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THE
SANSKRIT DRAMA [[3]]

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THE
SANSKRIT DRAMA

in its
Origin, Development
Theory & Practice

BY A. BERRIEDALE KEITH, D.C.L., D.Litt.
Of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law, and of the Scottish Bar
Regius Professor of Sanskrit & Comparative Philology at the University of Edinburgh
Author of ‘Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon’, &c.

GEOFFREY CUMBERLEGE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C. 4

GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI CAPE TOWN IBADAN

Geoffrey Cumberlege, Publisher to the University

FIRST PUBLISHED 1924
REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY 1954

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN [[5]]

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PREFACE

Thirty-two years have elapsed since the appearance of Professor Sylvain Lévi’s admirable treatise, Le théâtre indien, the first adequate sketch of the origin and development of the Indian drama and of Indian dramatic theory. Since then the discovery of important fragments of the dramas of the great Buddhist poet Açvaghoṣa, and of the plays of the famous Bhāsa, has thrown unexpected light on the early history of the drama in India; the question of the origin of the drama has been the subject of elaborate investigation by Professors von Schroeder, Pischel, Hertel, Sir W. Ridgeway, Lüders, Konow, and myself; and the real significance and value of the Indian theory of the dramatic art have been brought out by the labours of Professor Jacobi. The time is therefore ripe for a fresh investigation of the origin and development of the drama in the light of the new materials available.

To bring the subject matter within moderate compass, I have confined it to the drama in Sanskrit or Prākrit, omitting any reference to vernacular dramas. I have also omitted from the account of the theory of drama all minor detail which appeared to have no more than the interest of ingenuity in subdivision and classification; I have had the less hesitation in doing so, because I have no doubt that the value and depth of the Indian theory of poetics have failed to receive recognition, simply because in the original sources what is important and what is valueless are presented in almost inextricable confusion. In tracing the development of the drama, I have laid stress only on the great writers and on dramatists who wrote before the end of the first millennium; of later works I have selected a few typical specimens for description; it seemed needless to dwell on plays which in the main show an excessive dependence [[6]]on older models and on the text-books of dramatic theory, and whose chief merit, when they have any, lies in skill and taste in versification. Valuable bibliographies of the dramas are contained in Mr. Montgomery Schuyler’s Bibliography of the Sanskrit Drama (1906), and in Professor Konow’s treatise, and it has seemed needless to do more than refer to the most important and accessible editions of the plays mentioned and to treatises which have appeared since the publication of these works.

Though the limits of space available have precluded any full investigation of the style of the dramatists, I have not followed Professor Lévi in leaving this aspect out of consideration. The translations given of the passages cited are intended merely to convey the main sense; I have therefore left without discussion difficulties of interpretation and allusion, and have resorted to prose. Verse translations from Sanskrit sometimes attain very real merit, but normally only in a way which has little affinity with Sanskrit poetry. H. H. Wilson’s versions of Sanskrit dramas in his Theatre of the Hindus for this reason, and also because the prose of the dramas is turned into verse, thus fail, despite their many intrinsic merits, to convey any precise idea of the effect of a Sanskrit drama.

I am indebted to my wife for much assistance and criticism.

A. BERRIEDALE KEITH.

Edinburgh University,
April, 1923. [[7]]

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CONTENTS

PART I. [THE ORIGIN OF THE SANSKRIT DRAMA]

PAGE

PART II. [THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SANSKRIT DRAMA]

PART III. [DRAMATIC THEORY]

PART IV. [DRAMATIC PRACTICE]

[English Index] 373

[Sanskrit Index] 394 [[10]]

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ABBREVIATIONS

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PART I

THE ORIGIN OF THE SANSKRIT DRAMA

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I

DRAMATIC ELEMENTS IN VEDIC LITERATURE

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1. The Indian Tradition of the Origin of the Drama

Indian tradition, preserved in the Nāṭyaçāstra,[1] the oldest of the texts of the theory of the drama, claims for the drama divine origin, and a close connexion with the sacred Vedas themselves. The golden age had no need for such amusements: ignorant of all pain, the sorrow, which is as essential to the art as joy itself, was inconceivable. The creation of the new form of literature was reserved to the silver age, when the gods approached the all-father and bade him produce something to give pleasure to the ears and eyes alike, a fifth Veda which, unlike the other four, would not be the jealous preserve of the three twice-born castes, but might be shared by the Çūdras also. Brahmā gave ear to the pleading, and designed to fashion a Veda in which tradition (itihāsa) should be combined with instruction in all the ends of men. To accomplish his task he took from the Ṛgveda the element of recitation, from the Sāmaveda song, from the Yajurveda the mimetic art, and from the Atharvaveda sentiment. Then he bade Viçvakarman, the divine architect, build a playhouse in which the sage Bharata was instructed to carry into practice the art thus created. The gods accepted with joy the new creation; Çiva contributed to it the Tāṇḍava dance, expressing violent emotion, Pārvatī, his spouse, the tender and voluptuous Lāsya, while Viṣṇu was responsible for the invention of the four dramatic styles, essential to the effect of any play. To Bharata fell the duty of transferring to earth this celestial Veda in the inferior and truncated form of the Nāṭyaçāstra.

The legend is interesting for its determination to secure the [[13]]participation of every member of the Hindu Trinity in the creation of the new art, and for its effort to claim that the fifth Veda of tradition was the Veda of the dramatic art. The older tradition, recorded and exploited by the epic,[2] recognizes as the fifth Veda the mass of traditions, and the Nāṭyaçāstra tacitly concedes this by representing the Nāṭyaveda as including these traditions. The legend, therefore, is not of great antiquity, nor need we place it long before the compilation of the Nāṭyaçāstra itself. The date of that text is uncertain, but we cannot with any assurance place it before the third century A.D. With the Indian tendency to find divine origins, it may well be that the tradition existed much earlier, but in the absence of any corroboration that must remain a mere hypothesis, for which no conclusive ground can be adduced. What is important is that none of the theorists on the drama appeal to any Vedic texts as representing dramas, whence it is natural to draw the conclusion that there was no Indian tradition extant in their time which pointed to the preservation among the sacred texts of dramas. Indeed, if it were worth while, the conclusion might legitimately be drawn that the absence of any drama in the Vedic literature was recognized, since it was necessary for the gods to ask Brahmā to create a completely new type of literature, suitable for an age posterior to that in which the Vedas already existed.

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2. The Dialogues of the Veda

The silence of Indian tradition is all the more remarkable because there do exist in the Ṛgveda itself a number of hymns which are obviously dialogues, and which are expressly recognized as such by early Indian tradition.[3] The number of such hymns is uncertain, for it is possible to add to those which clearly bear that character others whose interpretation might be improved by assuming a division of persons. There are, however, at least fifteen whose character as dialogues is quite undeniable, and most of these hymns are of marked interest. Thus in x. 10 Yama and Yamī, the primeval twins, whence in the legend are derived the races of men, engage in debate; [[14]]the poet, with a more refined sentiment than the legend, is uneasy regarding this primitive incest, and represents Yamī as intent on an effort, fruitless so far as the hymn goes, to induce Yama to accept and make fruitful her proffered love. A tantalizing, but certainly interesting, hymn in the same book (x. 95) gives a dialogue between Purūravas, and the nymph Urvaçī; he rebukes her inconstancy, but does not succeed in making her refrain from withdrawing from his gaze. In viii. 100 Nema Bhārgava utters an appeal to Indra, to which the god is pleased to give a reply. Sometimes there are three interlocutors; thus Agastya, the sage, has a conversation (i. 179) of an enigmatic type with his wife, Lopāmudrā, and their son; not less obscure is the dialogue between Indra and Vasukra, in which the wife of the latter plays a small part, in x. 28; and in iv. 18 we have a most confused dialogue between Indra, Aditi, and Vāmadeva. Even less intelligible is the famous debate between Indra, his wife, Indrāṇī, and Vṛṣākapi (x. 86), each interpreter of which is able to show the absurdity of the versions of his predecessors but seems incapable of recognizing the defects of his own. Or one of the interlocutors may be a troop, not an individual. Thus Saramā, the messenger of Indra, seeking the kine which have been taken away, goes to the demons, the Paṇis, and holds with them lively debate (x. 108). The gods also have a hard business (x. 51–3) to persuade Agni, the living fire, to persevere in the tedious occupation of bearing to them the oblations of mortals, and the dialogue in which they engage is vivid in the extreme, extending even to the breaking of a stanza into portions for two interlocutors. Two dialogues are of interest for their historical allusions, the converse of Viçvāmitra and the rivers (iii. 33) which he seeks to cross, and that of Vasiṣṭha with his sons (vii. 33), if indeed that is the correct interpretation of the speakers of the hymn. Indra again disputes with the Maruts (i. 165 and 170), who had disgraced themselves in his eyes by deserting him in the thick of his contest with the demon Vṛtra, but who succeed at last in placating his anger; in the former hymn Agastya seems also to intervene, by summing up the result at the close, and invoking the favour of the gods for himself. Similarly the account of Viçvāmitra’s dialogue ends with the assertion that [[15]]the Bharatas successfully crossed the rivers in search of booty, having won a passage by the intercession of their priest. The interesting, but obscure, hymn (iv. 42), in which Indra and Varuṇa seem to engage in a dispute as to their relative pre-eminence, is clearly commented on by the poet himself, and his intervention may be suspected even where it is not essential.

Now it is clear that the tradition of the ritual literature did not know what to make of the dialogues of the Ṛgveda. The genre of composition was one which died out in the later Vedic age; it is significant that the Atharvaveda knows but one hymn of that type (v. 11) in which the priest, Atharvan, begs the god for the payment due, a cow; the god is little inclined to accord his prayer, but finally is induced to relent and to add to the guerdon due the promise of eternal friendship. It is not in the least surprising, therefore, if we find that Yāska and Çaunaka in the fifth century B.C. were at variance as to whether the hymn x. 95 was a dialogue, as the former held, or a mere legend, as the latter believed.[4] In the commentary of Sāyaṇa we find that the tradition was unable to ascribe any ritual use for nearly all the hymns; the case of x. 86 is an exception, but it is significant that that hymn has little of a true dialogue, the three speakers rather uttering enigmas than conversing, and it was therefore easier to fit it into the inconspicuous part it occupies in the later ritual. We must, therefore, admit that we have in these dialogues the remnant of a style of poetry which died out in the later Vedic period.

Its original purpose is obscure, but a very interesting suggestion was made in 1869 by Max Müller in connexion with his version of Ṛgveda i. 165.[5] He conjectured that the ‘dialogue was repeated at sacrifices in honour of the Maruts or that possibly it was acted by two parties, one representing Indra, the other the Maruts and their followers’. In 1890 the suggestion was repeated with approval by Professor Lévi,[6] who added to it the argument that the Sāmaveda shows that the art of music had been fully developed by the Vedic age. Moreover the Ṛgveda[7] already knows maidens who, decked in splendid raiment, dance and attract lovers, and the Atharvaveda[8] tells [[16]]how men dance and sing to music. There is, therefore, a priori no fatal objection to assuming that the period of the Ṛgveda knew dramatic spectacles, religious in character, in which the priests assumed the rôles of gods and sages in order to imitate on earth the events of the heavens.

The logical consequence of this doctrine is seen in Professor von Schroeder’s elaborate theory[9] that the dialogue hymns, and also certain monologues, for instance x. 119, in which Indra appears as glorifying himself in the intoxication of his favourite Soma drink, are relics of Vedic mysteries, an inheritance in germ from Indo-European times. Ethnology shows us the close relation of music, dance, and drama among many peoples, and the curious phenomenon that Vedic religion knows of gods as dancers cannot be explained satisfactorily save on the assumption that the priests were used to see performed ritual dances, in themselves imitations of the cosmic dance in which the world was, on one view, created. Such dances partake of the nature of sympathetic magic, and they have an obvious parallel in the great sacrificial rites, which in the Brāhmaṇa period are undertaken in order to represent on earth the cosmic creation. It is true that we do not find in the Ṛgveda the phallic dances which in Greece and Mexico alike are held to be closely connected with the origin of drama, but that was because the priests of the Ṛgveda were in many respects austere, and disapproved of phallic deities of any kind. The dramas of the ritual, therefore, are in a sense somewhat out of the main line of the development of the drama; the popular side has survived through the ages in a rough way in the Yātrās well known in the literature of Bengal, while the refined and sacerdotalized Vedic drama passed away without a direct descendant.

Independent support for the view of the dialogues as mystery plays in nuce is given by Dr. Hertel,[10] whose argument is largely based on the doctrine that the Vedic hymns were always sung, and that in singing it would have been impossible for a single singer to make the necessary distinction between the different speakers, which would have been possible if the hymns had not [[17]]been sung. The hymns, therefore, represent the beginnings of a dramatic art, which may be compared with the form of the Gītagovinda.[11] But, what is more important, he seeks to find an actual drama on an extended scale in the Suparṇādhyāya,[12] a curious and comparatively late Vedic text. In his view, accordingly, the Vedic drama does not stand isolated; it is seen in the Ṛgveda only in its beginnings; the Suparṇādhyāya displays it en route to further development, and in the Yātrās we can see a continuation of the old type, which aids us in following the growth from the Vedic drama of the classical drama of India. In this regard there is a distinct divergence of view between the two supporters of the dramatic theory, for Professor von Schroeder regards the Yātrās as genuinely connected with the later drama, being developed in close connexion with the cult of Viṣṇu-Kṛṣṇa and Rudra-Çiva, but as representing a different development from the same root as the Vedic dialogues. Of this other side of the drama he finds hints in the traditional connexion of the Gandharvas and Apsarases with the drama, for these in his view are essentially phallic deities.

There is, of course, no doubt of the possibility of the dialogues really representing portions of the old ritual in which the priests assumed the character of gods or demons, for there are abundant parallels for such a supposition. But there is no sufficient ground to compel us to seek for such an explanation of these hymns; that the Ṛgveda contains nothing save what is connected with ritual is a postulate which is not made by the Indians themselves, and has no justification save in the desire for symmetry. On the contrary, it is perfectly legitimate and much more natural to regard the Ṛgveda as a collection of hymns, in the vast majority of cases of ritual origin, but including some more secular poetry, to which genus alone can we reasonably attribute the battle hymns of Viçvāmitra and Vasiṣṭha. The fact that such hymns disappear in the later Vedic literature is then natural, for that literature represents unquestionably hymns collected definitely for ritual uses, and therefore nothing was admitted which could not be employed therein. To assume, therefore, that a ritual explanation must [[18]]be found, and to find it in ritual drama is illegitimate, and the only justification for accepting the view in any case must lie in the fact that it affords a better explanation of the hymn than any which can be given otherwise.

It is impossible to feel any certainty that the necessary proof has been brought in any case. The hymn ix. 112, which describes in four stanzas in a rather humorous style the various ends of men, ending with the refrain in each case, ‘O Soma, flow for Indra’, is transformed into the marching song of a popular festival at which mummers represent vegetation deities and symbols of fertility are carried. The tradition knows nothing of these happenings, and the hymn certainly suggests none to the average intelligence. On the contrary, it seems a very natural piece of witty sarcasm, to which point is lent by the use of the refrain, and to deny the possibility of sarcasm to the thinkers who produce the advanced and sceptical views expressed in the Ṛgveda is certainly unwise.[13] To explain the Vṛṣākapi hymn (x. 86) as a piece of fertility magic in dramatic form is ingenious, but unluckily it in no way contributes towards the explanation of the hymn, and, therefore, is as valueless as the other possible explanations which have been offered. The same condemnation must be passed on the effort to find a mimic race at a festival described in the strange Mudgala hymn (x. 102) which if it is intelligible at all, seems to have a mythological reference, and not to refer either to actual or mimic races.

An ingenious effort is that made to adduce ethnological parallels to prove that the hymn x. 119, which is a straightforward monologue, placed in the mouth of Indra, celebrating the effect of drinking the Soma, must be regarded as part of a ritual in which at the close of the drinking of the Soma in the rite, a priest comes forward, assuming the rôle of Indra, and celebrates in monologue the strength of the juice of the holy plant. Among the Cora Indians, after a wine festival, a god is introduced showing the effects of the drink, while a singer celebrates its potent merits. There is, however, a fatal hiatus in the proof; the poem by itself is perfectly clear, and to seek [[19]]for an explanation so far-fetched is idle expenditure of energy. The same condemnation must be expressed of the effort to find in the frog hymn (vii. 103) a song sung by men masked as frogs, dancing as a spell to secure rain. If we grant that the hymn is really intended as a rain spell, which is moderately probable though not proved, it needs no further explanation whatever, and, if we do not accept this suggestion but adopt the older view that it satyrizes in an amusing way the antics of certain performers of the ritual, the character of the hymn as a fertility spell vanishes at once. The errors of method are seen excellently in the fantastic conclusion that the gambler’s hymn (x. 34), in which a gambler deplores the fatal love for the dice which has led to his reducing even his beloved wife to ruin, is a dramatic monologue in which dancers represent the leaping and falling dice. The dialogue of Yama and Yamī reduces itself to a fertility drama, from which the prudishness of the Vedic age has omitted the vital part of the union of the pair. The curious hymn, iv. 18, which tells of Indra’s unnatural birth becomes a drama by the assumption that of thirteen verses seven are ascribed to the poet himself. We are in fact in every case presented with a bare possibility, which sometimes involves absurdities, and in all cases does nothing whatever to help us in interpreting the hymns. There is nothing, it is true, inconceivable in the view that the hymn of Saramā and the Paṇis was actually recited by two different parties, and thus was a ritual drama in nuce; what is certain is that the later Vedic period knew nothing whatever of such a practice; the only hymn in dialogue form for which it finds a use (x. 86) is assigned an employment in which there is nothing dramatic whatever. The absurdity of the whole process reaches perhaps its fullest exhibition in the dissertation on the hymn regarding Agastya and Lopāmudrā (i. 179), for it becomes a fertility rite performed after the corn has been cut; Lopāmudrā becomes ‘that which has the seal of disappearance upon it’, a feat which is impossible in the Vedic language; the hymn itself suits far better the obvious alternative[14] of ‘one who enjoys love at the cost of breaking her marital vows’. To explain the hymns of Indra and the Maruts (i. 170, 171, and 165) we are to hold that we [[20]]have three scenes of a dramatic performance, which takes place at a Soma sacrifice to celebrate the victory of Indra over the serpent Vṛtra, ending with a dance of the Maruts, represented by youths fully armed. This weapon dance is a relic of old vegetation ritual, the driving out of the old year, winter, or death, which is the foundation of the dances of the Roman Salii, the Greek Kouretes, the Phrygian Korybantes, and the German sword dancers. How can it be justifiable to spin theories thus in order to explain hymns which are taken by themselves without serious difficulty save in detail?

It is equally impossible to find any cogency in Dr. Hertel’s arguments from the necessity of assuming two sets of performers, since the hymns were sung and a single voice in singing could not distinguish the interlocutors. Doubtless, if we accepted this necessity, we would be inclined to admit a priori that the song would tend to be accompanied by action and by the dance, so that drama would be on the way to development. But we do not know that the hymns of the Ṛgveda were always sung; on the contrary we do know with absolute certainty that, while the verses of the Sāmaveda were sung (gai), the verses of the Ṛgveda were recited (çaṅs). True, we do not have precise information of the exact character of the recitation, but there is not the slightest ground to suppose that a reciter could not have conveyed by differences in his mode of recitation the distinction between two different interlocutors, and the fact that this point is ignored in the argument is fatal to it. Moreover, we must admit that we are wholly ignorant as to the degree in which it was desired by the authors or reciters of these hymns to convey these differences of person. We do not know, and the ritual text-books did not know, exactly in what way these hymns were used. We find in the Ṛgveda a number of philosophic hymns; why should we not admit that a philosophic dialogue such as that of Yama and Yamī is possible without demanding that it should be a fragment of ritual? We have historical hymns in Maṇḍala vii; why should we turn the dialogue of Viçvāmitra and the rivers into a drama? Why should we insist that all hymns were composed for ritual use, when we know that ancient tales were among the things used to pass the period immediately following the disposal of the dead, and [[21]]that during the pauses in the great horse sacrifice, performed to assert the wide sovereignty of the king, both Brahmins and warriors sang songs to fill up the time? We may legitimately assume that in the Ṛgveda we have hymns of other than directly ritual or magic purpose; the gambler’s hymn cannot by any reasonable stretch of the imagination be taken as ritual.[15]

It is also impossible to accept the view that the Vedic drama died out under the chilling effect of the disapproval of the priests of fertility ritual. We find, on the contrary, that fertility ritual is fully recognized later in the Mahāvrata ceremonial, and also in the horse sacrifice, which are both known to the other Vedic Saṁhitās, though this feature of the rite is not referred to, directly at least, in the Ṛgveda. Moreover, even if the disapproval of fertility rites had been real, why should it have brought to a close the drama? The dialogues of Agni and the gods, of Saramā and the Paṇis, of Varuṇa and Indra, of Indra and the singer—and perhaps Vāyu also (viii. 100), have no connexion with fertility, and this aspect of drama need not have perished. Dr. Hertel is certainly right in demanding traces of development, not of decadence, but his great effort to find a full drama in the Suparṇādhyāya must definitely be pronounced a failure. It involves an elaborate invention of stage directions, the preparation of a list of dramatis personae largely on the basis of imagination, and a translation of the piece based on this theory, which can be shown in detail to be open to the certainty of error. Add to this the fact that there is no hint in Indian tradition that the Suparṇādhyāya, on the face of it a late imitation of Vedic work proper, had ever any dramatic intention or use.

A very different theory of the purpose of these hymns is that which we owe to Professors Windisch,[16] Oldenberg,[17] and Pischel.[18] They represent an old type, Indo-European in antiquity, of composition of epic character, in which the verses, representing the points of highest emotion, were preserved, and the connecting links were in prose which was not stereotyped, and therefore [[22]]has not come down to us. The theory is capable of combination with the suggestion that these hymns in dialogue were dramatic; thus Prof. Pischel explained the combination of prose and verse in the Sanskrit drama as a relic of this early form of literature, which thus might serve both epic and dramatic ends.[19] Despite the considerable vogue which the theory has at one time or other attained, and the energetic defence of it by Professor Oldenberg, who has based upon it an elaborate theory of the development of Indian prose, it is doubtful whether we can accept the view.[20] It is a very real difficulty here also that the tradition shows no trace of knowledge of this characteristic of the hymns, and we do not find any work actually in this form in the whole of the Vedic literature. The alleged instances of this type, such as those of the tale of Çunaḥçepa in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, or the working up in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa of the legend of Purūravas and Urvaçī cannot possibly be made to fit the theory. In the latter case we have a tale, which manifestly does not agree with the verses of the Ṛgveda, and which is openly and obviously an attempt to work that hymn into the explanation of the ritual; in the former we have the use of gnomic verses to illustrate a theme, a form of literature which is preserved through the history of Sanskrit prose, and portions of a verse narrative. The true type, verses used at the point of emotion, especially, therefore, to give the vital speeches and replies, is thus not represented by any text of the Vedic literature. Whether it ever existed at all in the sense postulated by the theory, whether there are traces of it in the Pāli Jātakas, or whether its existence even there is a misunderstanding, are questions which are not in vital connexion with the origin of Sanskrit drama, and may, therefore, here be left undiscussed. One consideration, however, is germane; if it were necessary to explain the Vedic dialogues by this theory, it would certainly be possible to do so far more effectively and simply than by the theory of their being the remains of ritual dramas. The most serious objection to both theories is that they are not really necessary. Professor Geldner[21] who formerly patronized [[23]]the theory of Oldenberg has sought to explain the hymns in question as ballads.[22]

Nor of course is it necessary to make any use of this theory in order to explain the mixture of prose and verse in the Sanskrit drama. The use of prose needs no defence or explanation; that of verse is what was essentially to be expected, in view of the importance of song as a form of amusement as well as in worship both in Vedic times and later, and of the fact that our extant dramas draw so largely on epic tradition, preserved in versified texts. Nothing indeed is more noteworthy in Sanskrit literature than the determination to turn everything, law, astronomy, architecture, rhetoric, even philosophy into a metrical form. The theorists on the drama give no suggestion that the prose was regarded as any less fixed in character than the verses, or that it was not the duty of the author of the drama to be as careful in preparing the one as the other, and the manuscript tradition of the drama does not hint at any distinction of the two elements as regards source.

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3. Dramatic Elements in Vedic Ritual

When we leave out of account the enigmatic dialogues of the Ṛgveda we can see that the Vedic ritual contained within itself the germs of drama, as is the case with practically every primitive form of worship. The ritual did not consist merely of the singing of songs or recitations in honour of the gods; it involved a complex round of ceremonies in some of which there was undoubtedly present the element of dramatic representation; that is the performers of the rites assumed for the time being personalities other than their own. There is an interesting instance of this in the ritual of the Soma purchase for the Soma sacrifice. The seller is in some versions at the close of the ceremony deprived of his price, and beaten or pelted with clods. Now there can be no doubt that we have here, not a reflex of a disapproval of trafficking in Soma, but a mimic account of the obtaining of Soma from its guardians the Gandharvas, and there is some truth in the comparison drawn [[24]]between the Çūdra who plays the rôle of the mishandled seller and the much misused Devil of the mediaeval mystery plays.[23] But we must not exaggerate the amount of representation; it falls very far short of an approach to drama, a point which is overlooked by Professor von Schroeder throughout his discussions. A drama proper can only be said to come into being when the actors perform parts deliberately for the sake of the performance, to give pleasure to themselves and others, if not profit also; if a ritual includes elements of representation, the aim is not the representation, but the actors are seeking a direct religious or magic result. It would be absurd, for instance, to treat the identification in the marriage ritual of the husband and wife with the sky and the earth as in any sense dramatic or to see any drama in the performance of the royal consecration, which is based carefully on the divine consecration of Indra, doubtless in the view that thus the king was for the time being identified with the great god, and so acquired some measure of his prowess.

In the Mahāvrata[24] we find elements which are of importance as indicating the materials from which the drama might develop. The Mahāvrata is plainly a rite intended to strengthen at the winter solstice the sun, so that it may resume its vigour and make fruitful the earth. Now an essential part of the rite is a struggle between a Vaiçya, whose colour is to be white, and a Çūdra, black in colour, over a round white skin, which ultimately falls to the victorious Vaiçya. It is impossible, without ignoring the obvious nature of this rite, not to see in it a mimic contest to gain the sun, the power of light, the Aryan, striving against that of darkness, the Çūdra. In the face of the ethnological parallels it is impossible also to sever this episode from the numerous forms of the contest of summer and winter, the first represented by the white Aryan, the second by the dark Çūdra. We have in fact a primitive dramatic ritual, and one which it may be added was popular throughout the Vedic age. The same ceremony is also marked by a curious episode; a Brahmin student and a hetaera are introduced as engaged in coarse abuse of each other, and in the older form of the ritual [[25]]we actually find that sexual union as a fertility rite is permitted, though later taste dismissed the practice as undesirable. The ritual purpose of this abuse is undeniable; it is aimed at producing fertility, and has a precise parallel in the untranslatable language employed in the horse sacrifice during the period when the unlucky chief queen is compelled to lie beside the slaughtered horse, in order to secure, we may assume, the certainty of obtaining a son for the monarch whose conquests are thus celebrated.[25]

There are, however, nothing but elements here, and we have reasonable certainty that no drama was known. In the Yajurveda we have long lists of persons of every kind covering every possible sort of occupation, and the term Naṭa, which is normally the designation of the actor in the later literature is unknown. We find but one term[26] which later ever has that sense, Çailūṣa, and there is nothing whatever to show that an actor here is meant; a musician or a dancer may be denoted, for both dancing and singing are mentioned in close proximity.

Professor Hillebrandt,[27] on the other hand, is satisfied that we have actual ritual drama before us, and Professor Konow[28] insists that these are indeed ritual dramas, but that they are borrowed by the ritual from the popular mime of the time, which accordingly must have known dialogue, abusive conversation and blows, but of which the chief parts were dance, song, and music which are reckoned in the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa[29] as the arts, but of which the Pāraskara Gṛhya Sūtra[30] disapproves for the use of men of the three higher castes. The evidence for this assumption is entirely lacking, and it is extremely significant that the Vedic texts ignore the Naṭa,[31] whose activity belongs according to all the evidence to a later period. It is, of course, always possible to deprecate any argument from silence, though the value of this contention is diminished by the very remarkable enumerations of the different forms of occupation given in the Puruṣamedha sections of the [[26]]Yajurveda, where in the imaginary sacrifice of men the imagination of the Brahmins appears to have laboured to enumerate every form of human activity. But in the absence of any proof that secular pantomime is older than religious throughout the world, and in the absence of anything to indicate that it was so in the case of India, it seems quite impossible to accept Professor Konow’s suggested origin of drama.

Of other elements which enter into drama we find the songs of the Sāmaveda, and the use of ceremonial dances. Thus at the Mahāvrata maidens dance round the fire as a spell to bring down rain for the crops, and to secure the prosperity of the herds. Before the marriage ceremony is completed[32] there is a dance of matrons whose husbands are still alive, obviously to secure that the marriage shall endure and be fruitful. When a death takes place, and the ashes of the deceased are collected, to be laid away, the mourners move round the vase which contains the last relics of the dead, and dancers are present who dance to the sound of the lute and the flute; dance, music, and song fill the whole day of mourning.[33] Dancing is closely associated throughout the history of the Indian theatre with the drama, and in the ritual of Çiva and Viṣṇu-Kṛṣṇa it has an important part. Hence the doctrine which has the approval of Professor Oldenberg[34] and which finds the origin of drama in the sacred dance, a dance, of course, accompanied by gesture of pantomimic character; combined with song, and later enriched by dialogue, this would give rise to the drama. If we further accept the view that the dialogue in prose was added from the ritual element seen in the abuse at the horse sacrifice and the Mahāvrata, then within the Vedic ritual we may discern all the elements for the growth of drama present.

In this sense we may speak of the drama as having its origin in the Vedic period, but it may be doubted whether anything is gained by such a proposition. Unless the hymns of the Ṛgveda present us with real drama, which is most implausible, we have not the slightest evidence that the essential synthesis of elements and development of plot, which constitute a true [[27]]drama, were made in the Vedic age. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that it was through the use of epic recitations that the latent possibilities of drama were evoked, and the literary form created. One very important point in this regard has certainly often been neglected. The Sanskrit drama does not consist, as the theory suggests, of song and prose as its vital elements; the vast majority of the stanzas, which are one of its chief features, were recited, not sung, and it was doubtless from the epic that the practice of recitation was in the main derived. Professor Oldenberg[35] admits in fact the great importance of the epic on the development of drama, but it may be more accurate to say that without epic recitation there would and could have been no drama at all. Assuredly we have no clear proof of such a thing as drama existing until later than we have assurance of the recitation of epic passages by Granthikas, as will be seen below. [[28]]

[1] i. 2 ff. [↑]

[2] Hopkins, Great Epic of India, pp. 7, 10, 53. [↑]

[3] Keith, JRAS. 1911, pp. 981 ff. [↑]

[4] Sieg, Die Sagenstoffe des Ṛgveda, p. 27. [↑]

[5] SBE. xxxii. 182 f. [↑]

[6] TI. i. 307 f. [↑]

[7] i. 92. 4. [↑]

[8] xii. 1. 41. [↑]

[9] Mysterium und Mimus im Rigveda (1908); VOJ. xxii. 223 ff.; xxiii. 1 ff., 270 f. [↑]

[10] VOJ. xviii. 59 ff., 137 ff.; xxiii. 273 ff.; xxiv. 117 ff. Cf. Charpentier, VOJ. xxiii. 33 ff.; Die Suparṇasage (1922) is somewhat confused and uncritical. [↑]

[11] See ch. xi., § 9; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 130 f. [↑]

[12] See also Jarl Charpentier, Die Suparṇasage (Uppsala, 1922). [↑]

[13] This is quite consistent with the ritual use in a Soma ‘wish’ offering suggested by Oldenberg, GGA. 1909, pp. 79 ff. Cf. his remarks on vii. 103 in Ṛgveda-Noten, ii. 67. [↑]

[14] Oldenberg, GGA. 1909, p. 77, n. 4. [↑]

[15] Keith, JRAS. 1911, p. 1006. [↑]

[16] Cf. Sansk. Phil. pp. 404 ff. [↑]

[17] ZDMG. xxxvii. 54 ff.; xxxix. 52 ff.; GGA. 1909, pp. 66 ff.; GN. 1911, pp. 441 ff.; Zur Geschichte der altindischen Prosa (1917), pp. 53 ff.; Das Mahabharata, pp. 21 ff. [↑]

[18] VS. ii. 42 ff. GGA. 1891, pp. 351 ff. [↑]

[19] Compare Oldenberg, Die Literatur des alten Indien, p. 241. [↑]

[20] See Keith, JRAS. 1911, pp. 981 ff.; 1912, pp. 429 ff.; Rigveda Brāhmaṇas, pp. 68 ff. [↑]

[21] Die indische Balladendichtung (1913). Cf. G. M. Miller, The Popular Ballad (1905). [↑]

[22] The existence of this type in the Epic is certainly most improbable, and in the Jātakas it is not frequent; cf. Charpentier, Die Suparṇasage, and Winternitz’s admissions, GIL. ii. 368 with Oldenberg, GN. 1918, pp. 429 ff.; 1919, pp. 61 ff. [↑]

[23] Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth., i. 69 ff. [↑]

[24] Keith, Śāṅkhāyana Āraṇyaka, pp. 72 ff. [↑]

[25] Keith, HOS. XVIII. cxxxv. [↑]

[26] VS. xxx. 4; TB. iii. 4. 2. [↑]

[27] AID. pp. 22 f. [↑]

[28] ID. pp. 42 ff. [↑]

[29] xxix. 5. [↑]

[30] ii. 7. 3. [↑]

[31] The Prākritic form of the term as opposed to Vedic nṛtu and nṛtta is legitimate evidence for the development of pantomimic dancing in circles more popular than priestly. But it does nothing to show that such dancing was originally secular, or that it rather than religious dancing gave a factor to drama. [↑]

[32] Çān̄khāyana Gṛhya Sūtra, i. 11. 5. [↑]

[33] Caland, Die altindischen Todten- und Bestattungsgebräuche, pp. 138 ff. [↑]

[34] Die Literatur des alten Indien, p. 237; Macdonell, Sanskrit Literature, p. 347. [↑]

[35] Die Literatur des alten Indien, p. 241. In Mexico we have the material of a ritual drama (K. Th. Preuss, Archiv für Anthropologie, 1904, pp. 158 ff.), but not the epic element. [↑]

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II

POST-VEDIC LITERATURE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA

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1. The Epics

The great epic of India, the Mahābhārata, in the whole extent of its older portions, does not recognize in any explicit manner the existence of the drama.[1] The term Naṭa indeed occurs, and, if it meant actor, the existence of the drama would be proved, but it may equally well merely denote pantomimist. This conclusion, moreover, is strongly supported by the strange fact that, if the epic knew the drama, it should never mention any of its characteristics or such a standing character as the Vidūṣaka. There is, what is still more significant, even in the later parts of the epic, such as the Çānti and Anuçāsana Parvans, no clear allusion to the art, for the passage in the Çānti[2] in which Professor Hillebrandt has found an allusion to dramatic artists can perfectly well apply to pantomimes, and in the latter text[3] the passage in which the commentator Nīlakaṇṭha finds comedians and dancers (naṭa-nartakāḥ) yields perfectly good senses as pantomimists and dancers, both occupations there repudiated by Brahmins. To find the drama we are compelled to have recourse to the Harivaṅça,[4] which is a deliberate continuation of the Mahābhārata, and there we have explicit evidence, for we learn of players who made a drama out of the Rāmāyaṇa legend. But this is of no importance for the purpose of determining the date of the drama; the Harivaṅça is of uncertain date, but in all probability, as we have it, it cannot be placed earlier than the second or third century A.D., long after the [[29]]time when there is no doubt of the existence of a Sanskrit drama.

