp black, and red among others. The arsenic is formally addressed as being created by Svayambhū for the purpose of serving as a pigment; then it is placed on a board with fragments of brick, the whole reduced to fine powder, and mingled, and then used as pigment.[28]
The time of the performance is not in many cases stated, but in a number of plays, including the Mālatīmādhava, Karṇasundarī, and the embryo drama in the Priyadarçikā, we find it assumed to be the moment when the sun is just appearing.[29] The beat of drum announces the beginning of the drama, the preliminaries, often reduced to little more than a vocal and instrumental concert of brief duration, are completed, and the benediction pronounced, to be followed by the prologue proper and the drama.
4. The Audience
A drama like the Sanskrit demanded the full attention of a cultivated audience, and it is assumed or expressly asserted, as in the dramas of Kālidāsa, Harṣa, and Bhavabhūti, that the spectators are critical and experienced. The Nāṭyaçāstra[30] requires from the ideal spectator (prekṣaka) keen susceptibility and excellent judgement, with ability to make his own the feelings and emotions of the characters depicted by the actors. But it is admitted that there are the usual degrees among the spectators, good, medium, and indifferent; the question of the success of a drama depends on the judgement of the critic [[370]](prāçnika), who is to possess every possible good quality to fit him for the delicate task. The audience, as it is to share the feelings of the characters, is expected to show them by the usual outward signs; laughter, tears, cries, hair standing on end, jumping up from their seats, clapping with the hands and other manifestations of pleasure, horror, fear, and other sentiments are both proper and natural.
The rules for placing the patron at whose bidding the drama is performed, Sabhāpati, and his guests, are elaborate.[31] He sits himself on the Lion Throne, the equivalent of the royal box, with the ladies of his harem on the left, and on the right the personages of highest importance, such as the vassal princes of a great king like Harṣa. Behind the latter are the treasurer and other officers, and near them the learned men of the court, civil and religious, including the poets, and in their midst the astrologers and physicians. On the left again are the ministers and other courtiers; all around are maidens of the court. In front again of the king are Brahmins, behind the bearers of fans, radiant in youthful beauty. On the left in front are the reciters and panegyrists, eloquent and wise. Guards are present to protect the sacred person of the sovereign.
How far the dramas were viewed by the public in general we cannot say; the rules regarding the play-house contemplate the presence of Çūdras, but that is a vague term, and may apply to a very restricted class of royal hangers on. We have the general rule[32] that barbarians, ignorant people, heretics, and those of low class should not be admitted, but such prescriptions mean very little. There must, it is clear, have been the utmost variation in the character of the audience according to the place and circumstances of representation. At great festivals, when plays were given in the temples, there must have been admission for as many as could be crowded in; in private exhibitions the audience may well have been more select. The fact that the dramas must have been largely unintelligible to all save a select few of the audience would not matter much; a drama was essentially a spectacle; in many cases its subject was perfectly familiar to the [[371]]audience, and the elaborate use of conventional signs must have been enough to aid many of the audience in following roughly the nature of the proceedings.
