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. [↑]