The Rāmāyaṇa lends no aid to the attempt to establish an early existence of drama; we hear of festivals and concourses (samāja) where Naṭas and Nartakas delight themselves,[5] and even of the speaking of Nāṭakas;[6] in another passage the term Vyāmiçraka[7] denotes, if we believe the commentator, plays in mingled languages. But, accepting all these references as genuine, which we are not obliged to do, the passages have manifestly no claim to early date, for other reasons than the allusions, and leave us again without any early evidence.

But, while the epics cannot be said to know the drama, there is abundant evidence of the strong influence on the development of the drama exercised by the recitation of the epics. The long continued popularity of these recitations is attested throughout the literature; at the beginning of the seventh century A.D.[8] a Brahmin, Somaçarman, akin to the royal house of Cambodia, presented to a temple in that far-off outpost of Indian civilization a complete copy of the Bhārata, in order that regular recitations might take place, and almost contemporaneously Bāṇa in the Kādambarī depicts the queen as hastening to the temple of Çiva to hear the recitation of the epic. Four centuries later Kṣemendra reproaches his contemporaries with their equal eagerness to hear such recitations, and their reluctance to carry out in practice the excellent advice contained in them. We have vivid accounts from recent time of such recitations not only in temples but in villages, when the generosity of some rich man has secured the presence, if need be, for three months or longer of the reciters, Kathakas, to go over the huge poem, which claims to be an encyclopaedia of all useful knowledge as well as the best of poems. The reciters divide themselves into two classes, the Pāṭhakas, who repeat the poem, and the Dhārakas, who expound it in the vernacular for the edification of the people, whose deep interest in the recitations is attested; if the Rāmāyaṇa is the epic chosen for recitation, the departure [[30]]of the hero into exile excites their tears and sobs, even to the interruption of the recital; when he returns and ascends the throne the village is illuminated and garlanded.[9] Fortunately we have in a bas-relief[10] from Sānchi, which may safely be placed before the Christian era, a representation of a group of these Kathakas. We see in it that they accompanied with music in some degree their recitations, danced, and indicated by gestures the sentiments of the characters they presented. We have thus something which in its nature is far from undramatic; given the use of dialogue, the drama would be present in embryo. This step is foreshadowed but not actually taken in the account given in the later additions to the Rāmāyaṇa[11] of the first recitation of that poem. Vālmīki, the author of the narrative of Rāma’s deeds, teaches the poem to Kuça and Lava, the children whom Sītā in exile bears to Rāma; they enter Ayodhyā at the moment when the king performs the horse sacrifice, and excite the curiosity of the king himself, who hears the recitation of his own deeds by the two rhapsodes, and recognizes them for his own sons.

The term Bhārata,[12] which is an appellation of the comedian in the later texts, attests doubtless the connexion of the rhapsodes with the growth of the drama. It has survived in the modern form of Bhāṭ denoting a class of reciters, who are the inheritors of a tradition of recitation of the epics, and who are expert in genealogy, enjoy general consideration, and by their mere presence with a caravan assure its passage in safety. The Bhāratas must be the rhapsodes of the Bhārata tribe,[13] whose fame is great in the early history of India, whose special fire is known to the Ṛgveda, and who have a special offering (hotrā) of their own. The Mahābhārata is the great epic of the family, preserved by their care. With the passage of time the rhapsodes doubtless took upon them the newer art of drama. Bhavabhūti in the Uttararāmacarita shows himself conscious of the debts owed by the drama to the epic, and the clearest proof is now available in the dramas of Bhāsa, with their wide indebtedness to the great epic itself. [[31]]

The term Kuçīlava, which occasionally denotes actor, is apparently derived from the Kuça and Lava of the Rāmāyaṇa; the mode of formation of the compound is indeed strange, for it is not obvious why it should have been formed on the mode of compounds in which the first member represents a woman’s name, but it is equally, if not more difficult, to imagine how it could be derived from the prefix ku and çīla manners, denoting ‘of bad morals’. Weber’s attempt to compare this name with Çailūṣa of the Vedic texts and Çilālin, who is connected with a Sūtra for Naṭas, is obviously impossible, and it may be that the name, derived originally from Kuça and Lava, was later by a witticism altered to Kuçīlava as a hit against the morals of the actors, which were recognized on every hand to be bad.[14]

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2. The Grammarians

In Pāṇini[15] we find mention of Naṭasūtras, text-books for Naṭas, ascribed to Çilālin and Kṛçāçva; the fact is recorded because of the formation of the names assumed by their followers, Çailālins and Kṛçāçvins. The names are curious; it has been suggested by Professor Lévi to see in them ironical appellations; the Kṛçāçvins are those whose horses are meagre, with an ironic reference to the great Indo-Iranian hero Kṛçāçva, while the Çailālins have nothing but stones for their beds in pitiful contrast with the fame of the Vedic school of that name, whose Çailāli Brāhmaṇa is known to us. But we unfortunately are here as ever in no position to establish the meaning of Naṭa, which may mean no more than a pantomime. The conclusion is important, for Pāṇini’s date is most probably the fourth century B.C., and the fact that he has no term certainly denoting drama is of significance.

In Patañjali,[16] the author of the Mahābhāṣya, whose date is certainly to be placed with reasonable assurance about 140 B.C., we find much more effective evidence bearing on the existence of drama. We learn from his criticism on a rule laid down by his predecessor Kātyāyana, as to the use of the imperfect tense of things which a person has himself seen, that it was normal [[32]]to use in his time phrases describing a past event as if it had occurred before the eyes of the speaker; we can understand this only of a character in a dramatic performance of some kind, and it is significant that the phrase cited in illustration of the usage is ‘Vāsudeva has slain Kaṅsa’. The reference is to the famous legend of Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva, and his wicked uncle Kaṅsa, who first sought to destroy him in his childhood, and afterward paid the penalty of his evil deeds by death at the hands of Kṛṣṇa. This notice receives further elucidation by a famous passage, first adduced by Weber, in which Patañjali explains the justification of the use of phrases such as ‘He causes the death of Kaṅsa’, and ‘He causes the binding of Bali’.[17] Both these deeds, the actual killing, the actual binding, are deeds of the remote past; how then can the present be in place? The answer, we learn, is that the events are described in the present because the sense is, not that they are being actually done, but that they are being described. Of the modes of description no less than three are then set out. In the first place we have the case of the Çaubhikas or Çobhanikas, who before the eyes of the spectators actually carry out—naturally in appearance only in the first case—the killing of Kaṅsa and the binding of Bali; they represent in fact by action, without words, so far as this passage formally tells us, the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa, the binding of the evil Bali. Secondly, we have the painters; they describe by their paintings, for on the canvases themselves we see the blows rained on Kaṅsa and the dragging of him about; a painter, that is to say, kills Kaṅsa and has Bali bound by painting a scene describing these incidents. Thirdly, we have those who use words, and not action of the Çaubhika type, the Granthikas; they also, while relating the fortunes of their subjects from their birth to their death, make them real to the minds of their audience, for they divide [[33]]themselves into two parties, one set adhering to Kṛṣṇa, and one to Kaṅsa, and they adopt different colours, the adherents of Kaṅsa black, and those of Kṛṣṇa red, though, by what is probably an erroneous correction, the colours are ascribed in the inverse order by many of the manuscripts.

This is clear and intelligible, and it is unfortunate that it has recently been misunderstood by Professor Lüders,[18] with disastrous results for the comprehension of the notice. The Çaubhikas are made to be persons who explain to the audience shadow pictures, a view which has not even the merit of Indian tradition, and, as will be seen below, contradicts entirely the facts known as to the shadow play in India, where it is recorded only in late mediaeval times. The traditional rendering in India of the statement is recorded by Kaiyaṭa, more than a thousand years later; it is frankly obscure; Professor Lévi[19] renders it as meaning that the Çaubhikas are those who teach actors, representing Kaṅsa, and so on, the mode of recitation, a version which is doubtless very difficult. The sense accorded to it by Professor Lüders is that the Çaubhikas explain to the audience dumb actors, a form of drama which is recorded as performed by the Jhāṁkīs of Bombay and Mathurā in modern India, but of which in ancient times we have no certainty, since this is the only passage which even remotely can be supposed to allude to it. The obvious view, that of Weber,[20] that we have a reference to a pantomimic killing and binding, seems irresistible; the use of the causative is explained by this fact; if Bali and Kaṅsa were persons of to-day the simple verb would express their binding and slaying; because it is mere actors, the causative is used, and its use denotes that the act is not now real but an exposition of a past act. ‘He causes the binding of Bali’ [[34]]means ‘he describes the binding of Bali’. The only legitimate doubt on the passage is that regarding the exact mode of performance of the Çaubhikas; the word pratyakṣam in the text insists that it is done before the eyes of the audience, and we may justly assume that the Çaubhikas performed manual acts. Did they also use dialogue? There is nothing in the passage either to show that they did or that they did not; the contrast which follows later with Granthikas, whose medium was words, is sufficiently pointed if they used action as well as words. The most that can be said is that Çaubhika or Çobhanika does not obtain currency later as denoting an actor, which may tell against the view that Patañjali is here actually alluding to drama proper. Further we cannot go; to argue that, if he had known drama proper, he must have clearly mentioned it, is to ignore entirely the manner of Patañjali, whose silence as to what he must have known is as common as his incidental mention of current topics.

The error of Professor Lüders in insisting on a literal interpretation of the passage as referring to different sorts of narrators by words comes out with special clearness as regards the second class of persons alluded to by Patañjali. That they are painters whose canvases are living speeches was clearly recognized by the commentators in India. Haradatta tells us in the simplest and plainest language that when men look at a picture on which is shown the death of Kaṅsa at the hands of Vāsudeva they interpret the picture as the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa by the blessed Vāsudeva, and thus by the pictured Vāsudeva cause to be slain the pictured Kaṅsa, for this is the conception which they form as they gaze, and he adds, very naturally, that this explains the practice of saying of artists that they cause the slaying of Kaṅsa, the binding of Bali.[21] It would be difficult to see how the idea could have been more forcibly expressed, but Professor Lüders interprets it in the sense that artists occasionally explain their own pictures to others, an idea which is not merely wholly impossible, but renders Haradatta’s [[35]]language nonsense. On this basis he finds that the Çaubhikas added to their business of explaining shadow pictures that of showing and explaining other pictures, in this respect again without any support from tradition.

Finally Professor Lüders denies any division of parties among the Granthikas, whose name he derives, like the scholiasts, from the use of manuscript books in recitation, rejecting the idea of cyclic rhapsodes suggested by Dr. Dahlmann.[22] The derivation is too speculative in sense to be relied upon, but there is no doubt that the Granthikas were reciters. Their exact means of expressing the sense is not quite clear owing to the unlucky divergence of reading in the text, and the fact that the precise meaning of the second word in the most probable reading (çabda-gaḍu-mātram)[23] is wholly unknown. It is, accordingly, wholly illegitimate to assert that they used words alone, and on the score of that to deny that they could be said to divide themselves into two parties, one of followers of Kaṅsa, one of adherents of Kṛṣṇa, bearing appropriate colours. This view reduces us to the impossible theory that the division of parties refers to the audience. Apart from all questions of regard for the Sanskrit language, which Patañjali should be assumed capable of writing, the ludicrous result is achieved that among a pious audience of Kṛṣṇa adorers we are to suppose that there were many who favoured Kaṅsa, the cruel uncle whose vices are redeemed by not a single virtue, and for whose fate Sanskrit literature, pious and devout, shows not a sign of regret. The change of colour, which is asserted to be the only possible sense of the term varṇānyatvam, wholly without ground, is referred to the spectators, who turn red with anger if supporters of Kaṅsa, black with fear if they support Vāsudeva. Professor Hillebrandt, who has unfortunately accepted the new theory to the extent that he believes that there were persons who carried round pictures and explained them for a living, justly declines to believe in the possibility of a Hindu audience containing persons who wished the success of Kaṅsa, and he accepts the plain fact that the Granthikas took parts. The colours he [[36]]explains, however, as indicating the sentiments which the two parties feel, a view for which there is the authority of the Nāṭyaçāstra which ascribes to each sentiment an appropriate colour, and, accepting the reading of Kielhorn, he is compelled to assume that the supporters of Kaṅsa on the stage showed as the dominant sentiment fury, while those of Kṛṣṇa are reduced to manifest fear as the sentiment of their side. But it is frankly incredible that the followers of Kṛṣṇa, the invincible, who calmly and coolly proceeds from victory to victory culminating in the overthrow of his wicked uncle, accomplished with ease and celerity, should show fear as the dominant sentiment, and it is clear that on this view we should accept the reading which inverts the descriptions,[24] thus allotting to the supporters of Kaṅsa the fear, to those of Kṛṣṇa the fury of slaughter and revenge. But in this trait it is more probable, as will be seen below, that we have a trace of the religious origin of the drama.[25]

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3. Religion and the Drama

We seem in fact to have in the Mahābhāṣya evidence of a stage in which all the elements of drama were present; we have acting in dumb show, if not with words also; we have recitations divided between two parties. Moreover, we hear of Naṭas who not only recite but also sing; we find that in the days of the Mahābhāṣya the Naṭa’s hunger is as proverbial as the dancing of the peacock, that it was no rare thing for him to receive blows, and that a special term, Bhrūkuṅsa, existed to name him who played women’s parts, appropriately made up.[26] The Mahābhāṣya does not seem to recognize women as other than dancers or singers,[27] so that it may well be that in the infancy of the [[37]]dramatic art the rôles of women were reserved for men, though in the classical drama this was by no means necessarily the case. We cannot absolutely prove that in Patañjali’s time the drama in its full form of action allied to speech was present, but we know that all its elements existed, and we may legitimately and properly accept its existence in a primitive form.

That form, from the express mention of the subjects of the dramatic exhibitions, we may deduce to have been of the nature of a religious drama. It is difficult not to see in the Kaṅsavadha, the death of Kaṅsa at the hands of Kṛṣṇa, the refined version of an older vegetation ritual in which the representative of the outworn spirit of vegetation is destroyed. Colour is given to this theory by the remarkable fact that in one reading the partisans of the young Kṛṣṇa are red in hue, those of Kaṅsa are black. Now as Kṛṣṇa’s name indicates black, it would be almost inevitable that the original attribution of red to his followers should be corrected by well-meaning scribes to black, and this explains effectively the transposition found in the bulk of the manuscripts. In the red hue of Kṛṣṇa’s supporters as against the black of those of Kaṅsa we probably have a distinct reminiscence of another side of the slaying of the vegetation spirit.[28] The contest is often presented as one between summer and winter, and we have seen in the Mahāvrata what is probably a primitive form of this contest; the white Vaiçya fights with the black Çūdra for the sun, and attains possession of its symbolical form. The red of Kṛṣṇa’s following then proclaims him as the genius of summer who overcomes the darkness of the winter.

With this view accords most interestingly the theory of the origin of the Greek drama from a mimic conflict of summer and winter, as developed by Dr. Farnell.[29] In the legend of the conflict between the Boiotian Xanthos and the Neleid Melanthos we hear that at the moment of conflict Melanthos descried a form beside his foe, whom he taunted with bringing a friend to aid him. Xanthos turned round, and Melanthos slew him. [[38]]The form was that of Dionysos Melanaigis, and for his intervention the Athenians rewarded him by admission to the Apatouria, the festival of deceit. Thus the black Melanthos with the aid of Dionysos of the black goatskin slays the fair; the dark winter destroys the light of summer. Even in modern times in Northern Thrace[30] is celebrated a popular festival in which a man clad in a goatskin is hailed as king, scatters seed over the crowd—obviously to secure fertility—and ultimately is cast into the river, the usual fate for the outworn spirit of vegetation. In a similar mummery performed near the ancient Thracian capital there is a band of mummers, clad in goatskins, of whom one is killed and lamented by his wife. It is natural to deduce hence that tragedy had its origin in a primitive passion-play performed by men in goatskins, in which an incarnation of a divine spirit was slain and lamented, whence the dirge-like nature of the Greek drama.

The primitive Indian play differs in one essential from this suggested origin of tragedy; the victory lies, as we have seen, with Kṛṣṇa, with the Vaiçya, not with the dark Kaṅsa, the black Çūdra. We have, therefore, not sorrow, though there is death, and the fact that the Sanskrit drama insists on a happy ending is unquestionably most effectively explained if it be brought into connexion with the fact of the origin of the drama in a passion play whose end was happiness through death, not grief. This view has received a remarkable measure of confirmation from the discovery of the plays of Bhāsa; that dramatist does not conform to the rule of the later theory that there must be no slaying on the stage, but he most assuredly conforms to the principle of the Kaṅsavadha that the slaying is to be of an enemy of the god; the Ūrubhan̄ga, which has erroneously[31] been treated as a tragedy is, on the contrary, the depicting of the deplorable fate of an enemy of Kṛṣṇa, and we have from Bhāsa himself the Bālacarita which describes the death of several monsters at Kṛṣṇa’s hands, and finally of Kaṅsa himself.

In the recitation of the Granthikas divided into two parties [[39]]we have an interesting parallel to the place played according to Aristotle[32] by the dithyramb in the development of the Greek drama. Action was required neither of the singers of the dithyramb nor of the Granthikas, but it was only necessary in one case and the other to introduce action, and the form of the drama would be complete.

Both in the Greek and the Sanskrit drama the essential fact in the contest, from which their origin may thus be traced, is the existence of a conflict. In the Greek drama in its development this conflict came to dominate the play, and in the Indian drama this characteristic is far less prominent. But it is distinctly present in all the higher forms of the art, and we can hardly doubt that it was from this conflict that these higher forms were evolved from the simplicity of the early material out of which the drama rose.

For the religious origin of drama a further fact can be adduced, the character of the Vidūṣaka, the constant and trusted companion of the king, who is the normal hero of an Indian play. The name denotes him as given to abuse,[33] and not rarely in the dramas he and one of the attendants on the queen engage in contests of acrid repartee, in which he certainly does not fare the better. It would be absurd to ignore in this regard the dialogue between the Brahmin and the hetaera in the Mahāvrata, where the exchange of coarse abuse is intended as a fertility charm.

Another religious element may, it has been suggested, be conjectured as present in the Vidūṣaka, the reminiscence of the figure of the Çūdra who is beaten in the ceremony of the purchase of the Soma; possibly it is to this that the hideous appearance attributed to the Vidūṣaka is due. Professor Hillebrandt[34] compares the history of the Harlequin who was originally a representative of the Devil and not a figure of mirth. It may be that these factors concurred in shaping the character of the Vidūṣaka, but the fact that he is treated as a Brahmin is conclusive that the abusive side of his character is the more [[40]]important. It is to this doubtless that his use of Prākrit is due; it cannot be conceived that a dialogue of abuse was carried on by the Brahmin in the sacred language, which the hetaera of the primitive social conditions of the Mahāvrata could not possibly be expected to appreciate. Professor Hillebrandt suggests indeed that there is change in the character of the Vidūṣaka in the literature as compared with the account given in the Nāṭyaçāstra, but there is clearly no adequate ground for this view.

There is further abundant evidence of the close connexion of the drama with religion; it is attested in the legend of Kṛṣṇa whose feat of slaying Kaṅsa is carried out in the amphitheatre in the presence of the public, where he defeats the wrestlers of his uncle’s court, and finally slays the tyrant. The festival of his nativity is essentially a popular spectacle; as developed later, in detail which has often evoked comparison with the Nativity,[35] the young mother, Devakī, is shown on a couch in a stable, with her infant clinging to her; Yaçodā is also there with the little girl, who in the legend meets the fate intended for Kṛṣṇa by Kaṅsa; gods and spirits surround them; Vasudeva stands sword in hand to guard them; the Apsarases sing, the Gandharvas dance, the shepherdesses celebrate the birth, and all night is spent by the audience in gazing at the gay scene. Kṛṣṇa, again, is the lover of the shepherdesses and the inventor of the ardent dance of love, the Rāsamaṇḍala. Of great importance in this regard is the persistence in popularity of the Yātrās, which have survived the decadence of the regular Sanskrit drama. They tell of the loves of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, his favourite among the Gopīs, for cowherdesses replace in the pastoral the shepherdesses of European idyllic poetry. Kṛṣṇa is by no means a faithful lover, but the end is always the fruition of Rādhā’s love for him. And in Jayadeva’s Gītagovinda we have in literary form[36] the expression of the substance of the Yātrā, lyric songs, to which must be added the charms of music and the dance. A further consideration of the highest importance attests the influence of the Kṛṣṇa cult: the normal [[41]]prose language of the drama is Çaurasenī Prākrit, and we can only suppose that it is so because it was the ordinary speech of the people among whom the drama first developed into definite shape. Once this was established, we may feel assured, the usage would be continued wherever the drama spread; we have modern evidence of the persistence of the Brajbhāshā, the language of the revival of the Kṛṣṇa cult after the Mahomedan invasions in the ancient home of Çaurasenī, as the language of Kṛṣṇa devotion beyond the limits of its natural home.[37] Mathurā, the great centre of Kṛṣṇa worship, still celebrates the Holi festival with rites which resemble the May-day merriment of older England, and still more the phallic orgies of pagan Rome as described by Juvenal. It is an interesting coincidence with the comparison made by Growse[38] of the Holi and the May-day rites that Haraprasād Śāstrin should have found an explanation of the origin of the Indian drama in the fact that at the preliminaries of the play there is special attention devoted to the salutation of Indra’s banner, which is a flagstaff decorated with colours and bunting.[39] The Indian legend of the origin of drama tells that, when Bharata was bidden teach on earth the divine art invented by Brahmā, the occasion decided upon was the banner festival (dhvajamaha) of Indra. The Asuras rose in wrath, but Indra seized the staff of his banner and beat them off, whence the staff of the banner (jarjara) is used as a protection at the beginning of the drama. The drama was, therefore, once connected with the ceremonies of bringing in the Maypole from the woods at the close of the winter, but in India this rite fell at the close of the rainy season, and the ceremony was converted into a festival of thanksgiving for Indra’s victory over the clouds, the Asuras. The theory in itself is inadequate, but the preliminaries of the drama are sufficient to show the extraordinary importance attached to propitiation of the gods, a relic of the old religious service, which would be quite out of place if the origin of the drama had been secular.

The importance of Kṛṣṇa must not cause us to ignore the prominent place occupied by Çiva in the history of the drama. [[42]]To him and his spouse are ascribed the invention of the Tāṇḍava[40] and the Lāsya, the violent and the tender and seductive dances, which are so important an element in the representation of a play. Nor is it surprising that a god who in the Vedic period itself is hailed as the patron of men of every profession and occupation should be regarded as the special patron of the artists. But it is probable that this importance in the drama is later than that of Kṛṣṇa, and it is not without significance that Bhāsa, who is older than any of the other classical dramatists, unlike them, celebrates in full Kṛṣṇa, and is a Vaiṣṇava, while Çūdraka, Kālidāsa, Harṣa, and Bhavabhūti alike are adorers of Çiva in their prefaces. The Mālavikāgnimitra of Kālidāsa introduces a dancing-master who speaks of the creation of the dance by the god and its close connexion with the drama. The sect of the Pāçupatas, adorers of Çiva as lord of creatures, include in their ritual the song and the dance, the latter consisting in expressing the sentiments of the devotees by means of corporeal movement in accord with the rules of the Nāṭyaçāstra. In the decadent ceremonial of the Tantras the ritual includes the representation of Çiva by men, and of his spouse as Çakti, female energy, by women.

The part of Rāma in the growth of drama was certainly not less important than that of Kṛṣṇa himself, for the recitation of the Rāmāyaṇa was popular throughout the country, and has persisted in vogue. The popularity of the story is proved to the full by the effect of the Rām-Līlā or Daçārha festival, at which the story is presented in dumb show, children taking the places of Rāma, Sītā, and Lakṣmaṇa before a vast concourse of pilgrims and others. No effort is made to speak the parts, but a series of tableaux recalls to the minds of the devotees, to whom the whole tale is familiar, the course of the history of the hero, his banishment, his search for Sītā, and his final triumph. In Rāma’s case the influence of the epic on the drama appears in its full development.[41]

The religious importance of the drama is seen distinctly in [[43]]the attitude of the Buddhists towards it.[42] The extreme dubiety of the date of the Buddhist Suttas renders it impossible to come to any satisfactory decision regarding the existence of drama at any early date, while the terms employed, such as Visūkadassana, Nacca, and Pekkhā, and the reference to Samajjas leave us wholly without any ground for belief in an actual drama. We see, however, that the objection of the sacred Canon to monks engaging in the amusement of watching these shows, whatever their nature, was gradually overcome, and it is an important fact that the earliest dramas known to us by fragments are the Buddhist dramas of Açvaghoṣa. With the acceptance of the drama, the Lalitavistara[43] does not hesitate to speak of the Buddha as including knowledge of the drama as among his accomplishments; the Buddha is even called one who has entered to gaze on the drama of the Great Law. The legend is willing to admit that even in Buddha’s time there were dramas, for Bimbisāra had one performed in honour of a pair of Nāga kings,[44] and the Avadānaçataka,[45] a collection of pious tales, places the drama in remote antiquity. It was performed by the bidding of Krakucchanda, a far distant Buddha in the city Çobhāvatī by a troupe of actors; the director undertook the rôle of the Buddha himself, while the other members of the troupe took the rôle of monks; the same troupe in a later age, under Gautama the Buddha himself, performed at Rājagṛha, the actress Kuvalayā gaining enormous fame, and seducing the monks, until the Buddha terminated her career by turning her into a hideous old woman. She then repented and attained the rank of a saint. The same idea of a play bearing on the life of the Buddha himself is preserved in another tale in Tibet where an actor from the south sets up in rivalry with the monks in giving representations of the life of the Buddha. These Buddhist dramas have left their imprint on the form of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, the Lotus of the Good Law, itself, which has none of the epic character of the Lalitavistara, but is presented [[44]]as a series of dialogues in which the Buddha himself, now supernatural, is the chief, but not the only interlocutor. The same love of the Buddhists for artistic effects is seen in the use of music, song, dance, and some scenic effects in the ceremonial attaching to the foundation of Thūpas in Ceylon by a prince of the royal house; the Mahāvaṅsa assumes that dramas were displayed on such occasions, though this may be an anachronism. The frescoes of Ajantā show the keen appreciation felt for music, song, and the dance, though they date from a time when there is certain evidence of the full existence of the drama. We find also in Tibet[46] the relics of ancient popular religious plays in the contests between the spirits of good and those of evil for mankind, which are part of the spring and autumn festivals. The actors wear strange garments and masks; monks represent the good spirits, laymen the evil spirits of men. The whole company first sings prayers and benedictions; then an evil spirit seeks to seduce into evil a man; he would yield but for the intervention of his friends; the evil spirits then arrive in force, a struggle ensues, in which the men would be defeated but for the intervention of the good spirits, and the whole ends with the chasing away with blows of the representatives of the spirits of evil.

With Jainism it is as with Buddhism; we find censure of such ideal enjoyments as the arts akin to the drama, but also recognition of song, music, dance, and scenic presentations in the Canon.[47] But it is hopeless, in view of the utter uncertainty of the date of that collection, to draw any conclusion from it as to the age of the drama. As in the case of Buddhism, Jainism in its development was glad to have recourse to the drama as a means of propagating its beliefs.[48]

The evidence is conclusive on the close connexion of religion and the drama, and it strongly suggests that it was from religion [[45]]that the decisive impulse to dramatic creation was given. The importance of the epic is doubtless enormous, but the mere recitation of the epics, however closely it might approach to the drama, does not overstep the bounds. The element which fails to be added is that of the dramatic contest, the Agon of the Greek drama. That this was supplied by the development of such primitive vegetation rituals as that of the Mahāvrata, until they assumed the concrete and human form of the Kṛṣṇa and Kaṅsa legend would be a conjecture worth consideration, but without possibility of proof if we had not the notice of the Mahābhāṣya which expressly shows that the story of Kṛṣṇa and Kaṅsa could both be represented by Granthikas, who coloured their faces and expressed vividly the emotions of those whom they represented, but also, in dumb show seemingly, by Çaubhikas. If there did not exist an Indian drama proper, in which these sides were combined when Patañjali wrote, it is fair to say that it would be surprising if it did not develop shortly afterwards, and we have perfectly certain proof that the Naṭas of Patañjali were much more than dancers or acrobats; they sang and recited. The balance of probability, therefore, is that the Sanskrit drama came into being shortly after, if not before, the middle of the second century B.C., and that it was evoked by the combination of epic recitations with the dramatic moment of the Kṛṣṇa legend, in which a young god strives against and overcomes enemies.

The drama which was nascent in Patañjali’s time must be taken to have been, like the classical drama, one in which Sanskrit was mingled with Prākrit in the speeches of the characters. The epic recitations of the slaying of Kaṅsa which he records must have been in Sanskrit, but, if the drama was to be popular—and the Nāṭyaçāstra in its tale of the origin of the art recognizes both its epic and popular characteristics, the humble people who figured in it must have been allowed to speak in their own vernacular; this accords brilliantly with the presence of Çaurasenī as the normal prose of the drama of the classical stage. A different view is taken by Professor Lévi,[49] [[46]]who conceives that the drama sprang first into being in Prākrit, while Sanskrit was only later applied at the time when Sanskrit, long reserved as a sacred language, re-entered into use as the language of literature; India, he contends, was never anxious for contact with reality, and it is absurd to suppose that the mixture of languages was adopted as a representation of the actual speech-usage of the time and circles in which drama came into being. This contention is supported by the observation that a number of the technical terms of the Nāṭyaçāstra are of strange appearance, and the frequency of cerebral letters in them suggests Prākrit origin. The contention can hardly be treated as satisfactory, nor is it clear how it can possibly be reconciled with the evidence of Patañjali. The early drama, it seems clear, was not secular in origin, and Professor Lévi emphasizes its dependence on the cult of Kṛṣṇa; to refuse to use Sanskrit in it, therefore, would be extremely strange, unless we are to assume that the existence of true drama goes back to a period considerably earlier than Patañjali, and that it came into being among a milieu which was not Brahminical. There are very serious difficulties in such a theory; we may legitimately hold that such a literary form as the true drama was not created until the Brahmin genius fused the ethic and religious agonistic motives into a new creation of the highest importance for the literary history of India. The presence of a number of Prākrit terms in the Nāṭyaçāstra is probable, but it does not mean that a theory of drama was first excogitated in Prākrit; the main theory in all its essentials is expressed in Sanskrit, and all that is borrowed from Prākrit is some technical terms of subsidiary importance, borrowed, doubtless, from the minor arts, which go to aid but do not constitute the drama, song, music, dancing, and the mimetic art.