When such dramatic exhibitions became rare we do not know; it is certain that in the eleventh century in Kashmir they were not uncommon; Kṣemendra advised aspirants to poetic fame to improve their taste by the study of such representations.[33] Doubtless the Mahomedan conquest seriously affected the vogue of the classical drama, which was obnoxious to Mahomedan fanaticism as being closely identified both with the national religion and the national spirit of India. The kings, who had been the main support of the actors and poets alike, disappeared from their thrones or suffered grave reverses in fortune. The tradition of dramatic performances gradually vanished. Other causes contributed to this end; the divorce between the language of the stage and that of the people steadily increasing with the passage of time made the Sanskrit drama more and more remote to the public, and the Mahomedans made it lose its position as the expression of the official and court life of the highest circles.[34] [[373]]
[1] Bloch, Arch. Survey of India Report, 1903–4, pp. 123 ff. [↑]
[2] ii; cf. JPASB. v. 353 ff.; Çilparatna (ed. TSS.), pp. 201 ff. Cf. Kāvyamīmāṅsā, p. 54. [↑]
[3] For the Greek theatre, which presents certain points of similarity but many of difference, see Dorpfeld, Das griechische Theater; Haigh, Attic Theatre (3rd ed.); a brief summary is given in Norwood, Greek Tragedy, pp. 49 ff. [↑]
[4] The theory of a transverse curtain (Wilson, I. lxviii) is not supported by evidence of any clear kind. Cf. p. 113, n. 1. [↑]
[5] Weber, IS. xiv. 225. Cf. Lévi, TI. i. 374; ii. 62. [↑]
[6] The Greek number was three, later five. The Chinese stage, which resembles the Indian in its primitive character, but has no curtain, has two doors, one for entry, one for exit; Ridgeway, Dramas, &c., pp. 274 f. [↑]
[7] W. Crooke, The Tribes and Castes of the N. W. Provinces and Oudh, ii. 20 ff. [↑]
[8] Hillebrandt, AID., p. 12; cf. naṭagrāma, Epigr. Ind. i. 381. [↑]
[10] Cf. Karpūramañjarī, i. 12/13. [↑]
[11] xxvi.; cf. xii. 166 f. [↑]
[12] Weber, IS. xiii. 493. [↑]
[13] viii. 362; cf. Rāmāyaṇa, ii. 30. 8; Kuṭṭanīmata, 855. [↑]
[18] Manu, viii. 65; Yājñ. ii. 70. [↑]
[19] Manu, iv. 215; Yājñ. i. 161. [↑]
[21] N. xxi. 5 ff. Masks may have been used for animals, but not normally as in Greece; cf. ZDMG. lxxiv. 137, n. 2. [↑]
[23] N. xxi. 62 ff.; Lévi, TI. i. 388; ii. 69. Cf. the Mahābhāṣya, iii. 1. 26; Yājñavalkya, iii. 162. [↑]
[24] Also read Pāhravas and Bāhlikas. Cf. Kāvyamīmāṅsā, pp. 96 f. [↑]
[26] Cf. the Abhinayadarpaṇa of Nandikeçvara, trs. by A. Coomaraswamy and G. K. Duggirala, Cambridge, Mass., 1917. [↑]
[27] 856 ff. Cf. the accounts in the Harivaṅça, ii. 88–93. [↑]
[29] Cf. Nīlakaṇṭha’s reason for the alleged abbreviation of the Mṛcchakaṭikā (Lévi, TI. i. 210). [↑]
[30] xxvii. 51 ff.; Lévi, TI. ii. 62 ff. [↑]
[31] Saṁgītaratnākara, 1327 ff.; Lévi, TI. i. 375 ff. Cf. Kāvyamīmāṅsā, pp. 54 f. [↑]
[32] Tagore, Eight Principal Rasas, p. 61. That women as such were excluded (Wilson, ii. 212) cannot have held good for the early stage. [↑]
[33] Kavikaṇṭhābharaṇa, p. 15. [↑]
[34] A certain revival of displays occurred in the nineteenth century; e.g. the Citrayajña of Vaidyanātha Vācaspati Bhaṭṭācārya, written for the festival of Govinda by request of the Rājā of Nadiyā about A.D. 1820. The Cakkyars of Malabar still act Çaktibhadra’s Āçcaryamañjarī and Kulaçekharavarman’s plays, as well as Act III of the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa, under the style of Mantrān̄kanāṭaka, and the Nāgānanda; JRAS. 1910, p. 637; Pratimānāṭaka (ed. TSS.), p. xl; A. K. and V. R. Pisharoti, Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, III. i. 107 ff., who maintain the impossible view that Bhāsa’s plays are compilations or adaptations of the eighth century, or later, holding that the Cārudatta is an adaptation of the Mṛcchakaṭikā (contrast p. 131), the Pratimānāṭaka is later than Kālidāsa, and the Avimāraka than Daṇḍin. The genealogy of Rāma in the Pratimā (iv. 9 f.) is that of Kālidāsa, but is also Purāṇic, and Daṇḍin, of course, is not the inventor of the Kathā. Barnett (Bulletin, III. i. 35) accepts Pisharoti’s views, holding the Nyāyaçāstra of Medhātithi (Pratimā, v. 8/9) to be the Manubhāṣya (tenth century), but this is wholly against the context, and Barnett’s view is surely incompatible with the priority of the Cārudatta to the Mṛcchakaṭikā which he admits, and the absence of Māhārāṣṭrī. Cf. also p. 341. [↑]