The Sanskrit drama

by Arthur Berriedale Keith

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.