The religious origin of the Sanskrit drama in Kṛṣṇa worship is also admitted as part, however, of a wider thesis by Dr. Ridgeway,[50] who contends that Greek drama, and drama all over the world, are the outcome of the reverence paid to the spirits [[47]]of the dead, which again is the source of all religion, a revival in fact of the doctrine of animism in one of its connotations. The contention as applied to the Indian drama involves the view that the actors in the primitive drama were representatives of the spirits of the dead, and that the performance was meant to gratify the dead. It is supported by the doctrine that not only Rāma and Kṛṣṇa were believed once to be men, but that Çiva himself had this origin;[51] all gods indeed are derived from the memory of noble men. The evidence adduced for this thesis is simply non-existent. A valuable collection of material due to Sir J. H. Marshall proves the prevalence throughout India of popular dramatic performances celebrating the deeds of Rāma and Kṛṣṇa, and the modern Indian drama deals also with the lives of distinguished historical characters such as Açoka or Candragupta. But there is nothing to show that the idea of gratifying the dead by the performances of dramatic scenes based on their history was ever present to any mind in India, either early or late. Rāma and Kṛṣṇa to their worshippers were long before the rise of so late an art as drama, just like Çiva, great gods, of whom it would be absurd to think as dead men requiring funeral rites to give them pleasure. Nor is it necessary further to criticize his reconstruction of Vedic religion on the basis of his animistic theory, for these issues of origins have no possible relevance to the specific question of the origin of the Indian drama. Whether elsewhere the worship of the dead resulted in drama is a matter open to grave doubt; certainly in the case of the Greek drama, which offers the most interesting parallel to that of India, the evidence of derivation from funeral games is wholly defective.

Definite support for this view of the origin of drama may be found in the accounts of dramatic performances which are given in the Harivaṅça, the supplement of the Mahābhārata. That work cannot, as has been mentioned, be dated with any certainty or probability earlier than the dramas of Açvaghoṣa, and, therefore, it cannot be appealed to as the earliest mention now extant of the dramatic art. But it is of value as showing how closely [[48]]connected the drama was in early times with the Kṛṣṇa cult, thus supplementing the conclusions to be derived from the Mahābhāṣya, and falling into line with the evidence of Bhāsa.

At the festival performed by the Yādavas after the death of Andhaka, we find that the women of the place danced and sang to music, while Kṛṣṇa induced celestial nymphs to aid the merriment by similar exhibitions, including a representation by the Apsarases, apparently by dancing, of the death of Kaṅsa and Pralamba, the fall of Cāṇūra in the amphitheatre, and various other exploits of Kṛṣṇa. After they had performed, the sage Nārada amused the audience by a series of what may fairly be called comic turns; he imitated the gestures, the movements, and even the laughter of such distinguished personages as Satyabhāmā, Keçava, Arjuna, Baladeva, and the young princess, the daughter of Revata, causing infinite amusement to the audience, and reminding us of the part played by the Vidūṣaka in the drama. The Yādavas then supped, and this enjoyment was followed by further songs and dances by the Apsarases, whose performance thus resembled a modern ballet with songs interspersed.[52]

In a later passage[53] in connexion with the story of the demon Vajranābha, whom Indra asked Kṛṣṇa to dispose of, we learn of an actor Bhadra who delighted all by his excellent power of representation; Vajranābha is induced to demand his presence in his abode, and Kṛṣṇa’s son Pradyumna and his friends disguise themselves to penetrate there; Pradyumna is to be the hero, Sāmba the Vidūṣaka, and Gada the assistant of the stage director, while maidens, skilled in song, dance, and music, are the actresses; they delight the demons by presenting the story of Viṣṇu’s descent on earth to slay the chief of the Rākṣasas, a dramatised version of the Rāmāyaṇa, presenting the figures of Rāma, his brother, and in special the episode of Ṛṣyaçṛn̄ga and Çāntā, that curious old legend based on a fertility- and rain-ritual.[54] After the play the actors showed their skill in depicting [[49]]situations suggested by their hosts, and Vajranābha himself induces them to perform an episode from the legend of Kubera, the rendezvous of Rambhā; after music from the orchestra the actresses sing, Pradyumna enters and recites the benediction, and then a verse on the descent of the Ganges, which is connected with the subject-matter of the piece; he then assumes the rôle of Nalakūbara, Sāmba is his Vidūṣaka, Çūra plays Rāvaṇa, Manovatī Rambhā. Nalakūbara curses Rāvaṇa, and consoles Rambhā, and the audience was delighted by the skilled acting of the Yādavas, who by a magic illusion had presented mount Kailāsa on the stage.

[[Contents]]

4. Theories of the Secular Origin of the Drama

Professors Hillebrandt[55] and Konow[56] agree in the main in maintaining the view that it is an error to look to religious ceremonies as explaining the origin of the drama. True, these ceremonies have a share in the development of the drama, but they themselves are merely the introduction into the ritual of elements which have a popular origin. We are to believe that a popular mime existed, which, with the epic, lies at the bottom of the Sanskrit drama.

It must be admitted at once that we have extremely little authentic information regarding the performers of these mimes, believed to have existed before the origin of drama. The statements made by Professor Konow, who finds in them experts in song, dance, music, but also in matters such as jugglery, pantomime, and the allied arts, all rest on evidence which is either contemporary with the Mahābhāṣya or later than it; the fact that Naṭas sang is recorded for us in the Mahābhāṣya, which of course may refer to genuine actors, and not to professors of the mime, and their connexion with sweet words is attested in the Jātaka prose only, which dates several centuries after the existence of the true drama. We need not, of course, doubt that music, song, and dance, popular in the Vedic age, preserved that character throughout the later period, and we have evidence from Açoka’s time onwards of the existence of Samājas which he condemned, doubtless because of the fights of animals which took [[50]]place at them.[57] That Naṭas and Nartakas were present at such festivals we learn from the Rāmāyaṇa; but we cannot say whether pantomimes and dancers or actors and dancers are referred to. Our knowledge, in fact, of the primitive mime is hypothetical, and it rests in effect on certain considerations which Professor Hillebrandt adduces to show a popular as opposed to a religious origin for drama. His view is supported by the general argument that the drama as comedy is a natural expression of man’s primitive life of pleasure and appreciation of humour and wit. It is, however, unnecessary to enter into any examination of this general principle, which he defends against the theory accepted by Dr. Gray that it is highly problematical whether any view of pleasure to the actors or audience is associated with primitive drama.[58] These ultimate origins are a matter of indifference to the concrete question of the origin of so late a production as the classical drama of India. That the mimetic character is natural to man may be granted; the essential point in question is whether the Sanskrit drama in its characteristics shows signs of religious or secular origin.

Of the points adduced by Professor Hillebrandt most have clearly no relevance in the argument. The use of Sanskrit and dialects in the classical drama is claimed as a proof of popular origin; as has been explained above, the Prākrit element is due to the fact that the drama contains an essential popular, but also religious, element, the Kṛṣṇa worship. The mixture of prose and song, and the union of both with music and the dance, are as natural on the theory of religious origin as on that of secular derivation. The simplicity of the Indian stage, which knows no arrangements for providing changes of scenery, is certainly no proof of secular origin; the Vedic religion is singularly sparing in any external apparatus, and there is the strongest similarity between its practice to mark out altars for its great sacrifices at pleasure, and to have no regular sacrificial buildings, and the tradition throughout the Sanskrit dramas which neither requires nor needs fixed theatres.

The popular origin of the Vidūṣaka is obvious, but the point is whether this origin is religious or secular, and we have seen [[51]]that the Vedic literature offers us in the Brahmin of the Mahāvrata the prototype, possibly with reminiscences of the Çūdra in the Soma sale, of this figure, a fact admitted by the supporters of the theory of secular origin. It is manifestly unnecessary and illegitimate, when the descent of this figure from the Vedic literature is clear, to insist that it was borrowed directly from popular usage, for which there is no proof, but only conjecture.

There remains the argument derived from the fact that the classical drama usually begins with a dialogue between the Sūtradhāra and the Naṭī, who is usually represented as his wife; in this we have, it is said, a reflex of the old popular mime. But an examination of the practice and theory, as found in Bhāsa and the Nāṭyaçāstra, shows that we have no simple or naïve arrangement, but a very elaborate literary device by which the actors bridge over the transition from the preliminaries of the drama to the drama itself. The preliminaries are essentially popular religion, and the detail was left largely in the hands of the Sūtradhāra and his assistants, aided by a chorus of dancers and by musicians; they are doubtless older than the drama, and it was an ingenious and happy device which was invented to carry on the preliminaries, so that the transition to the drama was effective and satisfactory. It is, however, a perversion of all probability to find in this item the trace of a primitive popular secular performance.

The evidence, therefore, for a secular origin disappears; it is curious, indeed, that Professor Hillebrandt[59] himself adduces proof that the western parallel of the Vidūṣaka is connected with religious ceremonies rather than a secular creation. But what is most remarkable of all is that Professor Konow adduces as evidence of the secular origin of the drama the Yātrās, which are essentially bound up with the religion of Kṛṣṇa, and the rough dramatic sketches performed at Almora at the Holi festival, also [[52]]essentially religious.[60] It is indeed to ignore how essentially religion enters into the life of the Hindu to imagine that it is possible to trace the beginnings of drama to a detached love of amusement. It is apparently difficult for the modern mind to appreciate that religion may cover matters which to us appear scarcely connected with it or even repugnant; but this is a delusion largely due to the narrower and more exalted conception of religion of the northern and western lands of Europe.

Less plausible still is the attempt of Pischel[61] to find evidence that the puppet-play is the source of the Sanskrit drama, and that moreover it has its home in India, whence it has spread over the world. The curious and odd art may indeed have an Indian origin, but it would be wholly unwise to suppose that the drama is due to it, nor is the theory apparently accepted on any side at the present time. The existence of such a play is attested by the Mahābhārata,[62] though the antiquity of the device is not thus made clear; in the Kathāsaritsāgara, following perhaps the Bṛhatkathā of Guṇāḍhya, possibly of the third century A.D., we hear of a damsel, daughter of the wonderful craftsman Asura Maya, who amused her companion with puppets which could speak, dance, fly, fetch water, or pluck and bring a garland. In the Bālarāmāyaṇa of Rājaçekhara Rāvaṇa is represented as deceived by a puppet made to resemble Sītā, in whose mouth a parrot was placed to give his entreaties suitable replies. Shaṅkar Pāṇḍuraṅg Paṇḍit[63] records of his time that in the Marāṭha and Kanarese country there are travelling marionette theatres, the only form of drama known in the villages; the puppets made of wood or paper are managed by the director, whose style is Sūtradhāra; they can stand or lie, dance or fight. From this puppet-play, it was suggested, the names of the Sūtradhāra, as the puller of the strings, and of the Sthāpaka, arranger, his assistant, passed over to the legitimate drama. The Vidūṣaka, in Pischel’s view, owed also his origin to the puppet-play.

Professor Hillebrandt[64] has argued against this theory on the ground that the puppet-play assumes the pre-existence of the [[53]]drama, on which it must essentially be based, and he then uses the early date of the puppet-play as a proof of the still earlier existence of the drama. The latter argument, however, is unsatisfactory on various grounds. Apart from the fact that we cannot date the epic references or prove them earlier than the Mahābhāṣya, we have the doubt whether such a contention can possibly be justified. The use of puppets is primarily, of course, derived from the make-belief of children in playing with dolls; the terms for puppets which denote ‘little daughter’ (putrikā, puttalī, puttalikā, duhitṛkā), show this clearly enough, and the popularity of puppets is indicated by the erotic game known as the imitation of puppets, where the word for puppet (pāñcālī) suggests that the home of the puppet-play in India was the Pañcāla country. The growth of the drama doubtless brought with it the use of puppets to imitate it in brief, and from the drama came the Vidūṣaka, and not vice versa.

Though Pischel’s theory[65] of the puppet-play as the origin of drama has failed to find supporters, the shadow play, on whose importance in India he was the first to lay stress, has emerged in lieu in the hands of Professor Lüders[66] as an essential element in the development of the Sanskrit drama, a position accepted by Professor Konow. The place found for the drama is in connexion with the displays of the Çaubhikas of the Mahābhāṣya. Owing to the misinterpretation of that passage it is held that the Çaubhikas were persons who explained matters to the audience to supplement either dumb actors[67] or shadow figures. It is admitted by Professor Lüders that there is no proof which of these two eventualities is correct, but he endeavours both to prove the existence of the shadow-play in early India and to show that the Çaubhikas had the function of showing them. Based on this misinterpretation of the Mahābhāṣya and on the hypotheses—wholly in the air—which it necessitates, is his view that the influence of the epic on the drama was conveyed through [[54]]the use of shadow-figures to illustrate the epic recitation; this, united with the art of the old Naṭas, gave birth to drama, though he is not certain whether such a real drama existed or not at the time of Patañjali, and Konow sets its appearance much later.

The early evidence adduced for the existence of the shadow-drama is wholly unreliable. Professor Konow suggests that the term Rūpa used in the fourth Rock Edict of Açoka, where he speaks of exhibiting spectacles of the dwellings of the gods, of elephants and bonfires, refers to a shadow device, in apparent ignorance of the true sense abundantly illustrated by the attested facts as to the mode of such representations in Buddhist literature;[68] he accepts the wholly absurd view that Rūpaka as a name of the drama is derived from such shadow projections, while in fact it obviously denotes the visible presentation, the normal and early sense of Rūpa. Equally unfortunate is the effort to discover that the Sītābengā cave[69] shows signs of grooves in front, which might have served in connexion with the curtain necessary for a shadow play, and much more so is the effort to explain Nepathya, the name of the tiring-room behind the curtain in the Sanskrit drama, from a misunderstood Prākrit nevaccha, which in its turn might represent a Sanskrit naipāṭhya—never found—denoting the place for the reader; apparently the shadows are in this view explained by some person behind the curtain. The philological combination is quite impossible.

Pischel’s evidence for the early existence of the shadow-drama is all of it without value. The term rupparūpakam occurs in v. 394 of the comparatively old Therīgāthā of the Buddhist Canon, but it may indicate a puppet-play, and this is rendered very probable by the mention of a puppet only just before in the text; if not, it doubtless means, as taken by the commentator, a piece of jugglery, an art always loved in India; unfortunately the age of the text is uncertain, so that even for the puppet-play it gives no precise date. It is certain that rūpadakkha, a term used in the Milindapañha[70]—a work of dubious date—has no such reference, nor lūpadakha in a cave at Jogīmārā. To find rūpopajīvana in the Mahābhārata used in the sense of shadow-play [[55]]is impossible; the explanation is given by Nīlakaṇṭha,[71] and proves the existence in his time, the seventeenth century A.D., of the custom, but the term is used in close proximity with appearing on the stage (ran̄gāvataraṇa), and there is conclusive evidence that the word refers to the deplorable immorality of the players, who actually have as a synonym in the lexicons the style of ‘living by (the dishonour of) their wives (jāyājīva)’. The same fact explains the term rūpopajīvin used by Varāhamihira in the sixth century A.D. in proximity to painters, writers, and singers: the actor is essentially mercenary.[72] It is impossible to accept the suggestion that the Aindrajālikas, who appear working magic results in the Ratnāvalī, the Prabodhacandrodaya, and the Pūrvapīṭhikā of the Daçakumāracarita, were really shadow-dramatists; Indian magicians are well known even at present, and the illusions which to some extent they produce have nothing whatever to do with shadow-plays. The scenes which the magician describes to the king in the Ratnāvalī were doubtless left to the imagination of the audience, just as was the apparent fire which burned the inner apartments and enveloped the princess. To believe in realism in these cases runs contrary to the stage directions of the play itself. From the name Çaubhika, with its Prākrit equivalent Sobhiya, nothing whatever can be made out; the word has no relation to shadows and is never explained by any authority in that sense.

We are left, therefore, with the evidence to be derived from the term Chāyānāṭaka, which is interpreted by Pischel as a ‘shadow-drama’, and is applied to several dramas, among which the oldest which can be dated with sufficient certainty is the Dūtān̄gada of Subhaṭa in the thirteenth century A.D. The exact meaning of the term is uncertain, as it might denote a ‘drama in the state of a shadow’, and this would accord perfectly with the Dūtān̄gada itself. That such a drama was a shadow-drama is best supported by the Dharmābhyudaya of Meghaprabhācārya,[73] which is styled a Chāyānāṭyaprabandha, and in which a definite stage direction is found directing that, when the king expresses his intention to become an ascetic, a puppet is to be placed inside the curtain in the attire of an ascetic. But the [[56]]date of this play is uncertain, and it is extremely difficult to argue with any certainty from it to the Dūtān̄gada; why, it is inevitable to ask, should the latter play contain no stage direction of this kind? We know that the shadow-drama arose in some part of India, for Nīlakaṇṭha recognizes it, but we have no evidence that it existed at the time of the Dūtān̄gada.

Whatever judgement be passed on this view,[74] and the matter must be left undecided in the absence of any effective evidence, it is wholly impossible to accept the argument of Professor Lüders which would take the Dūtān̄gada as the type of Chāyānāṭaka, and thence deduce that the Mahānāṭaka and the Haridūta are shadow-dramas. The one Chāyānāṭya which we know to have been a shadow-drama in fact is an ordinary play without kinship to the Dūtān̄gada, and the same remark applies to the other dramas known to us which are styled Chāyānāṭakas. There are, however, points of similarity between the Dūtān̄gada and the Mahānāṭaka; the prevalence of verse, often epic in character, over prose, the absence of Prākrit, the large number of characters, and the omission of the Vidūṣaka, which explain themselves easily in the latter case by the assumption that we have literary drama before us, a play never intended to be acted. The conviction is strengthened by the shameless plagiarisms of the plays from earlier Rāma dramas. In any case, however, we are dealing with the late developments of the Sanskrit drama, and it is clear that nothing can be gained from any assumption of a part played by the shadow-play in the evolution of the Sanskrit drama. Even on Professor Lüders’s own interpretation of the Mahābhāṣya, all that is requisite is dumb players, and this form of drama is attested for India in modern times.

That the Sūtradhāra and Sthāpaka derive their names from manipulating the puppets for either the puppet- or the shadow-drama is a suggestion which, though recently repeated by Dr. Hultzsch, cannot be regarded as plausible.[75] The term Sthāpaka is colourless, and may merely denote ‘performer’; if it comes from the puppet-play, it is difficult to see why such a person was needed beside the Sūtradhāra, who moved the strings. Moreover, the theory recognizes the Sūtradhāra clearly [[57]]as the man who lays out the temporary playhouse needed for the exhibition, and this sense passes easily over into that of director; this derivation is preferable on the whole to the other, accepted by Professor Hillebrandt,[76] which would make him the man who knows the rules of his art.

The shadow-play, we have seen, cannot have influenced the progress of the early drama, and we may, therefore, leave aside the question whether it does not essentially presuppose the drama, as Professor Hillebrandt contends; the parallel from Java adduced to refute this opinion is clearly wholly inadequate, unless and until it can be proved that the shadow play sprang up in Java without any previous knowledge of real drama.

[[Contents]]

5. Greek Influence on the Sanskrit Drama

It is undoubtedly a matter far from easy for any people to create from materials such as existed in India a true drama, and it was a perfectly legitimate suggestion of Weber’s[77] that the necessary impetus to creation may have been given by the contact of Greece with India, through the representation of Greek plays at the courts of the kings in Baktria, the Punjab, and Gujarāt, who brought with them Greek culture as well as Greek forces. This view suffered modification in view of further consideration of the evidence of an Indian drama in the Mahābhāṣya, and the final opinion of Weber was content with the view that a certain influence might have been exerted by the Greek on the Sanskrit drama. The vehement repudiation of this opinion by Pischel[78] was followed by the elaborate effort of Windisch[79] to trace the extent of the influence which he believed he could establish. Windisch’s attitude is of special importance because he recognizes fully the elements which made for the development of an independent Indian drama, the epic recitations and the mimetic art of the Naṭa, whose name indicated, as a Prākritism of the root nṛt, dance, that he was at first a dancer, in the Indian sense of the term, that is one who represents by [[58]]his postures and gestures emotions of varied kinds, or, in the terminology of the Greek and Roman stage, a pantomime. But he insists on the distinction between the dramatization of the epic material suggested by the Mahābhāṣya, and the features of the classical form of the drama. The subject-matter differs, heroic and mythic figures are presented in the relations of everyday life, the chief theme is a comedy of love, the plot is artistically developed and the action divided into scenes, character types are developed, the epic element recedes before the development of dialogue, verse is mingled with prose, Sanskrit with Prākrit. The change is remarkable; was it aided by the influence of the Greek drama? Admittedly on any theory we must allow for powerful causes to produce so splendid a development, and it would be idle to ignore the possibility of such influence.

Since Windisch wrote, the extent of Greek influence on India before and after the Christian era has been the subject of much investigation, which has yielded its richest fruits in the sphere of art. That India borrowed the incitement to the art of Gandhāra from Greece as its ultimate source is undeniable, and it is equally clear that the Buddhist adoption of the practice of depicting the human form of the Buddha, in lieu of merely indicating his presence by some symbol such as his seat, was due to Greek artistic influences. The extent to which the rise of the Mahāyāna school of Buddhism was furthered by the influx of religious and philosophical ideas from the west is still uncertain; but it is noteworthy that Professor Lévi,[80] who most strongly opposed the theory of Windisch, has himself attributed to western influences the development of the new spirit in Buddhism which he traces in Açvaghoṣa, whom he places in the entourage of Kaniṣka, dating the former in the first century B.C. If this were the case, there would be decided difficulties in maintaining any chronological objections such as Professor Lévi[81] originally urged to the theory of Windisch; when he attacked that theory he could place the earliest Sanskrit dramas preserved, those of Kālidāsa in his view, five or six centuries A.D. But now we have dramas of about A.D. 100 which are certainly not the earliest of their [[59]]type, and it is impossible to deny that the Sanskrit drama came into being during the period when Greek influence was present in India. The highest point of that influence politically was doubtless attained under Menander; in the middle of the first century B.C., roughly a century after Menander’s conquests, the Greek princes were on the verge of being absorbed by new influences culminating in the establishment of the Kuṣana[82] domination, but there is nothing chronologically difficult in assuming the influence of Greek drama on the drama in India.

The question, however, arises how far there was actual presentation at the courts of Greek princes in India of dramatic entertainments. On this topic the evidence is no doubt scanty.[83] We know indeed that Alexander was fond of theatrical spectacles with which he amused himself in the intervals allowed by his victories, and we hear that at Ekbatana there were no fewer than three thousand Greek artists who had come from Greece. We are told also that the children of the Persians, the Gedrosians and the people of Susa, sang the dramas of Euripides and Sophokles; if we are to believe Philostratos’s Life of Apollonios of Tyana,[84] a Brahmin boasted that he had read the Herakleidai of Euripides, and Plutarch has described in inimitable fashion the strange scene at the court of Orodes of Parthia when the messenger arrived, bearing the head of Crassus, and the actor Iason substituted the ghastly relic for the head of Pentheus in the Bakchai, which he was then performing. We need not doubt from these and other passages the existence of performances of Greek dramas throughout the provinces which formed the Empire of Alexander; the scepticism of Professor Lévi[85] in this regard is clearly inadmissible. It is perfectly true that of dramatic performances in India we have no express mention, but in view of the miserably scanty information we possess regarding these principalities of the Greeks in India there is nothing surprising in the fact. Nor is it likely that princes who could employ artists of sufficient ability to produce [[60]]beautiful coins would be indifferent to what is after all the greatest literary creation of Greece.

Nor can we lay much stress on the difficulty of India borrowing anything from the Greek drama, owing to the great difference between the two civilizations, Indian exclusiveness, Indian ignorance of foreign languages, or similar general considerations, because we have really no evidence of value of the feelings and actions of the Indians during the period when the Greek invasion was only the forerunner of invasions by Parthians, Çakas, and Kuṣanas, followed by other less famous but not unimportant immigrants, whose advent vitally affected the population and civilization of the north-west of India. It is plain that in the Gupta dynasty of the fourth century A.D. we find a great Hindu revival, but a revival which evidently drew strength primarily from the east, and we do not know anything definite to enable us to reason a priori on what was, or was not, possible as regards assimilation of the drama. The only decisive evidence possible is that of the actual plays, and unfortunately the results to be attained by examination of them are not at all satisfactory.

It is held by Windisch that the New Attic Comedy, which flourished from 340–260 B.C., must be deemed the source of influence on Indian drama; the fact that no mention of this comedy is specifically made in the few notices we have of drama in the east is doubtless not of importance. On the other hand, we know that Alexandria under the Lagidai became a great centre of Greek learning, and that between Alexandria and Ujjayinī through the port of Barygaza[86] there was a brisk exchange of trade which may have aided in intellectual contact,[87] perhaps especially in the period when Menander’s conquests gave Greek products of every sort a special vogue. The new comedy by its making its subject of the everyday life of man was far more suited than any other form of drama to attract imitation.

The actual points of contact between the New Comedy and the Sanskrit drama are, however, scanty. The division of both the Roman drama[88] and the Sanskrit into acts, distinguished by [[61]]the departure of all the actors from the stage and the number of five as normal, though often exceeded in India, are facts which need not be more than casual coincidences: the divisions in the Sanskrit drama rest on an analysis of the action which is not recorded in Greece or Rome. There is similarity in the scenic conventions, in the asides, in the entry and exit of characters, more notably in the practice that the advent of a new character is usually expressly notified to the audience by a remark from one of the actors already on the stage. But these are all matters which must almost inevitably coincide in theatrical performances produced under approximately similar conditions. Even in the modern theatre with its programmes the necessity of indicating at once the identity of the new comers to the stage is keenly felt.

More value attaches to the argument from the use of Yavanikā,[89] or its Prākrit form Javanikā, for the name of the curtain which covered the tiring room and formed the background of the stage. The word primarily is an adjective meaning Ionian, the Greeks with whom India first came into contact. But it was not confined to what was Greek in the strict sense of the word; it applies to anything connected with the Hellenized Persian Empire, Egypt, Syria, Bactria, and it therefore cannot be rigidly limited to what is Greek. As applied to the curtain it is an adjective, and describes doubtless the material of the curtain (paṭī, apaṭī) as foreign, possibly as Lévi suggests, Persian tapestry brought to India by Greek ships and merchants. The word Yavanikā has no special application to the curtain of the theatre, as would be the case, if it were borrowed as a detail of stage arrangement from Greece. Nor in fact was there any curtain in the case of Greek drama, so far as is known, from which it could be borrowed; Windisch’s contention merely was that the curtain was called Greek because it took the place of the painted scenery at the back of the Greek stage.

As little can any conclusion of Greek borrowing be drawn from the Yavanīs, Greek maidens, who are represented as among the body-guard of the king;[90] for this the Greek drama offers no [[62]]parallel; it represents the fondness of the princes of India[91] for the fascinating hetaerae of Greece, and the readiness of Greek traders to make the high profits to be derived from shipping these youthful cargoes.

The points of resemblance in regard to the plot are of interest. There is some similarity between the stock theme of the Nāṭikā, the love of a king for a maiden, hindered by various obstacles, and finally successful through events which reveal her as a princess, destined for him in marriage but concealed in this aspect by some accident, and the New Comedy picture of the youth whose affection for a fair lady, apparently of status which forbids marriage by Attic law, but in reality of equal birth, is finally rewarded by the discovery of the mark which leads to her identification. The use of a mark of recognition is undoubtedly common in both dramas. We have in the Çakuntalā the ring[92] which gives part of the title of the play Abhijñāna-Çakuntalā, and in the Vikramorvaçī the stone of reunion (saṁgamamaṇi) which enables Purūravas to recognise his beloved despite her change into a creeper. In the Ratnāvalī we have the necklace which permits the identification of the heroine; in the Nāgānanda, the jewel which, falling from the sky, denotes the fate of the prince; in the Mālatīmādhava the garland plucked by Mādhava, worn by Mālatī, which Saudāminī produces at the dénouement as a sign of recognition; and in the Mṛcchakaṭikā the clay cart in which are placed the jewels used as evidence against the hero. In the same general category fall the ring of the queen in the Mālavikāgnimitra, which the Vidūṣaka obtains from her in order to cure a snake-bite, and employs to bring about the release of Mālavikā; the arrow of Āyus, in the Vikramorvaçī, which reveals to Purūravas his son; and the seal of Rākṣasa in the Mudrārākṣasa of which Cāṇakya makes use to confound his schemes. In [[63]]some cases the similarity of use of these emblems is close; Mālavikā, taken away by brigands, and Ratnāvalī, rescued from the sea, are real parallels to the heroine of the Rudens, stolen from her father by a brigand, sold to a leno and wrecked on the Sicilian coast, whose recognition is brought about by the discovery of her childish ornaments.

These are striking facts, and the only way to meet them is to show that the motifs in Sanskrit drama have an earlier history in the literature, and can, therefore, be regarded as natural developments. The difficulty presented here is that the literature available consists either of tales, which in any form available to us are later than the period of the supposed Greek influence, or the epic which is of uncertain date, so that no strict proof is available that any of its minor issues antedates the Christian era. But we do find in the epic indications that it was not necessary for Greece to give to India the ideas presented in the drama. The story of the love of Kīcaka for Draupadī, when disguised as handmaiden she served Sudeṣṇā, wife of the king Virāṭa, has a tragic outcome, for his love is repulsed, but it has undoubted affinities with the plot of the Nāṭikā. In the case of the old tale of Nala and Damayantī, the heroine is more happy, for, when separated from her husband who has abandoned her in the distraction of losing his kingdom at dice, she lives in peace, guarded securely from interference; at last she is recognized by a birthmark. In the Rāmāyaṇa the use of signs of this sort is extended to artificial modes: Sītā, stolen away from Rāma, drops her jewels to the ground; the monkeys bear them to their king, who hands them to Rāma, and the hero thus knows beyond a peradventure the identity of the ravisher. To console her in her detention pending his efforts at rescue he sends Hanumant to her, bearing his messages, and gives him his ring to serve to identify him; Sītā sees it and takes heart. We may admit that such incidents are almost inevitable in a primitive society, in which the means of identification were necessarily material, or personal. Nor in the Sanskrit drama is there any preponderant use of this factor; the letter and the portrait[93] are other means, the use of which is recognized in the theory.

The evidence of borrowing based on the Mṛcchakaṭikā by [[64]]Windisch requires reconsideration in the light of the facts now known regarding the authority of that drama for the early Sanskrit drama. To Windisch it seemed to present every appearance of an early age, and to show close relations to a Greek model. The title he compared with the Cistellaria, ‘little chest’, or the Aulularia, ‘little pot’; the mixture of a political intrigue and a love drama with the mention—only incidental however—of political events contemporaneous with the action in Plautus’s Epidicus and Captivi; the court scene he held to be of Greek inspiration; the meeting of Cārudatta and Vasantasenā he compared with that of the hero and heroine of the Cistellaria; the theft of Çarvilaka, in order to buy the freedom of the slave girl he loves, to the dishonest means adopted by the hero in the new comedy to procure means to purchase his inamorata; the setting free of the slave by Vasantasenā with the attaining of the position of a freedwoman in the Greek drama; finally the elevation of Vasantasenā to the rank of a woman of good character to permit of her legal marriage to Cārudatta is compared with the discovery in the Greek drama of the existence of a free status as the birthright of the maiden whom the hero loves. The Mṛcchakaṭikā, however, is not an early representative of the Indian drama in the sense held by Windisch; it is based on the Cārudatta of Bhāsa, in which there is no mingling of the political and love intrigue, at any rate as we have that play; the title Mṛcchakaṭikā, which departs from the usual model, was probably deliberately chosen to distinguish the new drama from the old. The plays cited have no real combination of political and love intrigues, and the other parallels are far too vague to be taken seriously. The raising of Vasantasenā to a new status is an extraordinary event, which is dependent on an action of the new king Āryaka, who, as an overthrower of the former monarch, exercises the supreme right of sovereignty in favour of the lady, in defiance of the rules of caste. The political intrigue thus becomes a vital element in the play.

Nor can any special value be ascribed to the rule, which is laid down in the theory, and observed in practice, and which confines the events in an act to the limits of a single day, as compared with the rule of Aristotle[94] that the events of a drama should not [[65]]exceed, or only by a little, the duration of a day. If the rule was borrowed, it was greatly changed in sense by permitting long periods, up to a year, to elapse between the acts in the Sanskrit drama, and the mere moral needs of the approximation to reality requisite for illusion would produce the state of the Sanskrit drama without external influence.

The characters of the drama present problems which are not solved by the theory of borrowing. The figure of the queen, loving her husband, noble and dignified, is compared by Windisch with that of the matrona of the Roman comedy, while her attempts to prevent the union of her husband and the new love are compared to the efforts of the senex to dissuade his son from a rash marriage or intrigue. But it is clear that the comparisons are idle; the rivalry of the old love and the new is an incident of the life of the harem inevitable in polygamy, while it affords an admirable opportunity for the poet to depict the contrast of types and the different aspects of love, his chief theme. Windisch, however, lays most stress on his comparison of the three figures of the Viṭa, Vidūṣaka, and Çakāra, with the parasite, the servus currens, and the miles gloriosus of the Greek drama, and his arguments have a certain weight. It is true that these three, with the Sūtradhāra and his assistant, are given by the Nāṭyaçāstra in a list of actors, and that the five correspond fairly closely with the male personnel of a Greek drama; it is also true that, while Kālidāsa and the Mṛcchakaṭikā with the Cārudatta know the Çakāra, he vanishes from the later drama, and the Viṭa shows comparatively little life, suggesting that the Greek borrowings were gradually felt unsuited to India and died a natural death. But the argument is inadequate to prove borrowing. The Viṭa is, indeed, more closely akin to the parasite than to any other character of the Greek or Roman comedy, but the parasite is lacking in the refinement and culture of his Indian counterpart, who is clearly drawn from life, the witty and accomplished companion who is paid to amuse his patron, but whose dependence does not make him the object of insolence and bad jokes. The Vidūṣaka has, in all likelihood, as has been seen, his origin in the religious drama; his Brahmin caste, and his use of Prākrit can best thus be explained. The alternative views all present far more difficulties; the transformance of the slave into a Brahmin [[66]]is far too violent a change to be credible, while Lévi’s[95] view which makes him a borrowing from the Prākrit drama, which depicted with truth the type of Brahmin who serves as go-between in love affairs, masking his degraded trade under the cloak of religion, renders it unintelligible why the Brahmins should have consented to maintain him in the Sanskrit drama. Equally unconvincing is Professor Konow’s[96] effort to explain him as a figure of the popular drama, which loved to make fun of the higher classes, especially the Brahmins. There was no conceivable reason why the Brahmins should have kept such a figure in a drama which never appealed to the lower classes, and it is significant that there is no trace of a comic figure of the Kṣatriya class, although the populace doubtless was as willing to make fun of the rulers as of the priests. The similarity between the Çakāra and the miles gloriosus is by no means small, but the argument from borrowing is refuted by the reflexion that such a figure can be explained perfectly easily from the actual life of India in the period of Bhāsa and the Mṛcchakaṭikā, when mercenary soldiers must have been painfully familiar to Indians.

