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]]