The number of actors is certainly not in accord with the Greek practice; not only has Bhāsa large numbers, but the Çakuntalā has thirty, the Mṛcchakaṭikā twenty-nine, the Vikramorvaçī eighteen, the Mudrārākṣasa twenty-four, and it is only in the later and less inventive Bhavabhūti that we find but thirteen in the Mālatīmādhava and eleven in the Uttararāmacarita.

The prologue in both dramas serves the purpose of announcing the author’s name, the title of the play, and the desire of the dramatist for a sympathetic reception, but the Indian prologue is closely attached to the preliminaries, and has a definite and independent character of its own in the conversation between the Sūtradhāra and his wife, the chief actress, so that borrowing is out of the question. Nor does any importance attach to the fact that Çiva, who is in a special sense the patron of drama, is the nearest Indian representative of Dionysos, or that the time of the festival at which plays were often shown was spring, as in the case of the Great Dionysia at Athens when new plays were usually presented. There is similarity between the Protagonist and the Sūtradhāra, for both undertake the leading parts in the drama, [[67]]but this and other minor points such as can be adduced are of no value as proofs of historical connexion.

Windisch admitted that in regard to the theatrical buildings there was no possibility of comparison, as the Indian theatre was not permanent, but Bloch[97] has endeavoured to show that the Sītābengā cave theatre has marked affinities to the Greek. The attempt, however, is clearly a failure; the construction of the whole is merely that of a small amphitheatre cut out in the rock for a small audience without any special similarity to the Greek theatre of any period.

More recently the tendency of those who seek to find Greek influence in the making of the Sanskrit drama has turned to the mime as the form of art which exercised influence on India, and the older arguments of Windisch have been given a new shape and in part strengthened in this regard.[98] The mime was performed without masks and buskins, as was the Indian drama. Moreover the mime, at any rate in Roman hands, had a curtain (siparium), which may be compared with the curtain of India. There was also no scene painting in the mime; different dialects were used, and the number of actors was considerable. Further, some of the standing types of the mime may be paralleled in the Indian drama; the zēlotypos has some similarity to the Çakāra, the mōkos to the Vidūṣaka.

Some of the arguments adduced against this theory of Reich’s are admittedly untenable. It is impossible to argue as does Professor Konow that the use of the Mṛcchakaṭikā as a work of early date is a mistake, since the oldest dramas preserved are of quite another type and have no similarity with Greek works. True, the Mṛcchakaṭikā is not as old as it was thought, but the Cārudatta can be substituted in lieu, and there are no dramas older than it, save those of the same author and some fragments of Buddhist drama. Nor have we any very satisfactory evidence of a mime in India at an early date, for a mime means a great deal more than the mere work of a Naṭa. But there are adequate grounds for disregarding the theory. The similarity of types is not at all convincing; the borrowing of the idea of using [[68]]different dialects from the mime is really absurd, and the large number of actors is equally natural in either case. The argument from the curtain is wholly without probative power; as we have seen, the term Yavanikā refers to material only; it would be very remarkable that the term Greek should be confined to the curtain alone, if the stage were really a Greek borrowing, and, last not least, we have no proof that the Greek mime had the curtain. The new form of the theory must, therefore, claim no more credence than the old. We cannot assuredly deny[99] the possibility of Greek influence, in the sense that Weber admitted the probability; the drama, or the mime, may, as played at Greek courts, have aided in the development of a true drama, but the evidence leaves only a negative answer to the search for positive signs of influence.

There are, undoubtedly, certain considerations which a priori tell against borrowing; to judge from the Roman borrowings from Greece and those of France from the classics, the trace of imitation if it were real would be clear and emphatic. But we can hardly place very great faith in arguments from analogy; India has a strange genius for converting what it borrows and assimilating it, as it did in the case of the image of the Buddha which it fabricated from Greek models. More important is the possibility of tracing the sources of the dramas in the epic and the tales, though here the difficulty of dates prevents the demonstration being complete. The epic and undramatic character of the Sanskrit drama is true enough, but not universally applicable, and the argument is liable to be turned by adopting the view that only Greek influence is contended for, not the exclusion of Indian native influences. The typical nature of the characters, adduced by Professor Konow as a point of difference, seems to indicate a forgetfulness that the Greek drama, and especially the New Comedy, is rich in types, and that the mime depicts types. Nor in that comedy do we find any particularly effective heightening of interest or development of the situation from the characters of the persons, or solutions produced without recourse to cutting the knot by artificial means. In all these matters indeed the Indian drama rather is akin to the Greek than otherwise. [[69]]

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6. The Çakas and the Sanskrit Drama

Professor Lévi,[100] whose opposition to Windisch regarding the possibility of Greek influence on the Indian drama has been noted, is himself responsible for the suggestion that the rise of the Sanskrit drama, as opposed to the more popular religious drama in Prākrit, is to be attributed to the Çakas, whose advent to India was one of the causes of the rapid decadence of the Greek principalities in the north-west. The theory is based on a general view of the elevation of Sanskrit to the rank of the language of literature, as opposed to its restriction to use as the learned and sacred language of the Brahmins. The inscriptions, on the whole, show that Sanskrit as an epigraphic language was introduced by Rudradāman whose Girnār inscription of A.D. 150 is wholly in Sanskrit, though Sanskrit appears in part in Uṣavadāta’s inscription of A.D. 124. The Western Kṣatrapas, of Çaka origin, were, he holds, the first to bring Sanskrit down to earth, while not vulgarizing it, as contrasted with the Hindu and orthodox Çātakarṇis of the Deccan who retained Prākrit in their inscriptions down to the third century A.D. The character of the Çakāra may be regarded in this light; in its hostility to the Çakas it reveals a period when either a prince was opposed to the Çaka rule, or the Çaka dominion had just fallen and was fresh in the minds of the people. The Mṛcchakaṭikā may retain a confused version of the events of the second century A.D. A specific connexion between the Çakas and the creation of drama may be seen in the terminology of the Nāṭyaçāstra, and that of their inscriptions. Rudradāman refers to his grandfather Caṣṭana as Svāmin and Sugṛhītanāman, and Svāmin is freely used in the epigraphic records of the kings of the line from Nahapāna (A.D. 78) onwards. Further Rudrasena in A.D. 205, in referring to his royal ancestors, Caṣṭana, Jayadāman, Rudradāman, and Rudrasena, gives them the epithet of Bhadramukha, ‘of gracious countenance’. These terms, Lévi argues, correspond with the use laid down in the Nāṭyaçāstra, which must have borrowed from contemporary official usage. Further, Rudradāman uses the term Rāṣṭriya as applying to Puṣyagupta, who under [[70]]Candragupta, the Maurya, some four and a half centuries earlier established the reservoir which he had repaired, and this term occurs in the Çakuntalā and the Mṛcchakaṭikā in the sense of brother-in-law of the king, the sense given to it in the Amarakoça, the earliest Sanskrit lexicon of established authority. To these considerations may be added that Ujjayinī, the capital of the Western Kṣatrapas of Mālava, is a centre, round which as a fan radiate the three great literary Prākrits of the drama, Çaurasenī, Māgadhī, and Māhārāṣṭrī, thus accounting for their use, which else would be difficult to explain.

Lévi’s suggestion, which was accompanied by an admission that the Mṛcchakaṭikā or its source was older than he had formerly argued, and that the possibility of Greek influence was thus increased, has been accepted by Professor Konow[101] with the important modification that in face of the fact that the oldest dramas known to us, the fragments of Açvaghoṣa and those of Bhāsa, ignore Māhārāṣṭrī and that Çaurasenī is the normal prose tongue, he accepts Mathurā as the home of the drama, and ascribes it to about the middle of the first century A.D. This view he supports by the fact that the rulers of Mathurā were also Çaka Kṣatrapas, or Satraps, whose control extends back at least to the beginning of the first century A.D.

It may be feared that neither theory will stand critical investigation, however tempting it may be to obtain an exact date for the Sanskrit drama. The discovery of Açvaghoṣa’s fragments shows that the drama has already attained a very definite and complete form, and we really cannot with any probability assume that the creation of drama preceded this by no more than a century. Even a century, however, brings us further back than the middle of the first century A.D., for Konow’s date of Kaniṣka, about A.D. 150,[102] is probably considerably too late, and should be placed fifty years earlier at least. We are thus separated from Rudradāman by a period of 150 years, probably more, and the theory that the Western Kṣatrapas introduced Sanskrit into the drama falls hopelessly to the ground on chronological considerations alone.

The argument from the use of technical terms is clearly untenable. That Rāṣṭriya in Rudradāman’s inscription has the sense [[71]]of ‘brother-in-law’ is not supported by the slightest evidence, and is most improbable; the term doubtless denotes governor, and the restricted use is a later development. The use of Svāmin as the mode of addressing the king is not recorded in the Nāṭyaçāstra, and to argue that it, being given in the Daçarūpa and the Sāhityadarpaṇa, must be borrowed from Bharata, as Konow does, is quite impossible. On the contrary, Bharata[103] gives the style to the Yuvarāja, or Crown Prince, presumably as distinct from the king. In the extant dramas after Bhāsa it is not used of the king or Crown Prince. Sugṛhītanāman, denoting perhaps ‘whose name is uttered with respect’, has no parallel in Bharata; only in the later theory do we find Sugṛhītābhidha, which, however, is prescribed merely for the address of a pupil, child, or younger brother to a teacher, father, or elder brother, and therefore stands in no conceivable relation to the term used by Rudradāman. Bhadramukha is the address to a royal prince in Bharata; it is used of kings by Rudrasena, and the literature ignores the specific or royal use. The lack of accord is complete and convincing; if the drama had originated under the Western Kṣatrapas of Ujjayinī, it would not have been so flagrantly out of harmony with the official language.

The whole error of these arguments rests in the belief that the drama developed as a Prākrit drama before it was turned into Sanskrit. The same theory has been applied to every department of secular Sanskrit literature without either plausibility or success; the Mahābhāṣya knows Sanskrit Kāvya before any Prākrit Kāvya is recorded.[104] But, apart from this, it is essential to remember that the drama was religious in origin and essentially connected with epic recitations, and that for both reasons Sanskrit claimed in it a rightful place from the inception. It is certain that the recitations known by Patañjali were in Sanskrit, and it is difficult in the extreme to understand how in the view of Lévi and Konow a Prākrit drama proper ever came into being. Before the coalescence of the epic recitation and the primitive mime believed in by Konow, there cannot have been any drama on his own theory; when they coalesced, Sanskrit must have from the first been present. [[72]]

The discovery of Açvaghoṣa’s fragments undoubtedly helps greatly to bring the creation of the drama very close up to the time of Patañjali, if not to that date. The first century B.C. can with fair certainty be assumed to be the very latest period at which the appearance of a genuine Sanskrit drama can be placed. If indeed Professor Lüders’s former date for Kaniṣka were correct and he were the founder of the Vikrama era of 57 B.C.,[105] then the Sanskrit drama must be dated a century at least earlier, and we would have the paradoxical position that on Professor Lüders’s date of Açvaghoṣa he must place the drama at not later than Patañjali, while when dealing with the Mahābhāṣya evidence he doubts the existence of the drama. Professor Lüders has overlooked this dilemma, which, however, we may evade on his behalf by recognising that he erred in assigning to Kaniṣka a date which the evidence available in 1911 already showed to be quite untenable.

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7. The Evidence of the Prākrits

The discovery of Açvaghoṣa’s fragments not only disposes effectively of Professor Lévi’s dating of the rise of Sanskrit drama, since he probably preceded Rudradāman by at least half a century, but it casts a vivid light on the question of the Prākrits and Sanskrit. It must be remembered that Açvaghoṣa was the exponent of a faith which had originally insisted on the use of the vernacular as opposed to Sanskrit, and that it is absurd to imagine that it would have occurred to him to use Sanskrit in dramas of Buddhist inspiration and aim, had not the use of that language been established in the drama of the day. This leads us back once more to the conclusion that the drama from the outset was written in part at least in Sanskrit, and that, therefore, it stands in genetic relation with the dramatic recitations described by Patañjali which were in Sanskrit.

That the drama was also in part in Prākrit from the outset seems extremely probable. The mere recitation of the epic [[73]]indeed did not demand any intervention of Prākrit, but that such recitations by themselves would produce a true drama is most improbable, and we may legitimately hold that it was only the union of these recitations with action from the religious contest that produced the drama. In that contest we may assume that the lower classes were represented and spoke their own language; in the Vedic Mahāvrata we cannot suppose that the Çūdra who contested the right of the Vaiçya to the symbol of the sun spoke in Sanskrit, nor that the Brahmin and the hetaera exchanged their ritual abuse in the classical tongue, or its Vedic antecedent. The religious festival in which Kṛṣṇa appeared as slaying Kaṅsa must similarly have demanded the use of the vernacular by the humbler members of those who took part in it. The fact that Prākrit appears mainly in the dialogue, Sanskrit pre-eminently in verses, strengthens the view that the new drama derived its verse in the main from the epic recitation, its prose dialogue from the religious contest. The two elements never entirely merged; the Vidūṣaka who comes from one side of the religious ceremonial, that which in Greece lies at the basis of comedy as opposed to tragedy, is not a figure normal in the dramas of mainly epic inspiration; but this is not enough to prove that the drama ever in its early days was merely in Sanskrit. It may indeed have been the case; Bhāsa’s Dūtavākya has no Prākrit, and so far the probability is rather for than against it, as an alternative form.

The question how many Prākrits were used in the primitive Sanskrit drama presents difficulties. The obvious conclusion is that the vernacular employed would be that of the region where the drama came into being, and that this was the Çūrasena country is not to be denied. Çaurasenī in fact appears throughout as the normal prose of the drama; it is the language of the Vidūṣaka and the hetaera and normally of all the characters of a play who are born in Āryāvarta, and no other dialect even in theory vies with it in importance. The theory and the practice after Bhāsa ascribe to Māhārāṣṭrī the honour of the language of verses sung by maidens who would in prose speak Çaurasenī. There can be no doubt that this is not primitive, but is a reflex of the growth and development of the fame of the artificial lyric poetry of which we have an anthology under the [[74]]name of Hāla, perhaps to be ascribed to the third or fifth century A.D.[106]

To what extent any other Prākrit was used in the earliest drama we cannot effectively determine. Bhāsa has only, besides Çaurasenī, Māgadhī of two kinds, and a few hints of what may be styled Ardha-Māgadhī, while Açvaghoṣa has three dialects which suggest much older forms of Çaurasenī, Māgadhī, and Ardha-Māgadhī. The use of these dialects for characters by Açvaghoṣa explains itself naturally from his familiarity with the Buddhist scriptures whose original was very probably in something approximating to the Ardha-Māgadhī[107] he knew, and the fact that the speaker of Old Māgadhī is the Duṣṭa, or bad man, reminds us of the bad character enjoyed[108] by the Magadha. Lévi’s[109] suggestion that the Māgadhī of the drama comes from its epic element, and that the Māgadhas were the reciters of Prākrit epic compositions, is clearly untenable, and indeed seems to have been later abandoned by its author in favour of the suggestion that the Prākrits of the drama were evolved, because the drama was produced at Ujjayinī, which was a meeting place of different dialectical forms. This theory might be revised to adapt it to making Mathurā the headquarters of the drama and Māgadhī and Ardha-Māgadhī the other dialects, but the restricted use of anything but Çaurasenī by Bhāsa suggests that the introduction of other Prākrits was a gradual process. In point of fact it never attained great vitality, and in the developed drama Çaurasenī and Māhārāṣṭrī alone play any real part. The ground for the more extended use of dialects when found may be attributed to literary purposes rather than to any attempt to imitate the speech of the day, as Sir George Grierson[110] has suggested. The ground for this conclusion, apart from the improbability of so great an effort at realism, is that the dialects used for instance even in the Mṛcchakaṭikā are clearly literary and not attempts to reproduce true vernaculars. [[75]]

The stage reached by the Prākrits of Açvaghoṣa shows clearly how late are the Prākrits of the orthodox classical drama,[111] and reminds us how much more closely akin to Sanskrit must have been the Prākrit of the drama of the time of, or shortly after, Patañjali. The classical drama with its broken-down forms of Prākrit gives a false impression of the original dramatic form in which either perhaps Sanskrit alone, if the matter were epic, or both Sanskrit and a closely akin Çaurasenī appeared.

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8. The Literary Antecedents of the Drama

The drama owes in part its origin to the epics of India; from them throughout its history it derives largely its inspiration, far more truly so indeed than Greek tragedy as compared with the Greek epic.[112] From the epics also developed the Kāvya, the refined and polished epic, which appears at its best in the Kumārasambhava and Raghuvaṅça of Kālidāsa. The parallelism between the developed form of both is close and striking. The Sāhityadarpaṇa[113] lays down that it is a composition in several cantos, the hero a god or Kṣatriya of high race, of the type noble and superior; if there are several heroes, they are persons of royal rank of one family. The sentiment which predominates is the erotic, the heroic, or occasionally that of calm; the others serve in a subsidiary rôle. The subject-matter is either taken from tradition or not, but the heroes must be virtuous. The work begins with a prayer, a benediction, or an indication of the subject-matter. The development of the story employs the same five junctures as the theory prescribes for the drama. One or other of the four aims of man, wealth, love, performance of duty, or release, is to be attained by the action. The number of cantos is not to be less than eight; each should end in a different metre, and should announce the subject of the following act. Descriptions of every kind are essential; objects of these are the different times of day, the sun, the moon, night, the [[76]]dawn, twilight, darkness, morning, midday, the hunt, mountains, the seasons, forests, the ocean, the sky, a town, the pleasures of love, the misery of separation from one’s beloved, a sacrifice, a battle, the march of an army, a marriage, the birth of a son, all of which should be developed in appropriate detail.

The essential feature of these little epics is the enormous development of the art of description, and the feature occurs in the other forms of narrative literature, the Kathā, tale, and the Ākhyāyikā, romance, types which blend with each other. Whether the subject be an imaginary theme, as is the Vāsavadattā of Subandhu, or a historical one, as in the Harṣacarita of Bāṇa, we find nothing treated as really important save the descriptions as contrasted with the narrative. The Sanskrit lyric also, in Kālidāsa’s masterpiece, the Meghadūta, is essentially descriptive, as is the Prākrit lyric preserved in the collection of Hāla, which is based on the model of an older lyric in Sanskrit, whose existence is revealed to us by the Mahābhāṣya.

The love of description, however, is not new; it is a characteristic of the epic itself, and the Rāmāyaṇa in special shows us how the way for the court poetry was being prepared.[114] Hence the fact that the verses of the drama are overwhelmingly descriptive, when not gnomic in character, is no matter for surprise. The peculiarity is a direct inheritance from the epic.

This fact has one important bearing on the history of the drama. The suggestion of Pischel[115] that the verses alone were once preserved, and the prose left to be improvised would have been plausible only if the verses had been essentially the important elements in the dialogue, as in the supposed Vedic Ākhyāna hymns. But this is assuredly not the case; the verses do little to help on the action; as in the epic, they express descriptions of situations and emotions; when movement of the play is requisite recourse is had to prose. Or the verses serve to set out maxims, as is natural in view of the great fondness of India for gnomic poetry, seen already in the verses introduced [[77]]into the legend of Çunaḥçepa in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa. In this again there is a close parallel with the epic, nor is it surprising that the epic poet, like Açvaghoṣa and Kālidāsa, was often devoted to the drama.

A further source of literary inspiration must undoubtedly be seen in the work of the lyric poets, of whose work clear evidence, as well as some scattered fragments, is preserved to us in the Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali.[116] Moreover, to these lyric writers it is probable that the drama owed some of its metrical variety; in the development of the metres with a fixed number of syllables, each of determined length, from the older and freer Vedic and epic forms, it may be taken as certain that the erotic poets, who had a narrow theme to handle, and had every motive to aim at variety of form and effect, must have contributed largely, a conclusion which is also strongly suggested, if not proved, by the very names of the metres with their erotic suggestion.[117] [[79]]

[1] Hopkins, The Great Epic of India, pp. 55 ff. Nāṭaka in ii. 11. 36 is very late; JRAS. 1903, pp. 571 f. [↑]

[2] xii. 140. 21. [↑]

[3] xiii. 33. 12. [↑]

[4] ii. 88 ff. See § 3 below. [↑]

[5] ii. 67. 15. [↑]

[6] ii. 69. 3. [↑]

[7] ii. 1. 27; Hillebrandt, ZDMG. lxxii. 229, n. 1; contra, SBAW. 1916, p. 730. [↑]

[8] Barth, Inscr. Sansc. du Cambodge, p. 30. At the close of the Mahābhārata the existence of such recitations is clearly recognized; Oldenberg, Das Mahabharata, p. 20. [↑]

[9] Max Müller, India, p. 81. Cf. Winternitz, GIL. iii. 162, n. 1. [↑]

[10] E. Schlagintweit, India in Wort und Bild, i. 176. [↑]

[11] vii. 93. [↑]

[12] Lévi, TI. i. 311 f. [↑]

[13] Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, ii. 94 ff. [↑]

[14] Konow, ID. p. 9; Lévi, TI. ii. 51. On these rhapsodes, cf. Jacobi, Das Rāmāyaṇa, pp. 62 ff.; GGA. 1899, pp. 877 f.; Hopkins, The Great Epic of India, pp. 364 ff. [↑]

[15] iv. 3. 110 f. [↑]

[16] iii. 2. 111. [↑]

[17] ye tāvad ete çobhanikā nāmaite pratyakṣaṁ Kaṅsaṁ ghātayanti pratyakṣam Balim bandhayantīti. citreṣu katham? citreṣv apy udgūrṇā nipātitāç ca prahārā dṛçyante Kaṅsakarṣaṇyaç ca. granthikeṣu kathaṁ yatra çabdagaḍumātraṁ lakṣyate te ’pi hi teṣām utpattiprabhṛty ā vināçād ṛddhīr vyācakṣāṇāḥ sato buddhiviṣayān prakāçayanti. ātaç ca sato vyāmiçrā hi dṛçyante: kecit Kaṅsabhaktā bhavanti, kecid Vāsudevabhaktāḥ. varṇānyatvaṁ khalv api puṣyanti: kecit kālamukhā bhavanti, kecid raktamukhāḥ. See iii. I. 26. The text, uncertain in detail, must be corrected by replacing buddhīr for the absurd ṛddhīr of some manuscripts only, defended by Lüders. See Weber, IS. xiii. 487 ff. Çaubhika is a variant. [↑]

[18] SBAW. 1916, pp. 698 ff. Cf. Hillebrandt, ZDMG. lxxii. 227 f.; Keith, Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, I. iv. 27 ff. Winternitz (ZDMG. lxxiv. 118 ff.) ineffectively supports Lüders, though he recognizes the extraordinary difficulties of this view. The error is due to the idea that one can only describe (ācaṣṭe) in words, ignoring art and action. [↑]

[19] TI. i. 315. The words are: Kaṅsādyanukāriṇāṁ naṭanāṁ vyākhyānopādhyāyāḥ. [↑]

[20] Weber might be interpreted as believing in an actual killing, but, if so, he was clearly in error, and in point of fact he merely gives this as possible (IS. xiii. 490). That Çaubhikas did manual acts and were not talkers primarily, if at all, is suggested by the use elsewhere of the term; thus in the Kāvyamīmāṅsā, p. 55, they are classed with rope-dancers and wrestlers. [↑]

[21] ye ’pi citraṁ vyācakṣate ’yam Mathurāprāsādo ’yaṁ Kaṅso ’yam bhagavān Vāsudevaḥ praviṣṭa etāḥ Kaṅsakarṣiṇyo rajjava etā udgūrṇā nipātitāç ca prahārā ayaṁ hataḥ Kaṅso ’yam ākṛṣṭa iti te ’pi citragataṁ Kaṅsaṁ tādṛçenaiva Vāsudevena ghātayanti. citre ’pi hi tadbuddhir eva paçyatām. etena citralekhakā vyākhyātāḥ. On Lüders’ view the second sentence is useless. [↑]

[22] Genesis des Mahābhārata, pp. 163 ff. Granthika occurs in MBh. xiv. 70. 7; cf. granthin, Manu, xii. 103. [↑]

[23] SBAW. 1916, p. 736. Hillebrandt (ZDMG. lxxii. 228) criticises effectively Lüders’s interpretation. Cf. granthagaḍutva in R. i. 243. [↑]

[24] It is a confirmation of the incorrectness of Lüders’s view that he is driven to render vṛddhīr, which he reads for buddhīr, as ‘Schicksale’. Now vṛddhi cannot possibly be used in this sense; it means ‘prosperity’, and, applied to Kaṅsa or Bali, it is ludicrous. What is meant is that, by forming parties, the Granthikas make real to the audience the feelings of the characters, a doctrine entirely in keeping with the duty of an actor according to N. Hillebrandt’s view of the Çaubhikas as explaining the subject of the play to the audience, like the Sthāpaka later (N. v. 154 ff.; DR. iii. 3; SD. 283), contradicts the word pratyakṣam. [↑]

[25] Winternitz (ZDMG. lxxiv. 122) desires inversion, even on Lüders’s theory, although Lüders attaches importance to the text. [↑]

[26] i. 4. 29 (naṭasya çṛṇoti, granthikasya çṛṇoti); ii. 4. 77 (agāsīn naṭaḥ); ii. 3. 67 (naṭasya bhuktam); iii. 2. 127 (naṭam āghnānāḥ); iv. 1. 3. [↑]

[27] vi. 3. 43. [↑]

[28] Keith, ZDMG. lxiv. 534 f.; JRAS. 1911, pp. 979 ff.; 1912, pp. 411 ff. [↑]

[29] The Cults of the Greek States, v. 233 ff. The variant theory of Miss Harrison, Prof. Gilbert Murray, and Dr. Cornford in Themis, and of Dieterich, Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, xi. 163 ff., is much less plausible. [↑]

[30] Dawkins, Journ. Hell. Stud., 1906, pp. 191 ff. [↑]

[31] Lüders (SBAW. 1916, p. 718, n. 3) is responsible for the view that Duryodhana is the hero. Lindenau (BS. p. 30) accepts this, but gives the true facts (pp. 32, 33), without apparently realizing that the views are contradictory. The Ūrubhan̄ga’s conclusion is happy, not tragic, for the worshipper of Kṛṣṇa. [↑]

[32] Poetics, 1449 a 10 ff. [↑]

[33] Cf. the connexion of Greek Comedy with ritual cathartic cursing; Keith, JRAS. 1912, p. 425, n. For less plausible theories see F. M. Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy (1914); Ridgeway, Dramas and Dramatic Dances, pp. 401 ff. [↑]

[34] AID. p. 27. Cf. below, p. 51, n. 1. [↑]

[35] Weber, Ueber die Kṛṣṇajanmāṣṭamī (1868). [↑]

[36] The influence of the Kṛṣṇa legend is suggested on the Vikramorvaçī; Gawroński, Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 33 ff. Cf. below, p. 130. [↑]

[37] Lévi, TI. i. 331 f. Cf. Bloch, Langue Marathe, pp. ix. 12 f. [↑]

[38] Mathurā, pp. 91 f., 101 f. [↑]

[39] JPASB. v. 351 ff. [↑]

[40] Megasthenes ascribed the Kordax to the Indian Dionysos (Çiva); Arrian, Ind. 7. Bloch (ZDMG. lxii. 655) exaggerates his importance. [↑]

[41] Cf. Ridgeway, Dramas and Dramatic Dances, p. 190, and pp. 192 ff. on modern Indian drama in general. [↑]

[42] Lévi, TI. i. 319 ff. That any of the early Buddhist texts (e.g. Padhānasutta, Pabbajjāsutta; Mārasaṁyutta, Bhikkhunīsaṁyutta; Chaddanta-, Ummadantī-, Mahājanaka-, or Candakinnara-jātaka; Theragāthā, 866 ff.; Therīgāthā, 912 ff.) is really dramatic is out of the question; cf. Winternitz, VOJ. xxvii. 38 f. [↑]

[43] xii. p. 178. Drama is alluded to in Divyāvadāna, pp. 357, 360, 361. [↑]

[44] Schiefner, IS. iii. 483, Indian Tales, pp. 236 ff. [↑]

[45] ii. 24 (75). [↑]

[46] E. Schlagintweit, Buddhism in Tibet, p. 233; JASB. 1865, p. 71. Ridgeway’s Dramas, &c., ignores Tibet. For similar Chinese performances, see Annales Guimet, xii. 416 f. [↑]

[47] Āyāraṁga Sutta, ii. 11. 14; Rājapraçnīya, IS. xvi. 385. The love of the Indians for song and dance is recorded by Greek tradition; Arrian, Anabasis, vi. 2. [↑]

[48] Unfortunately the date of this change of view is uncertain. No early Jain drama is certainly recorded. A number of mediaeval works have recently been printed; see E. Hultzsch, ZDMG. lxxv. 59 ff. [↑]

[49] JA. sér. 9, xix. 95 ff. If this had been the case, one would have found references freely to the literature in Hāla, where only v. 344 alludes to the Pūrvaran̄ga of the Nāṭaka (raiṇāḍaapuvvaraṁgassa). [↑]

[50] The Origin of Tragedy (1910); Dramas and Dramatic Dances of non-European Races (1915); JRAS. 1916, pp. 821 ff.; Keith, JRAS. 1916, pp. 335 ff.; 1917, pp. 140 ff. G. Norwood (Greek Tragedy, pp. 2 f.) rejects Ridgeway’s view for Greece, and see Keith, JRAS. 1912, pp. 411 ff. [↑]

[51] Drama, &c., p. 129 asserts this as the view of ‘the best authorities’; very wisely he does not refer to these amazing authorities. Cf. E. Arbman, Rudra (Uppsala, 1922); Keith, Indian Mythology, pp. 81 ff. [↑]

[52] ii. 88. [↑]

[53] ii. 91. 26 ff.; 93. 1 ff. Cf. Hertel, VOJ. xxiv. 117 ff.; Ravivarman, Pradyumnābhyudaya, Act III, p. 23. [↑]

[54] Cf. von Schroeder, Mysterium und Mimus, pp. 292 ff. That this was originally a ritual drama is most improbable. [↑]

[55] AID. pp. 22 ff. [↑]

[56] ID. pp. 42 ff. [↑]

[57] Hardy, Album Kern, pp. 61 f.; Thomas, JRAS. 1914, pp. 392 f. [↑]

[58] ERE. iv. 868. [↑]

[59] AID. p. 25. Lindenau (BS. p. 45) sees in Vṛṣākapi of Ṛgveda, x. 86, the prototype of the Vidūṣaka, as a maker of mischief and as the god’s companion, but this is far-fetched. Hertel (Literarisches Zentralbl. 1917, pp. 1198 ff.) lays stress on the fact that at the royal courts the king had normally a jester to amuse him. This may easily have served to affect the figure of this character, if of religious origin. For older views, cf. J. Huizinga, De Vidûṣaka en het indisch tooneel (Groningen, 1897); F. Cimmino, Atti della reale Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e Belle Arti (Naples, 1893), xv. 97 ff.; M. Schuyler, JAOS. xx. 338 ff.; P. E. Pavolini, Studi italiani di filologia indo-iranica, ii. 88 f. [↑]

[60] TD. pp. 43 f. Cf. Niṣikânta Chattopâdhyâya, The Yâtrâs (1882). [↑]

[61] Die Heimat des Puppenspiels (1902). Obvious objections are given by Ridgeway, Dramas, &c., pp. 164 ff. [↑]

[62] iii. 30. 23; v. 39. 1. [↑]

[63] Vikramorvaçīya, pp. 4 f. [↑]

[64] AID. p. 8; ZDMG. lxxii. 231. [↑]

[65] SBAW. 1906, pp. 481 ff. [↑]

[66] SBAW. 1916, pp. 698 ff. Contra, Hillebrandt, ZDMG. lxxii. 230 f. Winternitz (ZDMG. lxxiv. 120) reduces the Çaubhikas to people who tell tales of what is depicted on pictures, a clearly impossible version, but valid against Lüders. [↑]

[67] Based on Kaiyaṭa’s version of Çaubhika: Kaṁsādyanukāriṇāṁ naṭānāṁ vyākhyānopādhyāyāḥ. This is clearly incompatible with Lüders’s view, as he admits (pp. 720 f.). Kaiyaṭa is far too late for useful evidence. [↑]

[68] See Vincent Smith, Asoka, (ed. 3), pp. 166 f. [↑]

[69] Bloch, Arch. Survey of India Report, 1903–4, pp. 123 ff. [↑]

[70] p. 344. [↑]

[71] xii. 295. 5. [↑]

[72] Bṛhatsaṁhitā, v. 74; see Hillebrandt, ZDMG. lxxii. 227. [↑]

[73] ZDMG. lxxv. 69 f. [↑]

[74] See ch. xi, § 8 below. [↑]

[75] See ch. xiv, § 2 below. [↑]

[76] AID. p. 8, n. 2. On Javan drama, cf. Ridgeway, Dramas, &c., pp. 216 ff. [↑]

[77] IS. ii. 148; Ind. Lit.² n. 210; SBAW. 1890, p. 920; cf. IS. xiii. 492. [↑]

[78] Die Recensionen der Çakuntalā (1875), p. 19; SBAW. 1906, p. 502. [↑]

[79] Der griechische Einfluss im indischen Drama (1882); Sansk. Phil. pp. 398 ff. Cf. E. Brandes, Lervognen (1870), pp. iii ff.; Vincent Smith, JASB. lviii. 1. 184 ff. [↑]

[80] Mahāyānasūtrālaṁkāra, ii. 16 f. Cf. Keith, Buddhist Philosophy, p. 217. [↑]

[81] TI. i. 345. [↑]

[82] Or Kuṣāṇa; CHI. i. 580 ff. [↑]

[83] Plutarch, Alex. 72; Fort. Alex. 128 D; Crassus, 33. Marshall (JRAS. 1909, pp. 1060 f.) suggests a reproduction of a motif of the Antigone in a vase at Peshawar, but dubiously. [↑]

[84] ii. 32. [↑]

[85] TI. ii. 60. [↑]

[86] Periplus, 48. [↑]

[87] Cf. Hultzsch, JRAS. 1904, pp. 399 ff. on the Kanarese words found in a fragment of a Greek comedy preserved in a papyrus of the second century A.D. [↑]

[88] This does not appear in the dramas of Menander so far as recovered, and is of uncertain date. Cf. Donatus on Terence, Andria, Prol. [↑]

[89] Konow, ID. p. 5, n. 5; Lévi, TI. i. 348; for the generic sense, cf. Amara, ii. 6. 3. 22; Halāyudha, ii. 154. [↑]

[90] Already in Bhāsa: cf. Lindenau, BS. p. 41, n. 2; Lévi, Quid de Graecis, &c. [[62]](1890), pp. 41 f.; on Greek influence, cf. Kennedy, JRAS. 1912, pp. 993 ff., 1012 ff.; 1913, pp. 121 ff.; W. E. Clark, Classical Philology, xiv. 311 ff.; xv. 10 f., 18 f.; Weber, SBAW. 1890, pp. 900 ff. [↑]

[91] Kauṭilīya Arthaçāstra, i. 21; Megasthenes, frag. 26; Strabo, xv. 1. 55. [↑]

[92] For this motif cf. Gawroński, Les Sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 39 ff. On recognition in the Greek tragic drama see Aristotle, Poetics, 1452 a 29 ff.; Verrall, Choephorae, pp. xxxiii–lxx. Its alleged essential character as an element of primitive tragedy, the recognition of the god, is disposed of by Ridgeway, Dramas, &c., pp. 40 f. [↑]

[93] Cf. Bhāsa’s Svapnavāsavadattā, vi. pp. 51 ff. [↑]

[94] Poetics, 1449 b 12 ff. [↑]

[95] TI. i. 358. [↑]

[96] ID. p. 15. [↑]

[97] Arch. Survey of India Report, 1903–4, pp. 123 ff., rashly followed by Lüders, ZDMG. lviii. 868. See Hillebrandt, AID. pp. 23 f.; GIL. iii. 175, n. 1. [↑]

[98] Der Mimus, i. 694 ff.; DLZ. 1915, pp. 589 ff.; E. Müller-Hess, Die Entstehung des indischen Dramas (1916), pp. 17 ff.; Lindenau, Festschrift Windisch, p. 41. [↑]

[99] Cf. Oldenberg, Die Literatur des alten Indien, pp. 241 ff. [↑]

[100] JA. sér. 9, xix. 95 ff.; IA. xxxiii. 163 ff. Cf. Bloch, Mélanges Lévi, pp. 15 f.; Franke, Pāli und Sanskrit, pp. 87 ff.; Keith, Sansk. Lit. ch. 1. [↑]

[101] ID. p. 49. [↑]

[102] ID. p. 50. Contrast CHI. i. 583. [↑]

[103] xvii. 75; cf. Sāhityadarpaṇa, 431; R. iii. 314. [↑]

[104] Cf. IS. xiii. 483 ff.; Kielhorn, IA. xiv. 326 f. [↑]

[105] Bruchstücke buddhistischer Dramen, pp. 11, 64. Contrast his views in SBAW. 1912, pp. 808 ff., when he accepts the much later date, advocated by Oldenberg, GN. 1911, pp. 427 ff. [↑]

[106] Jacobi, Ausgew. Erzählungen in Mâhârâshṭrî, pp. xiv ff., suggests the fifth century A.D. for Sātavāhana. V. Smith’s date (first cent. A.D.) is certainly wrong. The poetry may probably be as early as the third century; Weber’s ed., p. xxiii; Lévi, TI. i. 326; GIL. iii. 102 f. [↑]

[107] Lüders, Bruchstücke buddhistischer Dramen, pp. 40 f.; SBAW. 1913, pp. 1003 ff. [↑]

[108] See Keith in CHI. i. 123 f. [↑]

[109] TI. i. 331. [↑]

[110] IA. xxx. 556. [↑]

[111] A transitional stage of Prākrit may, perhaps, be seen in the Nāṭyaçāstra, but the text is very corrupt; cf. Jacobi, Bhavisattakaha, pp. 84 ff. [↑]

[112] Cf. Aischylos in Athen., p. 347. [↑]

[113] 559. See Daṇḍin, Kāvyādarça, i. 14 ff., and cf. the analyses of Man̄kha’s Çrīkaṇṭhacarita (twelfth cent.) and Haricandra’s Dharmaçarmābhyudaya in Lévi, TI. i. 337 ff.; Keith, Sansk. Lit., pp. 38 ff. [↑]

[114] See Jacobi, Das Rāmāyaṇa, pp. 119 ff.; Walter, Indica, III. [↑]

[115] Such a drama as the Haragaurīvivāha of Jagajjyotirmalla of Nepal (A.D. 1617–33), which is really a sort of opera with the verses, written in dialect, as the only fixed element (Lévi, Le Népal, i. 242) is of no cogency for the early drama. The Maithilī beginnings of drama, based on the classical, give song in dialect, dialogue in Sanskrit and Prākrit (Lévi, TI. i. 393). [↑]

[116] Kielhorn, IA. xiv. 326 f.; Lüders, Bruchstücke buddhistischer Dramen, p. 63. [↑]

[117] Cf. Weber, IS. viii. 181 ff.; Jacobi, ZDMG. xxxviii. 615 f. [↑]

PART II

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SANSKRIT DRAMA

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III

AÇVAGHOṢA AND THE BUDDHIST DRAMA

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1. The Çāriputraprakaraṇa

The discovery of fragments of manuscripts on palm-leaf, of great antiquity, at Turfan, has through the energy of Professor Lüders revealed to us the existence of at least three Buddhist dramas. Of one of these the authorship is happily certain, for the colophon of the last act has been preserved, and it records that the drama was the Çāriputraprakaraṇa of Açvaghoṣa, son of Suvarṇākṣī; it gives also the fuller title Çāradvatīputraprakaraṇa and the number of acts as nine.

Açvaghoṣa is an author whose fame, thanks to his error in being a Buddhist long lost in India, has recently attained renewal by the discovery and publication of his Buddhacarita, a court epic in excellent style and spirit on the life of the Buddha. His Sūtrālaṁkāra is also known through the medium of a Tibetan translation, and illustrates his ability in turning the tale into an instrument for propaganda in support of the Buddhist faith. If the tradition which ascribes to him the Mahāyānaçraddhotpāda is correct, he was also the founder or expounder of a subtle system of metaphysics akin to the Vijñānavāda of the Mahāyāna school, and the Vajrasūcī seems to preserve in some measure the record of his onslaught on the caste system, which exalted the Brahmins at the expense of the Kṣatriyas, and condemned Buddhism on the score that it was unfitting that a Kṣatriya like the Buddha should give instructions to Brahmins. Certainly genuine is the Saundarananda, in the epic manner, which like all his works is devoted to the effective exposition of Buddhism in the language of polite literature, and also of the Brahmin schools. We recognize in him one who appreciated that it would never do to allow Buddhism to remain buried in a form inferior to the best that [[81]]Brahminism could produce, and it is curious that fate should have preserved the work of the rival of the Brahmins, while it has permitted his models to disappear. That he had abundant precedent to guide him is clear from the classical form already assumed by his dramas; the argument of Professor Konow[1] to the contrary, on the ground that many of the standing formulae and characters are derived from the popular drama, and show that the artistic drama had not developed yet full independence, is unintelligible, since these features persist throughout the history of the Sanskrit drama. Nor does any weight attach to the argument that the Nāṭyaçāstra, assumed to be of about the same period as Açvaghoṣa, shows knowledge of only a limited variety of dramas. On the contrary it is amazing how much literature must have preceded to permit of the setting up of the main types of drama, some of which were evidently represented by many specimens, though others doubtless rested on a small basis of practice.

The brief fragments preserved of the drama of Açvaghoṣa give us the certainty of his authorship if any doubt could exist after the colophon, for one verse is taken bodily from the Buddhacarita, just as he twice refers in the Sūtrālaṁkāra to that important work. The story of the play is clear; it deals with the events which led up to the conversion of the young Maudgalyāyana and Çāriputra by the Buddha, and some of the incidents are certain. Çāriputra had an interview with Açvajit; then he discussed the question of the claims of the Buddha to be a teacher with his friend, the Vidūṣaka, who raised the objection that a Brahmin like his master should not accept the teaching of a Kṣatriya; Çāriputra repels the objection by reminding his friend that medicine aids the sick though given by one of inferior caste, as does water one aheat. Maudgalyāyana greets Çāriputra, inquiring of him the cause of his glad appearance, and learns his reasons. The two go to the Buddha, who receives them, and who foretells to them that they will be the highest in knowledge and magic power of his disciples. [[82]]In this point there is a deliberate and certainly artistic deviation from the ordinary version of the incident, followed in the Buddhacarita, in which the prophecy of the Buddha is addressed, not to the disciples themselves, but to others of the Buddha’s followers. The end of the play is marked by a philosophic dialogue between Çāriputra and the Buddha, which includes a polemic against the belief in the existence of a permanent self; it terminates in a praise of his two new disciples by the Buddha, and a formal benediction.

The most remarkable thing regarding this drama is its close correspondence to the classical type as laid down in the Nāṭyaçāstra. The piece is a Prakaraṇa, and it has nine acts, which accords perfectly with the rule of the Çāstra; the Mṛcchakaṭikā and Mālatīmādhava have ten apiece; the Acts bear no titles, but this is in accord with the normal usage, though the Mṛcchakaṭikā gives names. The hero is Çāriputra, who corresponds to the Brahmin hero of the Çāstra, and who is emphatically of the noble and calm type enjoined by that authority. Whether the heroine was a lady or a hetaera we do not know, nor does it appear how far the poet altered the subject-matter by invention, which is normally the case with later Prakaraṇas. The Buddha and his disciples, including, beside the two heroes, Kauṇḍinya and a Çramaṇa speak Sanskrit, and use both prose and verse; the Vidūṣaka speaks Prākrit. The presence of this figure is a remarkable proof of the fixed character attained by the drama, for in itself there is nothing more absurd than that a youthful ascetic seeking after truth should be encumbered by one who is a meet attendant on a wealthy merchant, Brahmin, or minister. It can, therefore, only be supposed that Açvaghoṣa was writing a type of drama in which the rôle was far too firmly embedded to permit its omission, and presumably in the story of the drama now lost to us the Vidūṣaka served to introduce comic relief. With natural good taste, he disappears from the last Act, where Çāriputra has no need as a member of the Buddha’s fraternity for encumbrances like a jester.

In one point only has it been claimed to find a clear discrepancy between Açvaghoṣa’s practice and that of the later drama. At the close the theory[2] requires that the question, ‘Is [[83]]there anything further that you desire (ataḥ param api priyam asti)?’ be addressed to the hero by himself or another, to which he replies by uttering a benediction styled the Bharatavākya. In the drama of Açvaghoṣa the phrase is omitted, and the benediction proceeds, without prelude, with the words, ‘From now on shall these two ever increase their knowledge, restraining their senses, to gain release’, spoken by the Buddha, not by the hero. Lüders concludes hence that the regular form of close was not yet established by Açvaghoṣa’s time. The conclusion is clearly fallacious, and rests on a failure to recognize in this the readiness of Açvaghoṣa to give effect to a traditional usage, while not slavishly following it. It would obviously have been absurd to place the last words in the drama in the form of a benediction in the mouth of any one save the Buddha, and therefore he speaks the benediction. To preface it with the usual formula was needless in his case, but the opening words of the verse are ataḥ param, which is obviously not an incredible coincidence, but a deliberate reference to the ordinary phrase. Açvaghoṣa shows thus his knowledge of the rule and his power to vary it in case of need. Similarly Bhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa in the Veṇīsaṁhāra puts the Bharatavākya in the mouth of Yudhiṣṭhira, but he makes Kṛṣṇa end the play by according the favour prayed for by Yudhiṣṭhira. He too felt that it would be absurd to leave the omnipotent one in the position of listening without response to the utterance of a benediction by one who cannot be more than an inferior, though nominally the hero.[3]

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2. The Allegorical and the Hetaera Dramas

The same manuscript which contains portions of the Çāriputraprakaraṇa has also fragments of two other dramas. There is no evidence of their authorship, other than the fact that they appear in the same manuscript as the work of Açvaghoṣa, and that they display the same general appearance as the work of that writer. That they are Açvaghoṣa’s is much more probable than that they are the work of some unknown contemporary.[4] [[84]]

The first of these is specially interesting as it represents a type of which we have otherwise no earlier specimen than the Prabodhacandrodaya of Kṛṣṇamiçra. We find the allegorical figures of Buddhi, wisdom, Kīrti, fame, and Dhṛti, firmness, appearing and conversing. This is followed by the advent of the Buddha himself, adorned with the halo which he borrowed from Greek art. We do not know whether he appeared later in actual conversation with the allegorical figures, but for this mixture of the real and the ideal we have to go beyond Kṛṣṇamiçra, who represents all his characters as abstract, Viṣṇu for instance by Faith in Viṣṇu, to Kavikarṇapūra’s glorification of Caitanya in the sixteenth century, in which allegorical figures are mingled with Caitanya and his followers, though they do not actually converse together.[5] It must remain uncertain whether there was a train of tradition leading from Açvaghoṣa to Kṛṣṇamiçra, or whether the latter created the type of drama afresh; the former theory is the more likely. The characters all speak Sanskrit, but the fragments are too short to give us any real information on the general trend of the play.

The other drama gives us more interesting matter. It is one in which figures a hetaera named Magadhavatī, a Vidūṣaka named Komudhagandha, a hero styled only Nāyaka, but probably named Somadatta, a Duṣṭa, rogue, without further name, a certain Dhānaṁjaya, who may possibly be a prince if the term ‘king’s son’ (bhaṭṭidālaka), which is recognized in the Nāṭyaçāstra as the style of the younger princes of the blood, applies to him, a maid-servant, and Çāriputra and Maudgalyāyana. The drama was doubtless intended for purposes of religious edification, but what we have is too fragmentary to do more than show that the author was possessed of humour and that the Vidūṣaka was already a hungry soul. The drama alludes to an old garden as the place where part of the action passed, as in the Mṛcchakaṭikā, and also as in that drama the house of the hetaera served as the scene of another part of the action. The characters are often introduced as entering in vehicles (pravahaṇa), a further point of [[85]]similarity to that drama, while an allusion to a Samāja or festival on a hill-top accords with the frequent reference to such amusements in Buddhist literature. An obscure character is a person, obviously of lower rank, who is styled Gobaṁ°.

The drama shows close agreement with the classical model; the name of the Vidūṣaka is evidence of this, for not only is it connected with a real Brahmin family, but it obeys the rule that the name of that character should indicate a flower, the spring, &c., for it means literally ‘the offspring of the lotus-smelling’. The name of the hetaera does not observe the rule exemplified in the Cārudatta that the hetaera’s name should end in senā, siddhā, or dattā, but, apart from the fact that the authority for the rule is very late, the name was very probably given to the poet by the literary tradition. The fact that the Duṣṭa and the Nāyaka appear by these titles only has a parallel in the Cārudatta and the Buddhist drama of Harṣa, the Nāgānanda, but it is difficult to say whether or not this is a sign of antiquity.

The material available in the case of any of the three dramas is too scanty to give us any assurance as to what the practice was regarding the introduction, especially the use of the Nāndī, or verse of benediction. What is certain is that the Pāripārçvika, or assistant of the Sūtradhāra in the later literature, is found apparently as taking part in the opening of the drama, perhaps the Çāriputraprakaraṇa.

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3. The Language of the Dramas

In accordance with the later rules we find the Buddha, his disciples, the hero of the hetaera play and Dhānaṁjaya speaking Sanskrit; the same is true of the allegorical characters, and this is also in accord with later practice, for in both Kṛṣṇamiçra and Kavikarṇapūra’s works some of the allegorical characters speak Sanskrit, though others, of more feminine appeal and character, speak Prākrit. One Çramaṇa speaks Sanskrit, another—conceivably an Ājīvika—a Prākrit.

The Sanskrit contains some errors, which are obvious Prākritisms, and which it would be unjust to attribute to the author, or authors. Genuine departures from the norm are scanty; the use of ārttha for artha has a precise parallel in the nearly contemporaneous dialect of Mathurā; tuṣṇīm is frequent in [[86]]Buddhist Sanskrit as well as etymologically correct; krimi is found also in the Buddhacarita where the reading kṛmi would spoil the metre; pratīgṛhīta has many Sanskrit parallels. In pradveṣam where the metre requires pradoṣam Buddhist influence is doubtless present, but yeva and tāva are probably merely errors of the scribe, to whom may be assigned such a monstrosity as paçyemas and Somadattassa. But bhagavāṁ has the support of the practice of the Mahāvastu where stems in mat and vat end thus, and it explains the Sandhi çṛṇvam puṣpā. These are minimal variants; in the main the Sanskrit is excellent and the fragments shows traces of the able versification and style of Açvaghoṣa.

The other characters speak Prākrit, and, by a curious variation from the normal practice, the stage directions, which are freely given as in the classical drama, are normally expressed in the language which the character concerned uses, though there are cases of mixture and apparent confusion which may be due to the scribe. Three different forms of Prākrit may be distinguished, the first spoken by the Duṣṭa, the second by the mysterious Gobaṁ°, and the third by the hetaera and Vidūṣaka.

The Duṣṭa’s speech in three important points is similar to the Māgadhī of the Prākrit grammarians; it substitutes l for r; reduces all three sibilants to ç; and has e in the nominative singular of masculine nouns in a. But it ignores the rules of the grammarians in certain matters; hard letters are not softened (e.g. bhoti), nor soft consonants elided (e.g. komudagandha), when intervocalic. There is no tendency to cerebralize n, and in kālanā the dental replaces the cerebral. Fuller forms of consonants remain in han̄gho (haṅho) and bambhaṇa (bamhaṇa). The later forms of development of consonantal combinations are unknown; thus for rj we have jj, not yy, as in ajja; cch remains in lieu of becoming çc; kṣ becomes kkh, not sk or ẖk; ṣṭ and ṣṭh give ṭṭh, not sṭ. In kiçça we have an older form than kīça, in ahakaṁ than ahake, hake, hage. In practically all these details we must see an earlier stage of what becomes Māgadhī in the grammarians. With it may be compared the metrical inscription of the Jogīmārā cave on the Rāmgarh hill which belongs to the period of Açoka.

The Prākrit of the Gobaṁ° agrees with this Old Māgadhī in having l for r and e in the nominative singular, but it reduces all [[87]]sibilants to s. It thus shows a certain similarity to the Ardha-Māgadhī of the grammarians, but that dialect often keeps r though it frequently alters it to l; for instance it has r for the kaleti of this Prākrit and the Old Māgadhī. Other points of similarity are the retention of the dental for cerebral in vanna; the lengthening of the vowel before the suffix ka (vannīkāhi); the accusative plural neuter in pupphā; and the infinitive bhuṁjitaye (bhuñjittae). There are points of difference, but they are probably all cases of earlier forms. Thus, as in Old Māgadhī, we have no softening or loss of intervocalic consonants; n is not cerebralised, but even introduced in palinata; ḷ appears in lieu of l; the instrumental in āhi has no nasal; the nominative of vat stems appears as in vā, as against vaṁ or vante; in the infinitive we find no doubling of the consonant in taye. The fact, however, of the regular change of r to l and the use of the form yeva after a long vowel as in Māgadhī and Pāli show that the Old Ardha-Māgadhī was more akin to Māgadhī than the later Ardha-Māgadhī, which came steadily under the influence of the western dialects as shown by the tendency to change e of the nominative to o.

There are strong points of similarity between this Old Ardha-Māgadhī and the language of Açoka’s pillar inscriptions. They agree as regards the use of l, s, and e, the dentals in palinata and vannīkāhi, yeva after long vowels, and the long vowel before the suffix ka. They disagree in the nominative and accusative plural neuter of a stems, which have āni in the inscriptions as against ā, but that is of no great importance, as these are doublets. The infinitive, however, is in tave, which cannot be equated with taye; Ardha-Māgadhī ttae may be from either.

The Açokan dialect is doubtless the court speech of his kingdom, and a descendant of the Ardha-Māgadhī of Mahāvīra, the founder of the Jain religion, and probably also of the Buddha, whose speech was clearly not akin to the Māgadhī of the grammarians, though it is called Māgadhī in the sacred texts.[6]

The theory of the Nāṭyaçāstra assigns Ardha-Māgadhī as the language of savants, sons of kings or Rājputs, and Çreṣṭhins, rich merchants, but, with the exception of Bhāsa’s Karṇabhāra, it does not appear in the extant dramas. Māgadhī, on the contrary, [[88]]is required in the case of men who live in the women’s apartments, diggers of underground passages, keepers of drink shops, watchers, the hero himself in time of danger, and the Çakāra. Into which category the Duṣṭa falls is not certain; the Daçarūpa ascribes this Prākrit to low people in general.

Çaurasenī is ascribed to the hetaera by the Çāstra which gives Prācyā or eastern dialect to the Vidūṣaka, but it is clear that the Prācyā is a mere variety of Çaurasenī, from which it differs only in the use of certain expressions. This is borne out by the dramas, in which there is no real distinction between the speech of these two characters. With the Çaurasenī of the grammarians it shows remarkable parallels. It has r in lieu of changing it to l; it reduces the sibilants to s; and for the nominative masculine it has o. Further, it changes kṣ into kkh, not cch; for chard it has chaḍḍ, for mard, madd; for saçrīkam irregularly sassirīkaṁ with the double s despite the epenthetic vowel; and in the third singular future issiti. The gerund kariya is parallel to karia in Hemacandra’s grammar; bhaṭṭā is the vocative of bhartṛ; iyaṁ is feminine as later iaṁ in Çaurasenī alone; bhavāṁ as nominative is comparable with bhavaṁ; bhaṇ is conjugated in the ninth class; viya is parallel to via for iva; and dāni with loss of i as a particle is similar to dāṇiṁ.

In other cases the forms of this Prākrit are clearly older than those of the grammarians’ Çaurasenī. As in the other Prākrits of the drama, there is no softening or omission of intervocalic consonants, and no cerebralization of n. Further, initial y is kept, not reduced to j; the interjection ai in lieu of aï is supported by the language of the Girnār and Udayagiri inscriptions; in nirussāsam we have an older form than ūsasida of Çaurasenī; jñ and ny give ññ, not the later ṇṇ; dy gives yy (written y) for jj; tuvaṁ and tava are both manifestly older than the forms tumaṁ and tuha, while karotha is a remarkable example of the preservation of the old strong base. Old also is the preservation of the long vowel in bhavāṁ. In adaṇḍāraho and the dubious arhessi we have two variants on the rule of Çaurasenī, which has i as the epenthetic vowel in arh, but this merely illustrates the uncertainty of these epentheses; duguṇa in lieu of diuṇa is not older, but a variant mode of treating dviguṇa, and there is no special difficulty in holding that dāṇi and idāṇi are forms which [[89]]were originally doublets of dāṇiṁ and idāṇiṁ in Çaurasenī, and later were superseded. From other Prākrit passages, presumably in the same Old Çaurasenī, we obtain old forms like vayaṁ, we, and tumhākaṁ in lieu of tumhāṇaṁ; edisa for erisa or īdisa; dissati for dīsadi; gahītaṁ for gahidaṁ; khu is kept after short vowels in lieu of being doubled; a long vowel is kept before tti and such forms as mhi. The future in gamissāma is probably old, while nikkhanta and bambhaṇa admit of this explanation against the later nikkanta and bamhaṇa.

In the words of the hetaera the word surada occurs, with softening of t to d; conceivably the passage might be verse, but in all probability we are merely faced with a sporadic instance of a change which later set in, due perhaps to a copyist’s error; to find in it an evidence of Māhārāṣṭrī would be unwise, especially as the very next word (vimadda) is not in the Māhārāṣṭrī form (vimaḍḍa). In the dialect of the Duṣṭa we have a form makkaṭaho which may be genitive, as in Apabhraṅça, but is not allowed in Māgadhī; but the sense is too uncertain to permit of any security.

The existence and literary use of these Prākrits is most interesting in the history both of the language and the literature, for they present archaic features which place them on the same plane of change as Pāli and the dialects of the older inscriptions. They may be set beside the inscriptions in the Sītābengā and Jogīmārā caves on the Rāmgarh hill, which both show lyric strophes. The influence of the Kāvya style in Sanskrit can be traced obviously in the later Nāsik inscription in Prākrit of the second century A.D., and even in the inscription of Khāravela of Kalin̄ga perhaps in the second century B.C.[7] We cannot, therefore, see any plausibility in the idea of the gradual adaptation of Sanskrit, a sacred language, to belles lettres; on the contrary the dramas show that the Prākrits in literature were already under the influence of the Sanskrit Kāvya.

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4. The Metres

Scanty as the fragments are, they display another feature significant of the development of the drama on the classical [[90]]lines. The metres employed are very numerous, as is natural in a poetry in which the verse serves essentially the purpose of displaying the skill of the writer. In addition to the Çloka we find the Upajāti (⏓ - ⏑ - - ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ - -), the Çālinī (- - - -, - ⏑ - - ⏑ - -), Vaṅçasthā (⏑ - ⏑ - - ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ - ⏑ -), Praharṣiṇī (- - -, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ - ⏑ - -), Vasantatilaka (- - ⏑ - ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ - -), Mālinī (⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ - -, - ⏑ - - ⏑ - -), Çikhariṇī (⏑ - - - - -, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ - - ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ -), Hariṇī (⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ -, - - - -, ⏑ - ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ -), Çārdūlavikrīḍita (- - - ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ - ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ -, - - ⏑ - - ⏑ -), Sragdharā (- - - - ⏑ - -, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ -, - ⏑ - - ⏑ - -), and Suvadanā (- - - - ⏑ - -, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ -, - - ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ -), the last of these metres being almost a stranger to the drama, though it appears in Bhāsa, in the Mudrārākṣasa, and once in Varāhamihira. The tendency to seek sound effects is clear in a Çikhariṇī verse.

That so many metres of elaborate form should be found is of great interest, not merely as testimony of the early development of the Kāvya literature, but also because we see that the drama as early as Açvaghoṣa, and doubtless long before him, had definitely accepted the verses not as essential elements of the dialogue as are the verses in Greek drama, but as more or less ornamental excursions. In the absence of any complete play we cannot say what proportion of Çlokas was observed by Açvaghoṣa; we may suspect that it was not higher than in Bhāsa, if so high. Now the Çloka by its comparative simplicity and brevity, and by the ease of its structure, might well have served the same purpose in the Indian drama as did the trimeter in that of Greece, and it is curious to speculate what might have been the fate of the drama if it had been felt possible to write it throughout in verse. But evidently by Açvaghoṣa’s age the distinction between prose and stanzas, essentially lyric in type, was fixed, and the elaborate structure of the stanza, normally with four lines of equal length and identic structure, the longer lines having also caesuras, rendered it quite unsuitable as a medium of conversation. Thus early in the drama we find a defect in form which was gradually to become more and more marked and to render the dialogue, that is the essential feature of the drama, less and less the subject of the labours of the dramatists. [[91]]

[1] ID. p. 50. For the fragments see Lüders, Bruchstücke buddhistischer Dramen (1911); SBAW. 1911, pp. 388 ff. For his philosophy, cf. Keith, Buddhist Philosophy, Part III, ch. iii. The Saundarananda is earlier than the Buddhacarita and it than the Sūtrālaṁkāra. [↑]

[2] N. xix. 102. [↑]

[3] Similarly in the Pārthaparākrama of Prahlādanadeva (twelfth cent.) Vāsava pronounces the benediction. [↑]

[4] Açvaghoṣa’s dramatic powers are also exhibited in the Māra legend of the [[84]]Sūtrālaṁkāra, which is preserved in the Divyāvadāna (pp. 356 ff.; Windisch, Māra und Buddha, pp. 161 ff.); cf. Huber, BEFEO. iv. 414 f. [↑]

[5] In the Jain Moharājaparājaya (below, ch. xi, § 3) the real and the ideal characters converse. [↑]

[6] Cf. Lüders, SBAW. 1913, pp. 999 ff. [↑]

[7] That any date is given in the inscription is wholly uncertain; see discussions in IA. xlvii. 223 f.; xlviii. 124, 206 f.; xlix. 30, 43 ff.; JRAS. 1910, pp. 324 ff. [↑]

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IV

BHĀSA

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1. The Authenticity of Bhāsa’s Dramas

Until 1910 the existence of any drama of Bhāsa’s was unknown in Europe, and only in 1912 appeared under the editorship of T. Gaṇapati Çāstrin, the first of a series of thirteen dramas which their discoverer attributed to that poet. The fact, however, that the dramas themselves are silent as to the authorship rendered careful research necessary to determine their provenance, and the proofs adduced have not won entire satisfaction.

What we knew before the publication of Bhāsa was simply his high reputation. Kālidāsa in his first work, the Mālavikāgnimitra, refers to Bhāsa, with Saumilla, Kaviputra, and others as his great predecessors in the art, whose fame renders difficult the acceptance of the work of an untried author. Bāṇa,[1] at the beginning of the seventh century, states that Bhāsa attained fame by his dramas, begun by the Sūtradhāra, with many rôles and including episodes, as one might by the erection of temples, begun by the architect, with many stages, and beflagged. It would be unwise to prove by this that Bhāsa innovated in these regards; what is essential to Bāṇa is to celebrate Bhāsa’s fame, and to show his wit by the comparison in the same words with some not very obvious object of comparison. A century later Vākpati[2] declares his pleasure in Bhāsa, friend of fire (jalaṇamitte), in the author of the Raghuvaṅça, in Subandhu and Hāricandra. Rājaçekhara (c. A.D. 900) places him among the classical poets, and a verse records a curious incident: ‘Critics cast on the fire, to test it, the discus composed of the dramas of Bhāsa; the Svapnavāsavadattā did not succumb to the [[92]]flames’.[3] The verse, however, contains a double entendre strangely ignored by Professor Konow;[4] it denotes of course the superiority of the Svapnavāsavadattā to the other dramas of Bhāsa—a fact which the published plays bear out to the full—but it also alludes to a reason; the play itself contains a fire, which was feigned by the minister to permit the possibility of the king’s new marriage, and it is only appropriate that, as that fire could not burn the queen, so the fire which tried the play was unable to prevail against it. The passage throws the necessary light on the term ‘friend of fire’ of Vākpati, which should not be rendered meaningless by attributing it to the fact that Bhāsa often mentions fire in his dramas.

These facts are, it must at once be admitted, extremely favourable to the authenticity of the dramas; taken all in all they are clearly the work of a very considerable writer; in technique they are less finished than those of Kālidāsa; the Prākrit is clearly earlier than that of the works of Kālidāsa or the Mṛcchakaṭikā; the Svapnavāsavadattā is clearly the best, and it explains Vākpati and Rājaçekhara’s references. Bāṇa’s statement regarding the opening of the plays by the Sūtradhāra is proved by the dramas. There is also substantial evidence to be derived from the writers on rhetoric. Bhāmaha, who may belong to the beginning of the eighth century A.D., criticizes severely the plot of the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa; Vāmana, in the eighth, cites from that play, the Svapnavāsavadattā, and the Cārudatta; Abhinavagupta (c. A.D. 1000) twice names the Svapnavāsavadattā, and mentions the Cārudatta. These references are not in themselves conclusive, for they do not mention Bhāsa as the author of the plays, even when these are named,[5] and not merely cited from or discussed, but they show that the critics knew and were prepared to cite these dramas, which means that they accepted the view that they were by an important author. The ascription of the Svapnavāsavadattā to Bhāsa gives us the right to accept his authorship of the rest if internal evidence supports it. That this is so is undeniable, [[93]]even by those who suspect the attribution to Bhāsa; the coincidences in technique, in the Prākrits, in metre, and in style are overwhelming. Finally, there is the evidence of the Cārudatta; it is undeniably and obviously the prototype of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, and it proves, therefore, that the dramas are older than that work which was well known by Vāmana, and is certainly a good deal earlier.

The arguments[6] against the authenticity are all inconclusive. They are based on the fact that a drama, Mattavilāsa, of Mahendravikramavarman, of the seventh century A.D. presents the same characteristics as regards the form of opening the drama as the plays of Bhāsa, and the suggestion that Rājasiṅha is to be identified with a prince of the south of that name (c. A.D. 675). The evidence is clearly inadequate; Bhāsa’s fame was evidently more prevalent in the south than in the north, for a scene from one of his plays has survived in a mutilated form in the popular theatre there, and it is easy to understand how a seventh-century writer imitated him in technique. Moreover, the imitation is very partial; the omission of the name of the author and the play is not followed, and this is certainly a sign of a later date for the Mattavilāsa. The guess regarding the identification of the king is without probative force, for the term seems deliberately vague, and is in keeping with the silence of the author regarding his own name and that of his drama. The introduction of immediate reality is incongruous, and, therefore, avoided.

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2. The Date of Bhāsa’s Dramas

It is difficult to arrive at any precise determination of Bhāsa’s date. That Kālidāsa knew his fame as firmly established is clear, and, if we may fairly safely date Kālidāsa about A.D. 400, this gives us a period of not later than A.D. 350 for Bhāsa. The fact of his priority to the Mṛcchakaṭikā leads us to no definite result, for the view that this play is to be placed before Kālidāsa in the third century A.D. is not at all plausible. An upper limit is given by the fact that Bhāsa is doubtless later than Açvaghoṣa, whose Buddhacarita is probably the source of a [[94]]verse in the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa, and whose Prākrit is assuredly and unquestionably older in character. It is useless to seek to estimate by the evidence of the Prākrit whether Bhāsa is more closely allied in date to Kālidāsa than to Açvaghoṣa, because changes in speech and the representation of them in literature are matters which do not in the slightest degree permit of exact valuation in terms of years. The most that can be said is that it may be held without improbability that Bhāsa is nearer to Kālidāsa’s period than to Açvaghoṣa’s.

An effort at more exact determination is made by Professor Konow[7] on the ground that Bhāsa’s dramas in part deal with the story of Udayana, of which Ujjayinī was specially fond, as we know from Kālidāsa. Hence we may assume that the home of the poet was Ujjayinī, an assumption which obviously is not legitimate in any degree. Further we may assume that he lived under one of the Western Kṣatrapas, which again goes too far. Now the usual ending of a drama is not regularly observed in Bhāsa’s dramas; the introductory question is found only in the Avimāraka, Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa, Bālacarita, and Dūtavākya. The description of the final benediction as Bharatavākya is omitted in the Madhyamavyāyoga, where Viṣṇu is praised; in the Dūtaghaṭotkaca, where his commands are given; in the Pañcarātra, where the wish is expressed that the king (rājasiṅha) should rule the whole earth; and in the Ūrubhan̄ga, where the wish is that the prince should conquer his foes and rule the earth. In the other plays a change of form of the Bharatavākya is asserted; in the Karṇabhāra there is the desire for the disappearance of misfortune; in the Pratimānāṭaka the wish is that the king may fare as Rāma who was reunited with Sītā and his kinsmen; in the Avimāraka, the Abhiṣekanāṭaka, and the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa, that the king should, after destroying his foes, rule the whole earth, while in the Svapnavāsavadattā, Dūtavākya, and Bālacarita, the wish is for universal rule. This suggests that for a time the king reigned in peace; then enemies arose and disturbed his power; finally he again won the upper hand, and his friends could without absurdity pray for his attaining imperial rank. This would agree with the history of the Kṣatrapa Rudrasiṅha, who held from 181–8, and [[95]]again from A.D. 191–6 the high rank of Mahākṣatrapa, and whose name may be hinted at in the use of the term rājasiṅha. That the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa is older than the Svapnavāsavadattā is held to support this suggestion, but it is clearly without any merit save ingenuity.

Nor is there more to be said for Konow’s other suggestions of date; the fact that the term Nāṭaka is used, and that the Vidūṣaka appears, cannot show that he is early, for they are used on continuously to the latest days of the drama, and the view that Bhāsa was an innovator who shortened the preliminaries, which is given as a reason for making him early, because the Nāṭyaçāstra gives the preliminaries in detail, is abandoned sub silentio in the author’s later work,[8] where it is candidly admitted that we do not know whether he shortened the preliminaries at all. Nor can we say anything regarding his relation to the Nāṭyaçāstra which will aid us to a date; there is even a tradition that he himself wrote on the theory of the drama. Nor can any weight be attached to the view that Bhāsa stands nearer Açvaghoṣa in technique than Kālidāsa; these matters do not permit of precise evaluation in time, and, if we place Bhāsa about A.D. 300, we go as far as the evidence allows.

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3. The Dramas and their Sources

The derivation of the drama in part from epic recitations is peculiarly clear in Bhāsa, who shows the influence of the two great epics in its clearest form. In the Madhyamavyāyoga[9] we have a reminiscence of the tale of the love of the demon Hiḍimbā for Bhīma, the third of the five Pāṇḍavas, and their marriage which has Ghaṭotkaca as its fruit, though the parents part. The play opens with preliminary rites, after which the director pronounces a benediction on the audience, and begins to address them, but is suddenly interrupted by a sound, which is revealed as the cry of a Brahmin, who with his three sons and his wife is being pursued by the demon Ghaṭotkaca. The demon has received orders from his mother to bring her a victim; he offers, therefore, [[96]]to spare the rest of the family, if one is willing to go with him, and the midmost, Madhyama, of the sons decides to go, though there is a generous rivalry among the three in self-sacrifice. He asks, however, time to go to perform a rite of purification, and, as he tarries, the demon in anger calls aloud for him. Bhīma responds, as the midmost of the Pāṇḍavas; he will go in the boy’s place, but not by force. The demon, not knowing his father, seeks to compel him, but, failing, accepts his offer to go willingly. Hiḍimbā greets her husband with joy, and reproaches her son and bids him express regret. She explains that her demand was made expressly to win for her a visit from Bhīma, who suggests that they should all accompany the aged Brahmin and his family to their destination, and with a verse in praise of Viṣṇu the piece ends.

Ghaṭotkaca is again the leading figure of the Dūtaghaṭotkaca, which may also be classed as a Vyāyoga, a term indicating primarily a military spectacle. The Kurus are jubilant over the defeat of Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s son, at the hands of Jayadratha, though Dhṛtarāṣṭra warns them of the dangers that overshadow them. Ghaṭotkaca appears to them and predicts their punishment at the hands of Arjuna. Of the same general type apparently is the Karṇabhāra which deals with Karṇa’s armour; he makes himself ready for his fight with Arjuna, and tells Çalya, the Madra king, of the trick by which he won it from the great Paraçurāma, though the latter retaliated for the deception by the curse that the arms should fail him in the hour of his need. The curse is fulfilled, for Indra comes in the guise of a Brahmin and obtains from Karṇa his weapons and earrings. Karṇa and Çalya go out to battle, and the sound of Arjuna’s chariot is heard. In the Ūrubhan̄ga the fight between Bhīma and Duryodhana, greatest of the Kurus, ends in the breaking of the thigh of the latter, who falls in agony; his son comes to him in his childish way, but his father is fain to save him the sorrow of his plight. His parents and wives surround him; he seeks to comfort them; Açvatthāman swears vengeance despite his counsels of peace; visions of his brothers and Apsarases float before him, and he passes away.

These four plays have each but one Act; the Pañcarātra, on the other hand, has three, and may perhaps be classed as a [[97]]Samavakāra, in so far at least as it is a drama in which there are more heroes of sorts than one, and they more or less attain their ends, which seem to be the chief features of that dubious kind of play in the theory. It reflects the period when efforts are being made to save the Kurus and the Pāṇḍavas from the fatal conflict, which ends in the ruin of the former and grave loss to the latter. Droṇa has undertaken a sacrifice for Duryodhana, and seeks as the fee the grant to the Pāṇḍavas of half the realm to which they had a just claim. Duryodhana promises on condition that they are heard of within five days. Virāṭa, however, is missing from those present at the offering; he has to mourn the loss of a hundred[10] Kīcakas. Bhīṣma suspects that Bhīma must be at the bottom of this illhap, and on his instigation at the end of Act II it is decided to raid Virāṭa’s cows, as he hopes thus to bring the facts to light. The foray, however, fails, for the Pāṇḍavas are with Virāṭa in disguise; Abhimanyu is taken prisoner and married to Virāṭa’s daughter. The charioteer in Act III brings back the news, showing clearly that Arjuna and Bhīma have taken part in the contest, but none the less Duryodhana decides to keep faith.

The Dūtavākya, a Vyāyoga in one act, is again from the Mahābhārata, but deals with the Kṛṣṇa legend. Bhīṣma is made chief of the Kuru forces; the arrival of Nārāyaṇa is announced, but Duryodhana forbids that any honour be shown to him, and seats himself before a picture, in which is depicted the indignity shown to Draupadī, when her husband gambled her away at dice. Kṛṣṇa enters, making a deep impression on all by his majesty; even Duryodhana falls from his seat. The messenger demands the half of the realm for the Pāṇḍavas; Duryodhana refuses and seeks to bind the envoy. Enraged, he calls for his magic weapons, but finally he consents to lay aside his wrath, and receives the homage of Dhṛtarāṣṭra. It is interesting to note that the play, in describing the picture, omits any allusion to the miracle by which in the epic Kṛṣṇa himself is represented as providing the unhappy Draupadī with fresh raiment as soon as each garment is dragged from her in insult. But it would be extremely unwise to assume with Professor Winternitz[11] that this [[98]]fact proves that Bhāsa did not know of this episode, and that it was interpolated after his time in the epic. Obviously it would have ruined the effect of the picture if such a fact had been hinted at in it, apart from the difficulty of exhibiting this by the painter’s art, and Bhāsa is clearly justified on artistic grounds in allowing this episode to be passed over.

Of far greater importance is the Bālacarita,[12] which presents us with a lively and vivid picture of the feats of Kṛṣṇa, culminating in the slaying of Kaṅsa, a brilliant exemplification of the value of Patañjali’s evidence as to the growth of drama. The director enters, pronounces a verse of benediction asking the favour of the god, who is Nārāyaṇa, Viṣṇu, Rāma, and Kṛṣṇa in the four ages of the world; he announces the advent of the sage Nārada and retires. Nārada explains that he has come from the heaven to gaze on the young Kṛṣṇa, born in the family of the Vṛṣṇis as son of Devakī and Vasudeva, who is in truth Nārāyaṇa incarnate to destroy Kaṅsa. He sees the infant, pays homage, and departs. Devakī and Vasudeva appear on the stage; they have joy in the birth of a son, but terror, for Kaṅsa has slain already six sons of theirs and will slay the seventh—a deviation in number from our other sources which make Kṛṣṇa the eighth child. Vasudeva takes the infant and decides to remove it from Kaṅsa’s reach. He leaves the city, but the child’s weight is as colossal as that of Mount Mandara; the darkness is impenetrable, but a marvellous light comes from the child, and the Yamunā makes dry a path for him to cross. The spirit of the tree under which he rests brings to him the cowherd Nanda, bearing a dead maiden, an infant just borne by his wife Yaçodā, who, fallen in a faint, does not know whether the child is a boy or a girl. Nanda gives aid reluctantly, but in memory of past favours. He seeks first to purify himself from contact with the dead, but a spring of water shoots forth and renders labour needless. He takes the boy, but his weight proves too great. Now appear in the guise of herdsmen the weapons of Kṛṣṇa and his steed, who present themselves each with a verse, ‘I am the bird, Garuḍa,’ &c., ‘I am the discus’, ‘I the bow’, ‘I the club’, ‘I the conch’, and ‘I the sword’. At the request of the discus the infant consents to become light, and Nanda bears him away. Vasudeva finds the dead child awakened [[99]]to life in his arms, and the weight of it is oppressive, but the Yamunā once more gives dry passage, and he returns to Mathurā and Devakī. Act II opens with an entr’acte in Kaṅsa’s palace. The curse pronounced on him by the seer Madhuka enters, guised as a Caṇḍāla in hateful form with a necklace of skulls; he and his retinue of Caṇḍālīs force their way into the heart of the palace; the royal fortune, Rājaçrī, would bar their way, but the curse announces that it is Viṣṇu’s will that he enter, and she yields; the curse seizes then hold of Kaṅsa. The Act then presents Kaṅsa uneasy and distressed by the portents of the night; he summons his astrologer and his domestic priests, who warn him that the portents presage the birth of a god. Kaṅsa has Vasudeva summoned, is told of the birth of a daughter, refuses to spare the child, and hurls it against a rock. But part only of the lifeless body falls to earth; the rest rises to heaven, and the dread figure of the goddess Kārtyāyanī appears to the king. Her retinue come also, announcing each his advent with a verse, and declare their purpose to destroy Kaṅsa. In the meantime, in herdsmen’s guise they will go to the home of the child to share in the sports of the herdsmen.

The entr’acte before Act III tells us in the mouths of the herdsmen of their joys since Kṛṣṇa came to live with them, and an old man relates in a long Prākrit speech his wonderful deeds, including the destruction of the demons, Pūtanā, Çakaṭa, Yamala and Arjuna, Pralamba, Dhenuka, and Keçin. We are told then that Kṛṣṇa or Dāmodara, the name won from an adventure, has gone to the Vṛndā wood for the Hallīçaka dance; the dance is performed by Dāmodara, his friends, and the maidens, to the music of the drum and to song. The advent of the demon Ariṣṭa is announced; Dāmodara bids the maidens and herdsmen mount a hill, and watch the struggle. It proves unequal; the bull demon recognizes the superiority of his foe, and that he is Viṣṇu himself, and meets death with resignation. The victory accomplished, the news is brought of a new danger, the snake Kāliya has appeared on the Yamunā bank, menacing cows and Brahmins. Act IV shows us the maidens seeking to restrain Kṛṣṇa from the new struggle, but he persists and overcomes the demon, plunging into the waters to grapple with him. He brings him out, learns that he had entered the waters in fear of Garuḍa [[100]]who slays snakes at pleasure, makes him promise to spare cows and Brahmins, and puts on him a mark that Garuḍa must respect. A herald then enters to challenge Dāmodara and his brother Balarāma to the festival of the boys at Mathurā.

Act V shows us Kaṅsa plotting the overthrow of the youths. A herald reports the arrival of Dāmodara, and his great feats of strength, the mocking of the elephant let loose on him, the making straight of a female dwarf, the breaking of the bow of the guardsman. The king orders at once the boxing to begin; Kṛṣṇa, however, easily overcomes Muṣṭika and Cāṇūra, the king’s chosen champions, and completes his victory by a sudden onslaught which leaves the king dead. His soldiers would avenge him, but Vasudeva announces Kṛṣṇa’s identity with Viṣṇu, and appoints Ugrasena king in Kaṅsa’s place, freeing him from the confinement in which his son had placed him. Nārada with Apsarases and Gandharvas appears to glorify Kṛṣṇa, who graciously permits Nārada to return to heaven, and a benediction, spoken apparently by the actor, closes the play.

The precise source of the drama is unknown; it differs in detail widely from the stories of Kṛṣṇa in the Harivaṅça, Viṣṇu, and Bhāgavata Purāṇas, but none of these works, as we have it, is probably older than Bhāsa. The erotic element, which is so closely associated with Kṛṣṇa in later tradition, is lacking here as in the Harivaṅça and the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, and similarly the figure of Rādhā is missing.

The merits of the Bālacarita are not reproduced in Bhāsa’s treatment of the other chief Avatāra of Viṣṇu. The Pratimānāṭaka shows us the death of Daçaratha, when he realizes the departure of Rāma, deprived of his inheritance by Kaikeyī’s wiles, with Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa into the forest; his statue is added to those of his predecessors in the statue (pratimā) hall. Bharata returns from a visit, learns of the news, pursues Rāma, but is induced to return to rule, bearing with him Rāma’s shoes as token that he regards himself but as viceroy. Rāma decides to offer the sacrifice for the dead for his sire; Rāvaṇa appears under the guise of an expert, and bids him offer a golden antelope, by this device securing Rāma’s absence when Sītā is stolen by him, slaying Jaṭāyu who seeks to protect her. Rāma goes to Kiṣkindhā, and makes alliance with Sugrīva against Vālin. Bharata [[101]]learns that Kaikeyī’s ruse had been induced by the curse of an ascetic, whose son Daçaratha had unwittingly slain, and that she had but meant to ask for a banishment of fourteen days, but had by a slip said years. He sends his army to aid Rāma, who ultimately defeats Rāvaṇa, and recovers Sītā. He brings her with him to Janasthāna, where he is begged to resume his kingdom; all then go by the magic car Puṣpak to Ayodhyā. The seven acts of the play are matched by the six of the Abhiṣekanāṭaka,[13] the drama of the consecration of Rāma which follows, like its predecessor, the Rāmāyaṇa. It tells of Vālin’s death at the hands of Rāma; Hanumant’s success in reaching Lan̄kā and in comforting Sītā and affronting Rāvaṇa. Vibhīṣaṇa advises the coercion of the ocean to attain a passage for the army; Rāvaṇa vainly seeks to win Sītā, showing her in appearance the heads of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa, but she repudiates his advances; he is compelled to fight, and the play ends with Rāma’s coronation. The epic apparently has weighed too heavily on the author, whose resource in incident is remarkable by its absence.

A far more favourable opportunity is afforded to Bhāsa when he derived his story from the Kathā literature,[14] as is doubtless the case in the Avimāraka, a drama in six acts. The daughter of king Kuntibhoja, the young Kuran̄gī, is saved from an elephant by an unknown youth, who, in reality son of the Sauvīra king, is with his father living as a member of a degraded caste for a year, as the outcome of a curse. His low status forbids his aspiring to the princess, but love triumphs, and the maidens of Kuran̄g, arrange a secret meeting to which the youth comes in the guise of a thief. But the news leaks out and he must fly; in despair of reunion he seeks death in the fire, but Agni repulses him; he would have thrown himself from a rock, but a Vidyādhara dissuades him, giving him a ring which enables him unseen to re-enter the palace and save Kuran̄gī, likewise desolated, from suicide. The way for a happy issue from the impasse is found by the fact that Nārada reveals the true history of Avimāraka; he is not in fact the son of the Sauvīra king; he is the son of the god Agni by Sudarçanā, the wife of the king of Kāçi, who [[102]]gave him over on his birth to Sucetanā, her sister, wife of the Sauvīra king. The marriage thus takes place with the approval of all those connected with the pair.

Equally from the Kathā literature, and in this case from a source known to us, the Bṛhatkathā of Guṇāḍhya, which, written in Paiçācī Prākrit has vanished, but is preserved in a version from Nepal and two from Kashmir, is the subject of the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa,[15] styled in the prologue a Prakaraṇa, which has four Acts and resembles in part that form of drama as recognized by the theory, though its hero is the minister of Udayana, the Vatsa king. The latter goes on an elephant hunt, armed with his lyre to charm his prey, but is taken prisoner by a clever trick of his enemy, Pradyota Mahāsena, of Ujjayinī, a counterfeit elephant being employed for his overthrow. Yaugandharāyaṇa determines to revenge the king. In Ujjayinī Mahāsena discusses with his wife the question of the marriage of their daughter Vāsavadattā, when the news of the capture of Udayana arrives. They decide that she shall take lessons in music from the captive, and, not unnaturally, the two fall in love. Yaugandharāyaṇa comes to Ujjayinī in disguise with his friends, and through his machinations the king is enabled to escape with Vāsavadattā, though the minister is himself, after a gallant fight, captured. Mahāsena, however, appreciated the minister’s cleverness, and has the marriage of the pair depicted.[16]

The play is criticized severely, though not by name, by Bhāmaha,[17] on the score that Udayana could never have been deceived by an artificial elephant, and if deceived his life would not have been spared by the enemy forces. The contentions are obviously of little value in this form; the essence, of course, is that such an incident which may pass in a tale seems too childish for a drama, but, if this troubles us, we may console ourselves with the reflexion that the trees were thick, and Udayana ardent in the chase. Vāmana[18] cites the end of verse 3 in Act IV which occurs also in the Arthaçāstra,[19] a work which need not be older than Bhāsa, and may be a good deal later. [[103]]

The Svapnavāsavadattā,[20] or the Svapnanāṭaka, in six Acts forms in substance the continuation of the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa. The minister is anxious to secure for Udayana an extension of his power by wedding him to Padmāvatī, daughter of the king of Magadha. But Udayana will not leave his beloved Vāsavadattā, so that strategy is needed. The minister induces Vāsavadattā to aid in his scheme, and, taking advantage of a temporary separation, he spreads the rumour that the queen and he have perished in a conflagration. The king is thus induced to consider marriage with Padmāvatī, in whose care the minister has entrusted the queen, giving out that she is his sister. Padmāvatī is willing to accept the love of the king, but, learning that he has never ceased to cherish the memory of his beloved, she is seized by a severe headache, and the king comes to comfort her. He does not find her, and lies down, sleep overcoming him; Vāsavadattā who had come to aid Padmāvatī sits down beside the sleeping form which she mistakes for that of her new mistress, but, as he begins to speak in his sleep she rises and leaves him, but not before he has caught a glimpse of her, in a dream as he thinks. He is summoned to the palace, and finds the good news that his foes have been defeated, and a messenger has come from Mahāsena and his wife to console him, bearing the picture of the nuptials of himself and Vāsavadattā. Padmāvatī recognizes in the lady the features of the sister left in her care by Yaugandharāyaṇa, who arrives to explain to the satisfaction of all the plan he has devised to secure Udayana’s ends.

The fame of the work in Rājaçekhara’s time is attested, and already before him the imaginary conflagration of the queen had excited the imitation of Harṣa in the Ratnāvalī; Vāmana[21] cites from it, and Abhinavagupta[22] knew it. Nor is there any doubt that it is the poet’s masterpiece and the most mature of his dramas. Great promise, however, in a different vein is shown in the Cārudatta, of which we have only a fragment in four [[104]]Acts without beginning or final verses. Cārudatta, a merchant whose generosity has impoverished him, has seen a hetaera Vasantasenā at a festival, and they have fallen in love. Pursued by the king’s brother-in-law, Saṁsthāna, Vasantasenā takes refuge in Cārudatta’s house, and, when she goes, she leaves in his care her gold ornaments. She generously ransoms from his creditors a former servant of Cārudatta, who then renounces the world and becomes a monk. In the night the ornaments, which she had deposited, are stolen by a thief Sajjalaka who breaks into Cārudatta’s house, in order to gain the means to purchase the freedom of a slave of the hetaera with whom he is in love. Cārudatta is overcome with shame at learning of the theft of goods deposited in his care, and his noble wife sacrifices a pearl necklace, which she gives to the Vidūṣaka to hand over to Vasantasenā in lieu of her lost jewels. He takes it to the hetaera, who has learned of the theft, but accepts it to have the excuse of visiting the merchant once more. She therefore hands over the slave girl to Sajjalaka, and starts out to Cārudatta’s house. At this point the play ends abruptly, but it seems as if Cārudatta were accused of theft, and that Vasantasenā herself is in grave danger of her life.

A verse of this play is cited by Vāmana[23] and another,[24] found also in the Bālacarita[25] and the Mṛcchakaṭikā,[26] is quoted by Daṇḍin in the Kāvyādarça.[27] We need not doubt that Bhāsa is his source, especially as there is possibly elsewhere in the Kāvyādarça an allusion to the dream scene of the Svapnavāsavadattā and its sequel. The Daridracārudatta mentioned by Abhinavagupta is most probably the same work. From it are derived the first four Acts of the Mṛcchakaṭikā.[28] The source of the drama is not certain; we have the motif of the love of a merchant and a hetaera elsewhere, but not with the special developments given by Bhāsa.

Verses attributed to Bhāsa are also found which are not contained in the extant dramas, so that, even allowing for misquotation and confusion, it is probable that he may have written [[105]]further plays, or he may have illustrated the book of the dramatic art which he is credited with writing,[29] by inserting examples of his own composition. Why his plays should have fared so badly as to disappear from popular use apparently for centuries does not appear. The most plausible view is that he was a poet of the south, and that his dramas suffered from the general Mahomedan objection to everything Hindu, and especially to the dramas of an earnest devotee of Viṣṇu such as Bhāsa was. But this is mere conjecture.

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4. Bhāsa’s Art and Technique

The number of Bhāsa’s dramas, and the variety of their themes, indicate the activity and originality of his talent. Even the limitations imposed by the choice of epic subjects are often successfully surmounted. In the Rāma dramas only is there lacking any sign of his ability; the Abhiṣekanāṭaka is a somewhat dreary summary of the corresponding books (IV–VI) of the Rāmāyaṇa, nor is the Pratimānāṭaka substantially superior. The variations are in the main few and unimportant; the two struggles between Sugrīva and Vālin are condensed into one, which leaves the treacherous slaying of Vālin without shadow of excuse, and casts a blemish on Rāma’s character which later dramatists avoid. The pathetic scene of the epic in which Tārā, his wife, laments Vālin’s death is omitted, Vālin forbidding any woman to gaze on him in his fall. The two efforts of Rāvaṇa to deceive Sītā, first by showing her Rāma’s head, and later Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa bound and seemingly dead, are reduced to one, the showing of the heads of both, and Sītā’s constancy is made inhuman by denying her the comfort of a consoler. To secure a happy ending, Agni is made to vindicate Sītā by the test of fire, and to hand her over to Rāma as Lakṣmī and his fit mate. The characters remain stereotyped and dull; Rāvaṇa is nothing more than a miles gloriosus, if not comic, and Lakṣmaṇa cuts a very poor figure.[30]

The pieces based on the Mahābhārata shows more invention [[106]]and interest. The Madhyamavyāyoga exploits neatly the theme of Hiḍimbā’s longing to see her husband of many years before, and the obedience of a son to a mother exemplified both by Ghaṭotkaca and by Madhyama; a mother’s bidding outweighs even that of a father. The struggle of father against son, both unknowing, is original, though not tragic. In the Karṇabhāra the nobility of the haughty Karṇa is emphasized; in the epic he surrenders his armour to Indra, but demands a price, the lance that never fails; in the play it suffices the prince that he has conferred a boon on the god himself. There is the same martial spirit, evoking the sentiment of heroism in the audience, in the Dūtaghaṭotkaca where the joy of the Kurus is contrasted effectively with the doubts of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, and the grave warning which Ghaṭotkaca brings of the revenge to be wreaked by Arjuna for his son’s death. The Dūtavākya is admirable in his contrast between the character of Duryodhana and the majesty of Kṛṣṇa; the picture motif is effectively elaborated, and the deep admiration of the poet for Kṛṣṇa as the embodiment of the highest of gods Viṣṇu, of whom he was an adorer, is plainly manifest. In the Ūrubhan̄ga Duryodhana’s hauteur to the highest of gods meets with its just punishment; Duryodhana is the chief subject, but not the hero, of the piece which manifests the just[31] punishment of the impious. The death of Duryodhana is admirably depicted; his child who loved to sit on his knees comes to him, but must be repulsed; the touch that brought joy aforetime would now be an agony.[32] But Duryodhana, with all his demerits as a man, remains heroic in his death.

The Bālacarita reveals the originality of Bhāsa’s genius; the entr’acte to the second Act is extremely effective in its terrors, and the poet has no hesitation in asking the audience to conceive for themselves the strange figures of the attendants of Viṣṇu or the host of the goddess Kārtyāyanī, or the bull Ariṣṭa, or the snake demon Kāliya, all of whom appear on the stage, but doubtless in costumes which left most to the mind’s eye. The miracles of the light emanating from the child Kṛṣṇa, the crossing of the Yamunā, and the water springing from the ground, are innovations on the tradition, as is the apparent death and revival of the child of Yaçodā. Kṛṣṇa is heroism incarnate, Kaṅsa [[107]]without merit, and his slaying just, but the heroic sentiment is blended with the erotic, and with that of wonder. As a drama, however, the play suffers unquestionably from the wholly undeniable disparity between the two opponents; Kṛṣṇa is never in danger, and his feats are too easily achieved to produce their full effect.

The Avimāraka is a drama of love, primitive in its expression and intensity; Bhāsa’s love for rapid action is here, as always, strongly marked, as is also his willingness to repeat incidents and situations; the hero twice seeks suicide, and the heroine does so once. The dénouement is artificial, though something of the kind was necessary to secure the possibility of the marriage of the pair. There is a far more interesting hint of youthful love in the amours of Udayana and Vāsavadattā in the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa, where the rapidity of action is in entire harmony with the skill attributed to the minister, whose address, courage, and loyalty, make him an attractive figure. The Svapnavāsavadattā itself reveals Udayana as a faithful and devoted husband, very different from the careless if courteous gentleman of Harṣa’s dramas. His love for the queen he imagines lost ennobles and elevates his character, while motives of statecraft and the affection shown him by Padmāvatī easily explain his wooing of that maiden. Vāsavadattā herself is not the jealous if high-minded wife of Harṣa’s plays; she is the devoted and self-sacrificing lover who is willing to postpone her own feelings and wishes to the good of her husband. The king and queen are the finest products of Bhāsa’s characterization of lovers. In the Cārudatta, however, we have clever studies in the hetaera, the merchant and the minor figures, though the value of the play must seem less to us than when completed and elaborated in the Mṛcchakaṭikā.

Bhāsa undoubtedly excels in suggesting heroism; this characteristic is admirably depicted in Yaugandharāyaṇa, and above all in Duryodhana, who in the Dūtaghaṭotkaca effectively replies to the menaces of the envoy by promising an answer in deeds, war, not in harsh words. But his power is not confined to heroism, love, pathos, or the marvellous. The Vidūṣaka in his hands attains the characteristics which mark him in the later drama, and, though much was doubtless traditional, it may [[108]]safely be assumed that he tended by his example to stereotype the figure. In the Avimāraka[33] he distinguishes himself by devotion to his master; he is set on finding him, dead or alive, when he is missing, and he is prepared if need be to follow him beyond the grave. Avimāraka himself portrays the character of his friend; he places first, doubtless deliberately, the amusement he produces in social intercourse (goṣṭhīṣu hāsyaḥ), but he describes him also as brave in battle, a wise friend, a comforter in sorrow, a violent foe to his enemies. If in the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa[34] he seems to abandon the idea of succouring his master, it is only because he is convinced that Vatsa is dead, and that nothing can be done to save him. The other side of his character is his devotion to the pleasures of the table and his feeble attempts at wit and humour. Vāsavadattā he remembers fondly because she used to see that he never lacked sweetmeats.[35] When in the Avimāraka[36] the heroine weeps in love-sorrow, he would like to weep also in sympathy; but no tears come, and he recalls that, even when his own father died, he could hardly weep. When addressed as a man, he insists that he is a woman. He is, however, a Brahmin in his prejudices; he will not drink brandy, a pleasure which he permits to the Gātrasevaka, the disguise assumed by one of Yaugandharāyaṇa’s following in the attempt to rescue Udayana. This worthy favours us with a eulogy of drink, which is an interesting fragment of the drinking songs which must have existed in ancient India:[37]

dhaṇṇā surāhi mattā dhaṇṇā surāhi aṇulittā;

dhaṇṇā surāhi hṇādā dhaṇṇā surāhi saṁñavidā.

‘Blessed those that are drunk with drink, blessed those that are soaked with drink; blessed those that are washed with drink, blessed those that are choked with drink.’ Amusing also is the figure of Yaugandharāyaṇa as an Unmattaka, devoted to eating and dancing, and of Rumaṇvant in his guise of a Çramaṇaka. There is genuine humour in the scene in the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa[38] between the Gātrasevaka and the servant, when the former makes ready the elephant Bhadravatī, which is to be [[109]]the means of carrying off the king and Vāsavadattā beyond the reach of all pursuit, without raising any suspicion on the part of the entourage of Mahāsena. Quiet humour is shown in the episode of the bringing of Bhīma by Ghaṭotkaca to his mother Hiḍimbā; Ghaṭotkaca has difficulty in describing his victim, and is much amazed to find his mother, whose curiosity is aroused by his lack of precision, finding him to be his deity and hers in his capacity as husband and father.[39] In the same vein is the compliment paid by Rāma to Sītā, when the latter accurately predicts the action he would take when his father offered him the throne: ‘Thou hast guessed well; few pairs are there of like character in the world (suṣṭhu tarkitam alpaṁ tulyaçīlāni dvandvāni sṛjyante)’.[40] Quite distinctly amusing is the scene at the close of the Avimāraka,[41] where the facts of the relationships are being disclosed to the king Kuntibhoja. That sovereign may be justly excused his difficulty in apprehending the situation; he is reduced to such confusion that he is dubious about his own capital Vairantya, but finally, when assured that the hero is the son-in-law of Kuntibhoja, asks who that worthy may be, to be reminded politely that he himself is Kuntibhoja, father of Kuran̄gī, son of Duryodhana, and lord of Vairantya. This power explains the description of Bhāsa as the laughter (hāsa) of poetry given to him by Jayadeva in the Prasannarāghava, a title which is also merited by such verses as one cited in the anthologies,[42] though not found in the extant dramas:

kapāle mārjāraḥ paya iti karāṅl leḍhi çaçinas

tarucchidraprotān bisam iti karī saṁkalayati

ratānte talpasthān harati vanitāpy aṅçukam iti

prabhāmattaç candro jagad idam aho viplavayati.

‘When its rays fall on its cheeks the cat licks them, thinking them milk; when they are caught in the cleft of a tree the elephant deems them a lotus; when they rest on the couch of lovers the maiden seizes them, saying, “’Tis my robe”; the moon in truth, proud of its brilliance, doth lead astray all this world.’

Of deeper sentiments we need expect nothing from Bhāsa; [[110]]in this respect he sets the model for his successors. From Kālidāsa he differs in being a devotee of Viṣṇu rather than Çiva, but he is equally an admirer of the established Brahminical order. In the Pañcarātra,[43] the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa,[44] and in the character of Nārada in the Avimāraka,[45] we find clearly expressed his appreciation of the high rank of the Brahmin, and the obligations due to him from kings and other classes.

Care in the delineation of even minor characters is normally displayed; the number of these is considerable; sixteen each in the Svapnavāsavadattā and the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa, about twenty in the Avimāraka, Abhiṣekanāṭaka, and Pañcarātra, twelve in the Cārudatta, and about thirty in the Bālacarita. But there are traces of the anxiety of Bhāsa to avoid adding needlessly to the number of those appearing; in the Avimāraka neither the king of Kāçi nor Sucetanā appears on the scene despite their part in the play. The silence of Sītā, though at the close of the Abhiṣekanāṭaka she appears on the stage, is doubtless explicable by the same dramatic touch which makes Euripides refuse to assign any words to Alkestis on her return from the dead.

In technique Bhāsa does not accord entirely with the later rules of the theorists. The Nāṭyaçāstra, it is true, when it forbids the exhibition of battle scenes contradicts itself, and Bhāsa freely permits them, as must have been the case in the primitive drama in which Kṛṣṇa slew Kaṅsa. The maidens, however, he bids watch the mortal combat of Ariṣṭa and Kṛṣṇa from afar. Daçaratha’s death he admits; the bodies of Cāṇūra, Muṣṭika, and Kaṅsa lie on the stage, and Vālin perishes there as well as Duryodhana, but all these are evildoers, and their death evokes no sorrow. The same simplicity doubtless accounts for the introduction of the mythological figures of the Bālacarita, whom we need not imagine to have been elaborately costumed; they announce their nature or are described,[46] and the spectator supplies the imagination requisite to comprehend them.

We find already in Bhāsa the formal distinction of introductory scenes into Viṣkambhakas of two kinds, according as Sanskrit alone or Sanskrit and Prākrit are used and Praveçakas; [[111]]in the former the number of interlocutors is three in two[47] cases against one or two as usual later; there are other signs of his fondness for triads.[48] The introduction normally is styled Sthāpanā,[49] not as later Prastāvanā, and it is extremely simple; after a Nāndī, not preserved, has been pronounced—perhaps behind the scene—the director enters, utters a benediction, and is about to make an announcement when a sound is heard which leads up to the actual drama. No mention of the poet’s name or the work is found, but these we may suggest were left to the preliminaries which even in the Nāṭyaçāstra were elaborate, and which doubtless were performed before Bhāsa’s plays, as they were essentially religious rites in honour of the gods. On the other hand, the close, the Bharatavākya, of the later theory is varied in Bhāsa. The conventions as to the use of speech, aloud, aside to another, or to the audience alone are well known, and effective use is made of the voice from the air or behind the scene, as in the Abhiṣekanāṭaka, when Rāvaṇa taunts his prisoner and asks, who can set her free when her rescuers are dead; the voice replies, ‘Rāma, Rāma’.[50]

There are unquestionably primitive traits in Bhāsa’s art; he uses with dangerous freedom the device by which some one departs and returns straightway, to narrate what must have taken long to happen; thus in the Abhiṣekanāṭaka, Çan̄kukarṇa is bidden send a thousand men against Hanumant; he departs at once, to return and tell that they have fallen. Free use is made also, as in the epic, of magic weapons in the conflict, as in the battle of Duryodhana and Kṛṣṇa in the Dūtavākya. So also in the Madhyamavyāyoga we find Ghaṭotkaca employing his magic power to produce water from a rock; then he binds Bhīma in a magic noose, from which he is delivered by a magic formula. In the Dūtavākya the discus of Kṛṣṇa [[112]]secures water from the heavenly Ganges by magic means; it has the power to move the mountains of the gods, to set the ocean in motion, and to bring down the stars to earth, ideas which are less unintelligible when we remember the wide-spread Indian beliefs in the powers of magicians, which we find later in Harṣa’s Ratnāvalī, and which are earlier recorded of those who have attained high degrees of intuition in both the Upaniṣads and Buddhism. In the Avimāraka we have the magic ring of the Vidyādhara playing a decisive part in the action, since by its use the hero can enter unseen the harem and visit his wife Kuran̄gī in secret. It is clear that both in the epic and in the popular tale Bhāsa found adequate precedent for the stress laid on these means of evoking in his audience the sentiment of wonder.

The use of the dance as an ornament to the drama which is seen in Kālidāsa is frequently resorted to in Bhāsa. In Act III of the Bālacarita there is a performance of the Hallīçaka dance, in which both the herdsmen and the cowherdesses take full part; the dance is accompanied by music and song, and the maidens are gaily attired. A similar dance is mentioned in Act II of the Pañcarātra,[51] a reflex no doubt of the ritual dance of the winter solstice in the Mahāvrata rite. It is conceivable also that the conception in the Bālacarita of the appearance of Viṣṇu’s weapons as figures on the stage in the dress of herdsmen is a reminiscence of a cult dance in honour of Viṣṇu, but this idea must not be pressed unduly, for the poet there invents also the figures of the Curse and the King’s Fortune as personae dramatis. There is, it is clear, a certain similarity between the personification of these abstractions and the allegorical figures of the Buddhist drama, which come again into being in the Prabodhacandrodaya of Kṛṣṇamiçra. Song as an important element in the drama again appears in the Abhiṣekanāṭaka, where the Gandharvas and Apsarases sing the praises of Viṣṇu.[52]

There are clear traces in the dramas of the overwhelming influence of epic tradition and of epic recitation in the tendency [[113]]to introduce the description of battle scenes at great length in lieu of dramatic action, while a certain lack of skill is apparent in the attempt to transform the tale into a drama. Thus in the Avimāraka the facts essential for a full understanding of the story come out only in the last Act, and the adventures of the hero are there recounted with distinct lack of propriety, as they have formed the subject of the earlier acts of the drama. Neither the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa nor the Svapnavāsavadattā is constructed in so clumsy a manner, but in both cases the working out of the plot is certainly open to criticism. Thus even in the last Act of the latter drama, which in many respects is effective, the stage directions assume that the queen appears on the stage with Vāsavadattā as her attendant, but that the king either does not see, or does not recognize the latter, both obviously very improbable suppositions; possibly it is assumed that the presence of Vāsavadattā, though obvious to the audience, is concealed from the king in some manner by the use of the curtain, but this is left to be imagined,[53] and it would have been much simpler to invent some ground for securing the entry of Vāsavadattā by herself later on. On the other hand, in Act I of the play, the facts regarding the supposed death of Vāsavadattā and the minister in a fire are effectively brought out by the device of using a Brahmacārin, who arrives at the hermitage at the same time as Yaugandharāyaṇa and Vāsavadattā in their disguise, and tells the tale of the disaster as explaining why he has left that place in sorrow at the event, dilating at the same time on the effect of the news on the unhappy king. The mode in which Vāsavadattā in Act V mistakes the king for Padmāvatī is quite naturally evolved, for the place where he is resting is poorly illuminated and she was naturally unwilling to arouse her mistress from the slumber into which she hoped she had fallen. In Act II of the Abhiṣekanāṭaka the conversation of Hanumant with Sītā is made possible only by the somewhat implausible device of assuming that the Rākṣasīs who guard her fall asleep at their post.

A rather marked fondness is shown by Bhāsa for the repetition of the same incident. Thus in the Avimāraka we have the [[114]]twice repeated attempt of the hero at suicide followed by the attempt of the heroine in the same sense, from which he saves her. At the close of the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa we have again the idea of the attempted suicide of the heroine’s mother, which is obviated by the king’s good sense in showing her that the marriage of the runaway pair was quite proper in their rank and in arranging for marrying them in a painting. The dying Vālin in the Abhiṣekanāṭaka has a vision of the Ganges and the other great rivers. Urvaçī and the Apsarases, and the chariot drawn by a thousand swans, which bears away the dead, coming for his spirit; Duryodhana in the Ūrubhan̄ga has a similar vision, and Avimāraka, when on the point of committing suicide he sees the Vidyādhara beside him, imagines that this is a vision such as comes often to dying men. Again in the prologues there is almost a monotonous adoption of the device by which the director is interrupted in making a proposed announcement by a voice from behind the scene, which enables him by a clever transition to lead the audience into the dramatic action proper.

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5. Bhāsa’s Style

The rapidity and directness of the action of Bhāsa’s plays is reflected in his style. More than any other dramatist, he uses the verse to further the progress of the play, in lieu of devoting it to descriptions rather poetic than directly aiding the drama, and it is characteristic that he freely employs monostichs, which are rare later. On the other hand, he is ready to resort to monologue; that on the third Act of the Avimāraka suggested perhaps the monologue of Çarvilaka in the Mṛcchakaṭikā, whose author must have known Bhāsa’s works intimately.

The dominating influence on Bhāsa’s style was clearly that of the epic and in special of Vālmīki, whose great work inevitably impressed itself on the minds of all his successors. The effects are visible not merely in the dramas with epic subject-matter, but extend throughout Bhāsa’s plays. The results of this influence are all to the good; the necessities of the drama saved Bhāsa from the one great defect of the epic style, the lack of measure, which permits the Rāmāyaṇa to illustrate by twenty-nine similes the sorrows of Sītā in her captivity, while in the [[115]]Abhiṣekanāṭaka the dramatist is content with one. On the other hand he owes to it the relative simplicity of his diction, and his freedom from the excesses of the poetic equivalent of the nominal style, which comes to dominate later Sanskrit literature. The use of long compounds is obviously and plainly undramatic; carried to excess it must have rendered a Sanskrit drama unintelligible even to a highly cultivated audience as far as the verses were concerned, and it is an essential dramatic merit in Bhāsa that his expression is far easier to follow than in much of later dramatic poetry. He possesses in fact that clearness, which is theoretically a merit of the Kāvya style, but which is signally neglected by the average Kāvya writer in his anxiety to display the complete familiarity which he possesses with every side of the art of poetry. As far as we can judge from the scanty fragments of Açvaghoṣa’s dramas, that poet was more complex than Bhāsa, and certainly so in his epics, which aided powerfully in the formation of Kālidāsa’s epic and dramatic style.

Bhāsa, of course, is not in the slightest degree akin to a poet of the people; he is an accomplished master of the art of poetry, but one whose good sense and taste preserve him from adopting in drama the artifices which are permitted in the court epic and lyric which were intended to be studied at leisure. The simple and sententious is beloved of Bhāsa: thus Karṇa repels the objections of Çalya to his parting with armour and earring to the disguised Indra:[54]

çikṣā kṣayaṁ gacchati kālaparyayāt: subaddhamūlā nipatanti pādapāḥ

jalaṁ jalasthānagataṁ ca çuṣyati: hutaṁ ca dattaṁ ca tathaiva tiṣṭhati.

‘Learning decayeth with the passing of time; though firm their roots, trees fall; the water of a lake drieth up; but sacrifices and gifts endure.’ When Sītā is forced to undergo the ordeal by fire Lakṣmaṇa exclaims:[55]

vijñāya devyāç çaucaṁ ca çrutvācāryasya çāsanam

dharmasnehāntare nyastā buddhir dolāyate mama.

‘I know the queen’s chastity; I have heard the bidding of our preceptor; like a swing, my mind doth move ’twixt duty and [[116]]love.’ When Rāma falls at his father’s feet on the order being given for his coronation, he tells us:[56]

samaṁ bāṣpeṇa patatā tasyopari mamāpy adhaḥ

pitur me kleditau pādau mamāpi kleditaṁ çiraḥ.

‘My father’s feet were wet with tears I let fall on them, and my head was wet with tears he let fall over me.’ When Devakī must yield, for the sake of saving it, her child, it is said of her:[57]

hṛdayeneha taran̄gair dvidhābhūteva gacchati

yathā nabhasi toye ca candralekhā dvidhā kṛtā.

‘She is divided; her heart remaineth here, her body goeth yonder, as in cloud and water the digit of the moon is divided.’ Rāvaṇa’s contempt for Rāma as a foe is forcibly expressed:[58]

kathaṁ lambasataḥ siṅho mṛgeṇa vinipātyate

gajo vā sumahān mattaḥ sṛgālena nihanyate?

‘Can the deer bring low the lion with flowing mane? Can the jackal slay the mighty elephant in his wrath?’ In the Cārudatta[59] the darkness is happily described:

sulabhaçaraṇam āçrayo bhayānāṁ: vanagahanaṁ timiraṁ ca tulyam eva

ubhayam api hi rakṣyate ’ndhakāre: janayati yaç ca bhayāni yaç ca bhītaḥ.

‘Affording easy refuge, yet abodes of fear, the forest depths and darkness are akin; for the shadows guard alike him who feareth and him who causeth fear.’ More ambitious is a verse given in the Subhāṣitāvali:[60]

kaṭhinahṛdaye muñca krodhaṁ sukhapratighātakam

likhati divasaṁ yātaṁ yātaṁ Yamaḥ kila mānini

vayasi taruṇe naitad yuktaṁ cale ca samāgame

bhavati kalaho yāvat tāvad varaṁ subhage ratam.

‘Hard-hearted maiden, lay aside the anger that doth impede our joy; death entereth on his register every day as it goeth, disdainful one; not meet is this in thy tender youth, for love is fleeting; rather spend in love the time we lose in this quarrel.’

The simple figures of speech are freely used by Bhāsa, and he shows as usual a marked fondness for the accumulation of similar sounds, as in sajalajaladhara, sanīranīrada, or kuladayaṁ hanti [[117]]madena nārī: kūladvayaṁ kṣubdhajalā nadīva. More interesting are instances of his power, which is specially manifest in the Svapnavāsavadattā and the Pratimānāṭaka, of expressing strong emotion adequately and forcibly. Thus we have the indignant upbraiding of Kaikeyī by the angry Bharata:[61]

vayam ayaçasā cīreṇāryo nṛpo gṛhamṛtyunā

pratataruditaiḥ kṛtsnāyodhyā mṛgaiḥ saha Lakṣmaṇaḥ

dayitatanayāḥ çokenāmbāḥ snuṣādhvapariçramair

dhig iti vacasā cogreṇātmā tvayā nanu yojitāḥ?

‘Hast thou not brought upon me disgrace and dishonour, on my noble father’s death at the hands of his dearest, on all Ayodhyā ceaseless lamentation, exile on Lakṣmaṇa, sorrow on the noble ladies, who love their children, for the cruel journey imposed on thy daughter-in-law, and on thyself the hateful reproach of a shameful deed?’ Equally effective is Lakṣmaṇa’s protest against Rāma’s acquiescence in his exclusion from the throne:[62]

yadi na sahase rājño mohaṃ dhanuḥ spṛça mā dayā

svajananibhṛtaḥ sarvo ’py evam mṛduḥ paribhūyate

atha na rucitam muñca mām ahaṁ kṛtaniçcayo

yuvatirahitaṁ kartuṁ lokaṁ yataç chalitā vayam.

‘If thou wilt not endure the king’s infatuation, take thy bow, show no pity. Hidden among his own folk every weakling is thus overborne. But, if thou wilt not, leave me free at least; my mind is intent to make this world free of that youthful one, since cheated we have been.’ Bharata’s devotion is expressed happily enough:[63]

tatra yasyāmi yatrāsau vartate Lakṣmaṇapriyaḥ

nāyodhyā taṁ vināyodhyā sāyodhyā yatra Rāghavaḥ.

‘Thither will I go where dwelleth Lakṣmaṇa’s beloved; without him Ayodhyā is not Ayodhyā; where Rāghava is, there is Ayodhyā.’ A martial spirit breathes in Virāṭa’s words:[64]

tāḍitasya hi yodhasya çlāghanīyena karmaṇā

akālāntaritā pūjā nāçayaty eva vedanām.

‘Instant fame destroys the pangs of the warrior stricken in performing a deed of valour.’ There is manly indignation and pathos in Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s mourning over Abhimanyu’s death:[65] [[118]]

bahūnāṁ samupetānām ekasmin nirghṛṇātmanām

bāle putre praharatāṁ kathaṁ na patitā bhujāḥ.

‘How could these cruel men bear to raise their arms to smite one young boy, alone against such a concourse?’ The necessity of toil to achieve any end is well brought out in a verse in the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa,[66] which has a curious parallel in Açvaghoṣa:[67]

kāṣṭhād agnir jāyate mathyamānād: bhūmis toyaṁ khanyamānā dadāti

sotsahānāṁ nāsty asādhyaṁ narāṇām: mārgārabdhāḥ sarvayatnāḥ phalanti.

‘Fire ariseth from the rubbing of timber; the earth when dug giveth water; nothing is there that men may not obtain by effort; every exertion duly undertaken doth bear fruit.’ A profound truth, the rareness of gratitude, is emphasized in the Svapnavāsavadattā:[68]

guṇānāṁ vā viçālānāṁ satkārāṇāṁ ca nityaçaḥ

kartāraḥ sulabhā loke vijñātāras tu durlabhāḥ.

‘There are many to show conspicuous virtue and to do constant deeds of kindness, but few are there who are grateful for such actions.’ The heavy burden of the duties of a king is effectively described in the Avimāraka:[69]

dharmaḥ prāg eva cintyaḥ sacivamatigatiḥ prekṣitavyā svabuddhyā

pracchādyau rāgaroṣau mṛduparuṣaguṇau kālayogena kāryau

jñeyaṁ lokānuvṛttam paracaranayanair maṇḍalam prekṣitavyam

rakṣyo yatnād ihātmā raṇaçirasi punas so ’pi nāvekṣitavyaḥ.

‘First there must be consideration of the injunctions of the law, then the train of the minister’s thought must be followed; desire and anger must be concealed; mercy and harshness must be applied as expediency demands; the temper of the people must be ascertained through the aid of spies as well as the demeanour of neighbouring kings; one’s life must be guarded with every care, but in the forefront of battle heed for it must be laid aside.’ The position of a minister is no enviable one:[70] [[119]]

prasiddhau kāryāṇām pravadati janaḥ pārthivabalam

vipattau vispaṣṭaṁ sacivam atidoṣaṁ janayati

amātyā ity uktāḥ çrutisukham udāraṁ nṛpatibhiḥ

susūkṣmaṁ daṇḍyante matibalavidagdhāḥ kupuruṣāḥ.

‘If policy succeeds, the people acclaim the prince’s might; if disaster ensue, it condemns the incompetency of the minister; poor fools, puffed up by their strength of intellect, they receive from kings the noble and sweet sounding style of “counsellor” only to be punished sharply for any failure.’

Bhāsa is fond of expressing typical feelings in simple language which later poets would deem lacking in ornament; thus he expresses a mother’s feelings regarding her daughter’s marriage in the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa:[71]

adattety āgatā lajjā datteti vyathitam manaḥ

dharmasnehāntare nyastā duḥkhitāḥ khalu mātaraḥ.

‘Shame were it if she be not betrothed; yet if betrothed sorrow is one’s lot; between duty and love mothers are sore vexed in heart.’ The responsibility of a teacher is set out by Droṇa in the Pañcarātra:[72]

atītya bandhūn avalan̄ghya mitrāṇy: ācāryam āgacchati çiṣyadoṣaḥ.

bālaṁ hy apatyaṁ gurave pradātum: naivāparādho ’sti pitur na mātuḥ.

‘A pupil’s fault passes over relatives and friends and settles on the teacher, for it is no wrong in father or mother to hand over a young child to a preceptor.’

Bhāsa’s power of depicting irony is specially prominent in the Svapnavāsavadattā,[73] where Vāsavadattā is driven to weave the garland for the new queen’s marriage, on the score of her skill in this art. Rāvaṇa shows the heads which he represents as those of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa to Sītā, only to hear the announcement that his son is slain in the battle, by the very two whose death he has feigned.[74] Effective is the contrast between Vālin’s splendour and his fall in his son An̄gada’s lament:[75]

atibalasukhaçāyī pūrvam āsīr harīndraḥ: kṣititalaparivartī kṣīṇasarvān̄gaceṣṭaḥ.

‘Soft indeed thy couch aforetime as lord of the apes, who now [[120]]dost lie on the ground, thy every movement stilled in death’, and Duryodhana’s fall is not less effectively described.[76]

A characteristic of Bhāsa is his fondness for pithy proverbial phrases, ‘Everything suits a handsome figure’, ‘Misfortunes never come singly’, ‘Good news sounds more pleasant from a friend’s mouth’ (piaṇivediamāṇāṇi piāṇi piadarāṇi honti), ‘Man’s fate is as mobile as an elephant’s trunk’, ‘There are many obstacles in the road to fortune’, ‘A small cause begets grave misfortune’, are found in the Avimāraka alone. An idea once expressed fascinates Bhāsa and is repeated again and again in the same terms, a fact which incidentally helps to assure the genuineness of the plays. For some phrases he has a special fondness; mā with the instrumental is normal in lieu of the ordinary alam, which he also uses; aho tu khalu to introduce a stanza; kiṁ nu khalu in a question; āma and bādham to indicate assent; sukham āryasya as a phrase of greeting. Especially is he devoted to the term vara, sometimes before, usually after, the noun whose quality it intensifies; the use occurs even twice or thrice in a single stanza.

The harmony and melody of Bhāsa’s style, added to its purity and perspicuity, have no better proof than the imitations of his verses which are unquestionably to be traced in Kālidāsa, who attests thus his practical appreciation of the merits of the dramatist, with whose established fame his nascent genius had to contend.

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6. The Language of the Plays

Bhāsa’s Sanskrit[77] is in the main correct according to the rules of the grammarians, but his dependence on the epic is revealed by the occasional use of epic irregularities, almost always for the sake of the metre, which in the epic also is the cause of many deviations from classical grammar. We have thus the irregular contractions putreti and Avantyādhipateḥ, and a number of middle forms in lieu of active, gamiṣye, garjase, drakṣyate, pṛcchase, bhraçyate, ruhyate, çroṣyate. In other cases the active replaces the middle, āpṛccha, upalapsyati, pariṣvaja. There is confusion between the simple and the causative verb in sravati and vījanti, [[121]]and in vimoktukāma. The forms rudantī and gṛhya have many epic parallels. Irregular compounds are sarvarājñaḥ in verse, and Kāçirājñe in prose; vyūḍhoras and tulyadharma occur in verse. The use in one clause of both ced and yadi is found in verse and also in prose, as in the epic. Mere blunders perhaps may be styled pratyāyati, a haplological form of the causative with the meaning of the simple verb, samāçvāsitum with causative sense, and yudh as a masculine noun. There are other seeming irregularities, but they are either sanctioned by usage or possible of explanation by reference to variant interpretations of Pāṇini’s rules.

The Prākrits[78] found in Bhāsa are normally Çaurasenī, which is present in all the plays save the Dūtavākya, which has no Prākrit; Māgadhī found in two different forms; and what may be styled Ardha-Māgadhī. The distinctive feature of his language is its transitional aspect as compared with Açvaghoṣa on the one hand and Kālidāsa on the other. Açvaghoṣa never softens—save in one instance—hard consonants, but both ṭ and t are changed to ḍ and d in Bhāsa. Açvaghoṣa never omits consonants, but, though this is less often carried out than in Kālidāsa, we find cases of the loss of k, g, c, j, t, d, p, b, v, and y when intervocalic. y itself suffers frequent change to j, contrary to Açvaghoṣa’s usage. The change of n initial and medial to ṇ is regular, while it is unknown to Açvaghoṣa. The aspirates kh, gh, th, dh, ph, and bh are all often reduced as later to h, but never in Açvaghoṣa.

In the case of conjunct consonants we find that jñ gives in Bhāsa either ññ or ṇṇ, possibly the latter by error; Açvaghoṣa has ññ only, Kālidāsa ṇṇ. For ny and ṇy Bhāsa has always ṇṇ as against Açvaghoṣa’s ññ. The eliding of a consonant, with the compensatory lengthening of the vowel as in dīsadi, is unknown to Açvaghoṣa, where the omission of the consonant twice occurs but without lengthening; it is frequent in Bhāsa and regular in Kālidāsa. The analogous use of a short vowel and a double consonant to represent a long vowel with a single consonant is unknown to Açvaghoṣa, but Bhāsa has it in evva, evvaṁ, jovvana, [[122]]devva, ekka. On the other hand, like Açvaghoṣa, for ry he has yy only in lieu of Kālidāsa’s jj. For the later metta matta is always found, and the epenthetic vowel is u, not i, in purusa, and puruva is normal.

In inflection we have, in the nominative and accusative plural of neuter stems in a, āni in Açvaghoṣa, āṇi in Bhāsa, while both āṇi and āiṁ are allowed later. The accusative plural masculine has also, analogously to āni in the Ardha-Māgadhī of the Açoka inscriptions,[79] āṇi, and the locative singular feminine is in āaṁ, not as later āe. For the later attāṇaaṁ we have attāṇaṁ. For ‘we’ Açvaghoṣa has vayaṁ, Kālidāsa amhe; Bhāsa both and vaaṁ. In the genitive plural Bhāsa has both amhāaṁ and the only form later amhāṇaṁ, while Açvaghoṣa would doubtless have used amhākaṁ. kissa is kept for later kīsa, and kocci (kaccid) disappears later. The root darç is represented by dass and daṅs, grah by gaṇhadi against the later geṇhadi, which, however, is found in Açvaghoṣa. The older forms karia and gacchia or gamia, are found in lieu of kadua and gadua, but the last occurs once. mā is used with the gerund in the sense of alam.

Many of these peculiarities mark also the Māgadhī, which appears in two slightly varied forms, the first in the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa and the Cārudatta, the second in the Bālacarita and the Pañcarātra; in the two latter we have ṣ and o for the ç and e of the former. As in Açvaghoṣa there is no trace of obedience to the rules of the grammarians which require sṭ for Sanskrit ṣṭh or ṣṭ, çc for cch, sk or ẖk for kṣ. For ‘I’ we find ahake, which is an intermediate stage between Açvaghoṣa’s ahakaṁ and the later hage. ny becomes ṇṇ, not ññ, and the use of y to denote a dropped consonant is not carried out.

The only passages that can claim to be anything like Ardha-Māgadhī are the remarks of Indra in disguise in the Karṇabhāra, where the characteristic signs, the use of r, s, and e, are found; in the speeches of Muṣṭika and Cāṇūra in the Bālacarita we have the use of l and a locative in ammi. A single passage in the Pañcarātra suggests Māgadhī Apabhraṅça, but is probably corrupt. [[123]]

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7. The Metres of the Dramas

It is characteristic of Bhāsa’s close dependence on the epic that his dramas should show a far more frequent use of the Çloka, 436 out of 1,092 verses. No later writer save Bhavabhūti in his Rāma dramas approaches this frequency, which, it must be noted, is not confined to the epic plays, for the Svapnavāsavadattā has 26 Çlokas out of 57 verses. In some plays, it is true, such as the Madhyamavyāyoga or the Pañcarātra, long series of Çlokas suggest incomplete command of the dramatic art on Bhāsa’s part, but his general preference is clearly an outcome of his desire for rapid movement and simplicity; it is the later love for elaborate descriptions that encourages the use of sonorous and complex metres. The Çlokas are remarkably regular in construction; the diiambus in the second Pāda is insisted on rigidly; the Vipulās[80] are rare, the fourth is unknown, the second sporadic, the first twice as frequent as the third, and the prior foot is rarely[81] ⏓ - ⏑ -. The sparing use of the irregular forms is doubtless due to the comparatively small number of Çlokas used consecutively, which minimises the desire for change of form.

Of the more elaborate metres, in which each syllable has a fixed length, the favourite is the Vasantatilaka, which occurs 179 times, while the Upajāti occurs 121 times. Next comes the Çārdūlavikrīḍita (92), Mālinī (72), Puṣpitāgrā with the scheme ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ - ⏑ - - | ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ - ⏑ - - (66), Vaṅçasthā (35), Çālinī (2), Çikhariṇī (19), and Praharṣiṇī (17). Other metres are purely sporadic; they include the Sragdharā, Hariṇī, Vaiçvadevī,[82] Drutavilambita,[83] Pṛthvī,[84] and Bhujan̄gaprāyata,[85] while the Suvadanā occurs four times. There is one example of the Upagīti with 12 morae in the first and third Pādas, and 15 in the second and fourth, and one of the Vaitālīya with 14 and 16 in the two sets respectively. There is also one example of the shortest form of Daṇḍaka metre, with six short syllables followed by [[124]]seven amphimacers, while there is also one shorter metre with six amphimacers. The rarity of the Āryā is remarkable; beside the one Upagīti, which is in Prākrit, there are only eleven, of which five are in Prākrit. Contrast the frequency of the Āryā in Kālidāsa where there are 31 out of 163 in the Vikramorvaçī, and 35 out of 96 in the Mālavikāgnimitra.

Generally the rules of classical prosody are faithfully observed; there is one hiatus between Pādas and once Sandhi; in niyatī and maulī, as in anūkarṣa, the lengthening is probably metrical. The Çlokas show a great fondness for epic tags, such as acireṇaiva kālena, prasādaṁ kartum arhasi, and kampayann iva medinīm. Especially frequent is the breaking up of a verse between different speakers or by interruptions of one kind or another.

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8. Bhāsa and Kālidāsa

There is prima facie the probability that Kālidāsa should be strongly affected by a predecessor so illustrious and of such varied achievement, and the probability is turned into certainty by the numerous coincidences between the two writers.[86] Inevitably, of course, with such a genius as Kālidāsa’s, the matter which is borrowed is transformed and normally improved in the change, and this fact renders strict proof of indebtedness impossible. But the evidence is sufficient to induce conviction to any one accustomed to weighing literary evidence of borrowing.

In Act I of the Çakuntalā the king is struck with the elegance of the simple bark dress worn by the heroine in keeping with her station as a maiden of the hermitage; kim iva hi madhurāṇām maṇḍanaṁ nākṛtīnām, ‘For what does not grace a lovely figure?’ he asks, and illustrates his theme.[87] The germ of this pretty idea is found in the Pratimānāṭaka, Act I, where Sītā playfully decks herself in a dress of bark, evoking the judgement of her friend: savvasohaṇīaṁ surūvaṁ ṇāma.[88] The converse relationship is here incredible; Bhāsa’s imitation of Kālidāsa would be feeble and tasteless, while Kālidāsa’s improvement on his original is apt and skilful. The fact of borrowing is established by the episode in the same act of the Çakuntalā of [[125]]the treatment of watering the garden as an act of penance on the maiden’s part; an idea which occurs in a closely parallel passage in Act V of the Pratimānāṭaka. Bhāsa treats it as bearable, illustrating it by the adduction of an example in the technical form of an Arthāntaranyāsa,[89] while Kālidāsa[90] is more severe in his condemnation, using the technical figure Nidarçanā, clearly a deliberate variation of the idea. In the same Act of the Pratimānāṭaka[91] we find Rāma bidding Sītā take farewell of the fawns and the trees, which are her foster-children, and of her dear friends, the Vindhya mountain and the creepers; in the departure of Çakuntalā from the hermitage[92] the trees and the fawns as well as the creepers share in the grief of her departure; of the deer is expressly used the term ‘foster-child’ found in the Pratimānāṭaka. Again in Act VII of that play Sītā is reminded of the distrust felt by the deer in Bharata,[93] just as Çakuntalā describes their distrust of Duḥṣanta.[94] There is a parallel in the Svapnavāsavadattā, Act I, where Vāsavadattā is received kindly by the lady of the hermitage, and thanks her for her courteous words, to the scene at the opening of the Çakuntalā, in which the king assures Anasūyā that her speech of welcome is sufficient hospitality (bhavatīnāṁ sūnṛtayaiva girā kṛtam ātithyam). The parallel is completed by the instruction given by the chamberlain in Bhāsa’s play to the servant to avoid disturbance to the hermitage with the commands of the king to the commander-in-chief. Similar also is the scene in Act II of the Svapnavāsavadattā, in which during the play of Padmāvatī and Vāsavadattā in disguise reference is made to the former’s approaching marriage, to the talk of Çakuntalā’s friends with her in Act I. We have also in the sixth Act of either play a parallel treatment of the lute lost by Udayana in the one case,[95] and the ring lost by Çakuntalā in the other;[96] the verses in which these innocent objects of censure are attacked are similar in spirit and taste.

Other traces of Bhāsa’s influence are also to be found. The motif of the curse of Durvāsas which in the Çakuntalā explains the sufferings of the heroine suggests the curse of Caṇḍabhārgava in the Avimāraka which reduces the hero to a humble rank, and [[126]]in the Çakuntalā the lovers are reunited at the hermitage of the sage Mārīca, as in the Avimāraka they meet at the home of Nārada. There is a vague similarity also as regards many expressions in the two poets, but it would be unwise to lay any special stress on such testimony. But the more specific evidence given above of dependence is undeniable, and it is surprising to find it questioned by Professor Hillebrandt,[97] especially when we have Kālidāsa’s own recognition of Bhāsa’s fame, and Bāṇa’s reiteration of it.

The most valid argument which might be adduced against dependence is the fact that Kālidāsa’s dramas as they stand do not seem to agree with the rule observed in those of Bhāsa regarding the beginning of the drama. In Bhāsa’s works the Sūtradhāra appears on the stage at the close of a Nāndī, the text of which is not given, and recites a verse which obviously is not technically a Nāndī, though it is of the same type, containing a benediction. In the works of Kālidāsa the first verse is the Nāndī, and at the close of it the Sūtradhāra begins the play with a dialogue. But we cannot rely on the manuscripts as giving us the true practice of Kālidāsa’s date, for we know that in the case of the Vikramorvaçī old manuscripts denied to the first verse the character of a Nāndī, and therefore presented the play in the form affected by Bhāsa, and the same style is sometimes followed in South Indian manuscripts of other plays. It is, therefore, impossible to hold that Kālidāsa rejected the practice of Bhāsa, or to base any argument on the facts. [[127]]

[1] Harṣacarita, intr. v. 16. [↑]

[2] Gaüḍavaha, 800. [↑]

[3] Cf. Chandradhar Guleri, IA. xlii. 52 ff. [↑]

[4] ID., p. 51, who also misses the point of Bhāsanāṭakacakra by taking it to refer to one play only. [↑]

[5] Cf. Lindenau, BS., p. 48, n. 1. [↑]

[6] Barnett, JRAS. 1919, pp. 233 ff.; 1921, pp. 587 ff. Contrast G. Morgenstierne, Über das Verhältnis zwischen Cārudatta und Mṛcchakaṭikā, p. 16, n. 1; Keith, IA. lii. 59 f.; Thomas, JRAS. 1922, pp. 79 ff.; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 186, 645. [↑]

[7] KF. pp. 109 ff. [↑]

[8] ID. p. 25; cf. Pischel, GGA. 1891, p. 361; below, p. 126. [↑]

[9] All the dramas are ed. in TSS. 1912–15 by T. Gaṇapati Çāstrin; this play is trs. E. P. Janvier, Mysore, 1921; P. E. Pavolini, GSAI. xxix. 1 f. who points out that the Bakavadha of the Mahābhārata is used. [↑]

[10] One in the Mahābhārata, but Bhīma slays there 105 Sūtas also, the original Kīcaka being of that class. [↑]

[11] KF. pp. 301 f. [↑]

[12] Winternitz, ZDMG. lxxiv. 125 ff.; Lindenau, BS. pp. 22 ff. [↑]

[13] Trs. E. Beccarini-Crescenzi, GSAI. xxvii. 1 ff. [↑]

[14] Cf. KSS. cxii. and Kāmasūtravyākhyā in ed. of Pratimānāṭaka, Upodghāta, p. 29, n.; trs. GSAI. xxviii. [↑]

[15] The story is referred to in the Mālatīmādhava, ii. 92; for the Kathā, see Lacôte, La Bṛhatkathā, pp. 70 ff.; for the ‘Trojan horse’ motif, GIL. ii. 155; iii. 175, n. 3. [↑]

[16] The work is styled a Nāṭikā in the colophon in one manuscript. [↑]

[17] iv. 40 ff. [↑]

[18] v. 2. 28. [↑]

[19] p. 366. [↑]

[20] Trs. A. Baston, Paris, 1914 (corr. in GSAI. xxvii. 159 f.); A. G. Shirreff and Panna Lall, Allahabad, 1918. Cf. Lacôte, JA. sér. II, xiii. 493 ff. [↑]

[21] iv. 3. 25, citing iv. 7. [↑]

[22] Dhvanyālokalocana, p. 152 cites probably a lost verse; comm. on N. in TSS. ed. p. xxii. The play is cited also by Vandyaghaṭīya Sarvānanda (A.D. 1159). [↑]

[23] i. 2 in Vāmana, v. i. 3. [↑]

[24] i. 19. [↑]

[25] i. 15. [↑]

[26] i. 34. [↑]

[27] ii. 233. [↑]

[28] G. Morgenstierne, Über das Verhältnis zwischen Cārudatta und Mṛcchakaṭikā (1921). Cf. Mehendale, Bhandarkar Comm. Vol. pp. 369 ff. [↑]

[29] Arthadyotanikā, 2. [↑]

[30] In the Pratimānāṭaka the poet invents the episode of Bharata’s learning of Sītā’s abduction, of Rāma’s taking over the reins of government from Bharata, and his coronation in the hermitage. In the Pañcarātra the gift by Duryodhana of half the realm is new. [↑]

[31] Recognized by Duryodhana, v. 35. [↑]

[32] v. 43. [↑]

[33] p. 69 and v. 21. [↑]

[34] iii. p. 53. [↑]

[35] Svapnavāsavadattā, iv. p. 43. [↑]

[36] v. p. 83. [↑]

[37] Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa, p. 57. [↑]

[38] pp. 59 ff. [↑]

[39] Madhyamavyāyoga, p. 22. [↑]

[40] Abhiṣekanāṭaka, i. p. 13. [↑]

[41] vi. p. 102. [↑]

[42] Subhāṣitāvali, 1994. [↑]

[43] i. 25. [↑]

[44] pp. 43 ff. [↑]

[45] pp. 99 ff. [↑]

[46] Cf. Duryodhana’s description of Kṛṣṇa’s manifestation in the Dūtavākya. [↑]

[47] Abhiṣekanāṭaka, vi, where three Vidyādharas describe Rāma and Rāvaṇa’s fight; Pañcarātra, i, where three Brahmins describe Duryodhana’s sacrifice. [↑]

[48] In the Madhyamavyāyoga there are three sons of the Brahmin; Ūrubhan̄ga, where three servants describe the battle. Cf. the Trigata of the preliminaries to the drama. [↑]

[49] Prastāvanā is given in the Karṇabhāra. [↑]

[50] v. p. 56; cf. Avimāraka, iii. p. 41. Compare the use of an abrupt interruption in the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa, p. 30, where the query of the king as to a husband is answered by the mention of Vatsarāja’s capture. [↑]

[51] p. 22. Apparently a dance on the occasion of an eclipse may be meant; Lindenau, BS. p. 43. Cf. L. von Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 114 ff. [↑]

[52] The idea that prathamakalpa is a technical term of dramaturgy (DR. i. 60, comm.) appears to be due to the frequent use of the term, apparently as a remark of eulogy, in the manuscripts of Bhāsa’s works. [↑]

[53] The use of a transverse curtain would explain the scene, but there is no real evidence of this. Cf. chap. xiv. § 1. [↑]

[54] Karṇabhāra, 22. [↑]

[55] Abhiṣekanāṭaka, vi. 21. [↑]

[56] Pratimānāṭaka, i. 6. [↑]

[57] Bālacarita, i. 13. [↑]

[58] Abhiṣekanāṭaka, iii. 20. [↑]

[59] i. 20. [↑]

[60] v. 1619. [↑]

[61] Pratimānāṭaka, iii. 17. [↑]

[62] Ibid., i. 18. [↑]

[63] Ibid., iii. 24. [↑]

[64] Pañcarātra, ii. 28. [↑]

[65] Dūtaghaṭotkaca, 17. [↑]

[66] i. 18. [↑]

[67] Pratimānāṭaka, p. xi. [↑]

[68] iv. 9. [↑]

[69] i. 12. [↑]

[70] Avimāraka, i. 5. [↑]

[71] ii. 7. [↑]

[72] i. 18. [↑]

[73] iii. p. 25. [↑]

[74] Abhiṣekanāṭaka, v. p. 56. [↑]

[75] Ibid., i. p. 10. [↑]

[76] Ūrubhan̄ga, 29. [↑]

[77] See Pratimānāṭaka, App. i; V. S. Sukhtankar, JAOS. xli. 118 ff. [↑]

[78] W. Printz, Bhāsa’s Prākrit (1921). The evidence of retention of older forms later in South Indian manuscripts (Barnett, JRAS. 1921, p. 589) is interesting but does not alter the importance of these forms. [↑]

[79] āni in Pāli, āṇi in the Ardha-Māgadhī of the Jain Canon; Lüders, SBAW. 1913, pp. 999 ff. [↑]

[80] Verses in which the last four syllables are not ⏑ - - ⏓; viz. (1) ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏓; (2) - ⏑ ⏑ ⏓; (3) -, - - ⏓; (4) - ⏑ - ⏓. [↑]

[81] Cf. Jacobi, IS. xvii. 443 f.; V. S. Sukhtankar, JAOS. xli. 107 ff. [↑]

[82] - - - - -, - ⏑ - - ⏑ - -. Later only in the Mṛcchakaṭikā of classical dramas. [↑]

[83] ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ -. [↑]

[84] ⏑ - ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ -, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ - ⏑ - - ⏑ -. [↑]

[85] ⏑ - - ⏑ - - ⏑ - - ⏑ - -. Later first in the Caitanyacandrodaya. [↑]

[86] T. Gaṇapati Çāstrin, Pratimānāṭaka, pp. 1 ff. [↑]

[87] i. 17. [↑]

[88] p. 7. [↑]

[89] v. 3. [↑]

[90] i. 16. [↑]

[91] v. 11. [↑]

[92] iv. 8, 11, 13. [↑]

[93] p. 107. [↑]

[94] v. [↑]

[95] vi. 1, 2. [↑]

[96] vi. 11, 13. [↑]

[97] Kālidāsa, p. 103. [↑]

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V

THE PRECURSORS OF KĀLIDĀSA AND ÇŪDRAKA

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1. The Precursors of Kālidāsa

Kālidāsa refers in the prologue to the Mālavikāgnimitra not only to Bhāsa but to Saumilla and Kaviputra—perhaps rather the Kaviputras—as his predecessors in drama. Saumilla, whose name suggests an origin in Mahārāṣṭra, is mentioned by Rājaçekhara along with Bhāsa and a third poet Rāmila. Further, the same authority tells us that Rāmila and Somila composed a Çūdrakakathā, which is compared to Çiva under the form of Ardhanārīçvara, in which he is united with his spouse, perhaps a hint at the union of heroic and love sentiments in the tale. A fine stanza is attributed to them in the Çārn̄gadharapaddhati:[1]

savyādheḥ kṛçatā kṣatasya rudhiraṁ daṣṭasya lālāsrutiḥ

kiṁcin naitad ihāsti tat katham asau pānthas tapasvī mṛtaḥ?

ā jñātaṁ madhulampaṭair madhukarair ārabdhakolāhale

nūnaṁ sāhasikena cūtamukule dṛṣṭiḥ samāropitā.

‘Had he been ill he would have been emaciated; wounded, he would have bled; bitten, have shown the venom; no sign of these is here; how then has the unhappy traveller met his death? Ah! I see. When the bees began to hum as they sought greedily for honey, the rash one let his glance fall on the mango bud’. Spring is the time for lovers’ meetings; the traveller, far from his beloved, lets himself think of her and dies of despair.

The Kaviputras, a pair according to the verse cited from them in the Subhāṣitāvali[2], were apparently also collaborators, a decidedly curious parallel with Somila and Rāmila, as such collaboration seems later rare. The stanza is pretty:

bhrūcāturyaṁ kuñcitāntāḥ kaṭākṣāḥ: snigdhā hāvā lajjitāntāç ca hāsāḥ

līlāmandaṁ prasthitaṁ ca sthitaṁ ca: strīṇām etad bhūṣaṇam āyudhaṁ ca.

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‘The play of the brows, the sidelong glances which contract the corners of the eyes, words of love, bashful laughter, the slow departure in sport, and the staying of the steps: these are the ornaments and the weapons of women.’

Strange that so scanty remnants should remain of poets who must have deserved high praise to receive Kālidāsa’s recognition, but the fame of that poet doubtless inflicted on them the fate that all but overtook Bhāsa himself.

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2. The Authorship and Age of the Mṛcchakaṭikā

The discovery of the Cārudatta of Bhāsa has cast an unexpected light on the age of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, but has still left it dubious whether or not the author is to be placed before Kālidāsa. That this rank was due to him was the general opinion before Professor Lévi attacked the theory, and it is curious that later he should have inclined to doubt the value of his earlier judgement. The existence of the Cārudatta would explain, of course, the silence of Kālidāsa on the Mṛcchakaṭikā, if it existed in his time. Explicit use of the drama by Kālidāsa or the reverse would be conclusive, but unhappily none of the parallels which can be adduced have any effective force, and from rhetorical quotations we only have the fact that Çūdraka was recognized as an author by Vāmana,[3] for Daṇḍin’s citation of a verse found in the Mṛcchakaṭikā is now clearly known to be a citation from Bhāsa, in whose works the verse in question twice occurs. With this falls the hypothesis of Pischel,[4] who, after ascribing the play to Bhāsa, later fathered it upon Daṇḍin, to make good the number of three famous works with which he is in later tradition credited.

The play itself presents Çūdraka, a king, as its author and gives curious details of his capacities; he was an expert in the Ṛgveda, the Sāmaveda, mathematics, the arts regarding courtesans, and the science of elephants, all facts which could be concluded from the knowledge shown in the play itself; he was cured of some complaint, and after establishing his son in his place, and performing the horse sacrifice, he entered the fire and [[129]]died at the age of a hundred years and ten days. We have a good deal more information of a sort regarding his personality; he was to Kalhaṇa in the Rājataran̄giṇī[5] a figure to be set beside Vikramāditya; the Skanda Purāṇa[6] makes him out the first of the Andhrabhṛtyas; the Vetālapañcaviṅçati knows of his age as a hundred, and gives as his capital either Vardhamāna or Çobhāvatī, which is the scene of his activities according to the Kathāsaritsāgara, which tells of the sacrifice of a Brahmin who saves him from imminent death and secures his life of a hundred years by killing himself. In the Kādambarī he is located at Vidiçā, and in the Harṣacarita we hear of the device by which he got rid of his enemy Candraketu, prince of Cakora, while Daṇḍin in the Daçakumāracarita refers to his adventures in several lives. The fact that Rāmila and Somila wrote a Kathā on him is significant of his legendary character in their time, considerably before Kālidāsa. A very late tradition in the Vīracarita and the younger Rājaçekhara[7] brings him into connexion with Sātavāhana or Çālivāhana, whose minister he was and from whom he obtained half his kingdom, including Pratiṣṭhāna.[8]

These references seem to suggest that Çūdraka was a merely legendary person, a fact rather supported than otherwise by his quaint name, which is absurd in a king of normal type. Nevertheless, Professor Konow treats him as historical, and finds in him the Ābhīra prince Çivadatta, who, or whose son, Īçvarasena, is held by Dr. Fleet to have overthrown the last of the Andhra dynasty and to have founded the Cedi era of A.D. 248–9.[9] This remarkable result is held to be supported by the fact that in the play the king of Ujjayinī is Pālaka, and is represented as being overthrown by Āryaka, son of a herdsman (gopāla), and the Ābhīras are essentially herdsmen. But this is much more than dubious; we have in fact legendary history in the names of Pālaka, Gopāla—to be taken probably in the Mṛcchakaṭikā as a proper name—and Āryaka. The proof is indeed overwhelming, for Bhāsa, who is the source of so much of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, [[130]]mentions in his Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa as sons of Pradyota of Ujjayinī both Gopāla and Pālaka, and the Bṛhatkathā must have contained the story of Gopāla surrendering the kingdom on Pradyota’s death to Pālaka, and of the latter having to make room for Āryaka, his brother’s son. To make history out of these events, which belong to the period shortly after the Buddha’s death, say 483 B.C., and history of the third century A.D., is really impossible. Çūdraka is really clearly mythical, as is seen by the admission that he entered the fire, for no one can believe that he foresaw his death-day so precisely, or that the ceremony referred to is that performed on becoming an ascetic, or even that the prologue was added after his death; if it had been, it would have doubtless been of a different type. Still less can we imagine that he was helped in his work by Rāmila and Somila.

Windisch,[10] on the other hand, attempted to prove a close similarity between the plot of the political side of the play and the legend of Kṛṣṇa, instancing the prediction of Āryaka’s attaining the throne, the jealousy of the king and his efforts to destroy him, and the final overthrow of the tyrant. The similarity, however, is really remote; the story is a commonplace in legend, and nothing can be made of the comparison.

We are left, therefore, to accept the view that the author who wrote up the Cārudatta, and combined with it a new play, thought it well to conceal his identity and to pass off the work under the appellation of a famous king. Lévi’s suggestion that he chose Çūdraka for this purpose because he lived after Vikramāditya, patron of Kālidāsa, and wished to give his work the appearance of antiquity by associating it with a prince who preceded Vikramāditya, is clearly far-fetched, and insufficient to suggest a date. Nor can anything be deduced from the plentiful exhibition of Prākrits, which is not, to judge from Bhāsa, a sign of very early date; while the use of Māhārāṣṭrī Prākrit would be, if proved, conclusive that he is fairly late. Konow’s effort to support Çūdraka’s connexion with Pratiṣṭhāna by this use is clearly untenable.

There is more plausibility in the argument from the simple form of the construction of the drama; the manner of Bhāsa is [[131]]closely followed; thus in Act IX the absurd celerity with which the officer of the court obeys the order to bring the mother of Vasantasenā on the scene, and secures the presence of Cārudatta, is precisely on a par with Bhāsa’s management of the plot in his dramas. The scenes of violence, in which Vasantasenā is apparently killed and Cārudatta is led to death, are reminiscent of Bhāsa’s willingness to present such scenes, but they do not depart from the practice of the later drama as in Bhavabhūti’s Mālatīmādhava. The Çakāra and Viṭa are indeed figures of the early stage, but they are taken straight from Bhāsa and prove nothing. The position of the Buddhist monk is more interesting, but here again it is borrowed, though developed, and we find Buddhism respected in Kālidāsa and Harṣa. The arguments based on the apparent similarity with the Greek New Comedy are without value for an early date, for they apply, if they have any value at all, to the Cārudatta of Bhāsa. We are left, therefore, with no more than impressions, and these are quite insufficient to assign any date to the clever hand which recast the Cārudatta and made one of the great plays of the Indian drama.[11]

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3. The Mṛcchakaṭikā

The first four acts of the play are a reproduction with slight changes of the Cārudatta of Bhāsa;[12] the very prologue shows the fact in the inexplicable transformation in the speech of the director, who opens in Sanskrit and then changes to Prākrit, while in the Cārudatta he speaks Prākrit only as fits the part of the Vidūṣaka which he is to play. The names are slightly changed; the king’s brother-in-law is called Saṁsthānaka, and the thief Çarvilaka. Act I carries the action up to the deposit of the gems by Vasantasenā; Act II relates the generosity of the hetaera to the shampooer who turns monk, and the attack made on him as he leaves her house by a mad elephant, from which Karṇapūraka, a servant of Vasantasenā’s, saves him, receiving as reward a cloak which Vasantasenā recognizes as Cārudatta’s. In Act III we learn of Çarvilaka’s success in stealing the jewels, and the generous resolve of the wife of Cārudatta to give her necklace to [[132]]replace them. In Act IV Çarvilaka gives the jewels to Vasantasenā, who, though aware of the theft, sets his love free. As he leaves with her, he hears of the imprisonment of his friend Āryaka by order of the king, who knows the prophecy of his attaining the kingship, and leaving his newly-made bride, he hastens to aid his friend who is reported to have escaped from his captivity. The Vidūṣaka then comes with the necklace, which the hetaera accepts in order to use it as a pretext to see Cārudatta once more. The visit occupies Act V, which passes in a storm forcing Vasantasenā to spend the night in Cārudatta’s house. Act VI reveals her next morning offering to return to Cārudatta’s wife the necklace, but her gift is refused. The child of Cārudatta appears, complaining that he has only a little earth cart (mṛcchakaṭikā), whence the name of the play; Vasantasenā gives him her jewels that he may buy one of gold. She is to rejoin Cārudatta in a neighbouring park, the property of Saṁsthānaka, but by error she enters the car of Saṁsthānaka, while Āryaka, who has been seeking a hiding-place, leaps into that of Cārudatta and is driven away; two policemen stop the cart, and one recognizes Āryaka, but protects him from the other with whom he contrives a quarrel. In Act VII Cārudatta, who is conversing with the Vidūṣaka, sees his cart drive up, discovers Āryaka, and permits him to go off in it, while he himself leaves to find Vasantasenā. In the next act Saṁsthānaka, with the Viṭa and a slave, meets in the park the shampooer turned monk, who has gone there to wash his robe in the tank; he insults him and beats him. The cart with Vasantasenā then is driven up, and the angry Saṁsthānaka first tries to win her by fair words; then, repulsed, orders the Viṭa and the slave to slay her; they indignantly refuse; he pretends to grow calm, dismisses them, and then rains blows on Vasantasenā, who falls apparently dead; the Viṭa, who sees his action, deserts at once his cause and passes over to Āryaka’s side. Saṁsthānaka, after burying the body under some leaves, departs, promising himself to put the slave in chains; the monk re-enters to dry his robe, finds and restores to life Vasantasenā, and takes her to the monastery to be cared for. In Act IX Saṁsthānaka denounces Cārudatta as the murderer of Vasantasenā to the court;[13] her [[133]]mother is summoned as a witness, but defends Cārudatta, who himself is cited; the police officer testifies to the escape of Āryaka, which implicates Cārudatta; the Vidūṣaka who enters the court, while en route to return to Vasantasenā the jewels she had given the child, is so indignant with the accuser that he lets fall the jewels; this fact, taken together with the evidence that Vasantasenā spent the night with Cārudatta and left next morning to meet him, and the signs of struggle in the park, deceives the judge, who condemns Cārudatta to exile; Pālaka converts the sentence into one of death. Act X reveals the hero led to death by two Caṇḍālas, who regret the duty they have to perform; the servant of Saṁsthānaka escapes and reveals the truth, but Saṁsthānaka makes light of his words as a disgraced and spiteful slave, and the headsmen decide to proceed with their work. Vasantasenā and the monk enter just in time to prevent Cārudatta’s death, and, while the lovers rejoice at their reunion, the news is brought that Āryaka has succeeded Pālaka whom he has slain, and that he has granted a principality to Cārudatta. The crowd shout for Saṁsthānaka’s death, but Cārudatta pardons him, while the monk is rewarded by being appointed superior over the Buddhist monasteries of the realm, and, best of all, Vasantasenā is made free of her profession, and thus can become Cārudatta’s lawful wife.

To the author we may ascribe the originality of combining the political and the love intrigue, which give together a special value to the play. We know of no precise parallel to this combination of motifs, though in the Bṛhatkathā there was probably a story recorded later[14] of the hetaera Kumudikā who fell in love with a poor Brahmin, imprisoned by the king; she allied herself to the fortunes of a dethroned prince Vikramasiṅha, aided him by her arts to secure the throne, and was permitted by the grateful prince to marry her beloved, now released from prison. The idea was doubtless current in some form or another, just as for the incidents of Bhāsa’s story we can trace parallels in the Kathā literature of hetaerae who love honest and poor men and desire to abandon for their sakes their hereditary and obligatory calling, which the law will compel them to follow.[15] The conception of the science of theft is neatly paralleled in the Daçakumāracarita, [[134]]where a text-book of the subject is ascribed to Karṇīsuta, and the same work contains interesting accounts of gambling which illustrate Act II. The Kathāsaritsāgara[16] tells of a ruined gambler, who takes refuge in an empty shrine, and describes in Sarga xxxviii the palace of the hetaera Madanamālā in terms which may be compared with the description by the Vidūṣaka in Act IV of the splendours of Vasantasenā’s palace.[17] The court scene conforms duly to the requirements of the legal Smṛtis of the sixth and seventh centuries A.D., but the conservatism of the law renders this no sign of date.

Though composite in origin and in no sense a transcript from life, the merits of the Mṛcchakaṭikā are great and most amply justify what else would have been an inexcusable plagiarism. The hints given in the Cārudatta here appear in full and harmonious development aided and heightened by the introduction of the intrigue, which combines the private affairs of the hero with the fate of the city and kingdom. Cārudatta’s character is attractive in the extreme; considerate to his friend the Vidūṣaka, honouring and respecting his wife, deeply devoted to his little son, Rohasena, he loves Vasantasenā with an affection free from all mere passion; he has realized her nobility of character, her generosity, and the depth and truth of her love. Yet his devotion is only a part of his life; aware of the vanity of all human things, he does not value life over-highly; his condemnation affects him most because it strikes at his honour that he should have murdered a woman, and he leaves thus to his child a heritage of shame. Not less attractive is Vasantasenā, bound, despite herself, to a profession which has brought her great wealth but which offends her heart; the judge and all the others believe her merely carried away by sensual passion; Cārudatta and his wife alone recognize her nobility of soul, and realize how much it means for her to be made eligible for marriage to her beloved. There is an admirable contrast with the hero in the Çakāra Saṁsthānaka, who is described vividly and realistically. His position as brother-in-law of the king and his wealth make him believe that he is entitled to whatever he wants; Vasantasenā’s repulse of him outrages his sense of his own importance [[135]]more than anything else; brutal, ignorant[18] despite his association with courtiers of breeding and refinement, and cowardly, he has only skill in perfidy and deceit, and is mean enough to beg piteously for the life he has forfeited, but which Cārudatta magnanimously spares. The Viṭa is an excellent foil to him in his culture, good taste, and high breeding; despite his dependence on his patron, he checks his violence to Vasantasenā, strives to prevent his effort to murder her, and when he fails in this takes his life into his own hands and passes over to Āryaka’s side. The Vidūṣaka may be fond of food and comfortable living, but he remains faithful in adversity to his master, is prepared to die for him, and consents to live only to care for his son.

The minor characters among the twenty-seven in all who appear have each an individuality rare in Indian drama. Çarvilaka, once a Brahmin, now a professional thief, performs his new functions with all the precision appropriate to the performance of religious rites according to the text-books. The shampooer, turned Buddhist monk, has far too much worldly knowledge to seek any temporal preferment from the favour of Āryaka. Māthura, the master gambler, is a hardened sinner without bowels of compassion, but the two headsmen are sympathetic souls who perform reluctantly their painful duty. The wife of Cārudatta is a noble and gentle lady worthy of her husband, and one who in the best Indian fashion does not grudge him a new love if worthy, while the lively maid Madanikā deserves fully her freedom and marriage with Çarvilaka. Even characters which play so small an actual part as Āryaka are effectively indicated. The good taste of the author is strikingly revealed by the alteration made in the last scene by a certain Nīlakaṇṭha,[19] who holds that the omission to bring upon the stage Cārudatta’s wife, his son, and the Vidūṣaka was due to the risk of making the time occupied by the representation of the play too great. He supplies the lacuna by representing all three as determined to commit suicide when Cārudatta rescues them; the author himself would never have consented to introduce the first wife at the moment when a second is about to be taken.

The author is not merely admirable in characterization; he is [[136]]master of pathos, as in the parting of Cārudatta from his son who asks the headsman to kill him and let his father go, and above all he abounds in humour and wit; even in the last act Goha, the headman, relieves the tension by the tale of his father who advised him on his death-bed not to slay too quickly the criminal on the off-chance that there might be a revolution or something to save the wretch’s life, and, when after deliverance comes the noble Cārudatta forbids the slaying with steel of the grovelling Saṁsthānaka, Çarvilaka cheerfully remarks that is all right: he will be eaten alive by the dogs instead.

These merits and the wealth of incident of the drama more than compensate for the overluxuriance of the double intrigue, and the lack of unity, which is unquestionable. A demerit in the eyes of the writers on poetics is the absence of elaborate descriptions, but the simple and clear diction of the play adds greatly to its liveliness and dramatic effect, and the poet has perfect command of the power of pithy and forcible expression. The Viṭa effectually rebukes the arrogance and pride of family of Saṁsthānaka:

kiṁ kulenopadiṣṭena çīlam evātra kāraṇam

bhavanti sutarāṁ sphītāḥ sukṣetre kaṇṭakidrumāḥ.

‘Why talk of birth? Character alone counts. In rich soil the thorn trees grow fastest.’ Cārudatta on the point of death asserts his fearlessness:

na bhīto marāṇād asmi kevalaṁ dūṣitaṁ yaçaḥ

viçuddhasya hi me mṛtyuḥ putrajanmasamo bhavet.

‘I fear not death, but my honour is sullied; were that stain removed, death would be as dear as the birth of a son.’ Admirable is his expression of belief in Vasantasenā who may be dead:

prabhavati yadi dharmo dūṣitasyāpi me ’dya: prabalapuruṣavākyair bhāgyadoṣāt kathaṁcit

surapatibhavanasthā yatra tatra sthitā vā: vyapanayatu kalan̄kaṁ svasvabhāvena saiva.

‘If righteousness prevails, though to-day I am undone by the slanderous words of one in power through my unhappy fate, may she, dwelling with the gods above or wherever she be, by her true nature wipe out the blot upon me.’ Sadly he apostrophizes his child deemed to be at play: [[137]]

hā Rohasena na hi paçyasi me vipattim: mithyaiva nandasi paravyasanena nityam.

‘Ah! Rohasena, since thou dost not know my plight, ever dost thou rejoice in thy play falsely, for sorrow is in store.’

The character of Cārudatta is effectively portrayed by the Vidūṣaka:[20]

dīnānāṁ kalpavṛkṣaḥ svaguṇaphalanataḥ sajjanānāṁ kuṭumbī

ādarçaḥ çikṣitānāṁ sucaritanikaṣaḥ çīlavelāsamudraḥ

satkartā nāvamantā puruṣaguṇanidhir dakṣiṇodārasattvo hy

ekaḥ çlāghyaḥ sa jīvaty adhikaguṇatayā cocchvasanti cānye.

‘A tree of bounty to the poor, bent down by its fruits, his virtues; a support for all good men; a mirror of the learned, a touchstone of virtue, an ocean that never violates its boundaries of virtue; righteous, free from pride, a store-house of human merit, the essence of courtesy and nobility; he gives meaning to life by the goodness which we extol; other men merely breathe.’

The evils of poverty are forcibly depicted by Cārudatta himself:[21]

çūnyair gṛhaiḥ khalu samāḥ puruṣāḥ daridrāḥ

kūpaiç ca toyarahitais tarubhiç ca çīrṇaiḥ

yad dṛṣṭapūrvajanasaṁgamavismṛtānām

evam bhavanti viphalāḥ paritoṣakālāḥ.

‘Like empty houses, in truth, are poor men, or wells without water or blasted trees; for fruitless are their hours of relaxation, since their former friends forget them.’ The same idea is again expressed by the hero:[22]

satyaṁ na me vibhavanāçakṛtāsti cintā: bhāgyakrameṇa hi dhanāni bhavanti yānti

etat tu māṁ dahati naṣṭadhanāçrayasya: yat sauhṛdād api janāḥ çithilībhavanti.

‘My dejection, assuredly, is not born of the mere loss of my wealth, for with the turn of fortune’s wheel riches come and go. Nay, what pains me is that men fail in friendship to him whose sometime wealth has taken flight.’ The repetition of the idea becomes, indeed, wearisome, but the ingenuity and fancy of the author are undoubted. [[138]]

Love is also effectively described. The Viṭa is an admirer of Vasantasenā and thus addresses the fleeting lady:[23]

kiṁ tvaṁ padair mama padāni viçeṣayantī

vyālīva yāsi patagendrabhayābhibhūtā?

vegād aham praviçṛtaḥ pavanaṁ nirundhyām

tvannigrahe tu varagātri na me prayatnaḥ.

‘Why, surpassing my speed with thine own, dost thou flee like a snake, filled with fear of the lord of birds? Were I to use my speed I could outstrip the wind itself, but I would make no effort to seize thee, O fair-limbed one.’ Cārudatta praises the rain:[24]

dhanyāni teṣāṁ khalu jīvitāni: ye kāminīnāṁ gṛham āgatānām

ārdrāṇi meghodakaçītalāni: gātrāṇi gātreṣu pariṣvajanti.

‘Happy the life of those whose limbs embrace the limbs of their loved ones, come to their home, dripping wet and cold with the water of the clouds.’

Moreover, while to later Indian critics the descriptive stanzas of the poet are lacking in that elaboration and cleverness which are admitted by developed taste, to us much of the poetic value of the drama depends on the power of the poet to describe with point and feeling in simple terms which require no effort to appreciate. The whole scene of the storm gains by the stanzas in which its beauties are described, once we consent, as we must do in appreciating any Sanskrit play, to ignore the inappropriateness of these lyric effusions in the actual circumstances. In real life a lady seeking eagerly an interview with her beloved, in resplendent attire, would have no time to display her command of Sanskrit poetry in description, when counsels of prudence urged her to her destination with the least possible delay:[25]

mūḍhe nirantarapayodharayā mayaiva: kāntaḥ sahābhiramate kiṁ tavātra?

māṁ garjitair iti muhur vinivārayantī: mārgaṁ ruṇaddhi kupiteva niçā sapatnī.

‘ “If, foolish one, my beloved has joy clasped in my bosom’s embrace, what is that to thee?” Thus night with her thunders, seeking to stay me, blocks my path, like an angry rival.’

meghā varṣantu garjantu muñcantv açanim eva vā

gaṇayanti na çītoṣṇaṁ ramaṇābhimukhāḥ striyaḥ.

[[139]]

‘Let the clouds rain, thunder, or cast down the levin bolt; women who speed to their loved ones reckon nothing of heat or cold.’[26]

gatā nāçaṁ tārā upakṛtam asādhāv iva jane

viyuktāḥ kāntena striya iva na rājanti kakubhaḥ

prakāmāntastaptaṁ tridaçapatiçastrasya çikhinā

dravībhūtam manye patati jalarūpeṇa gaganam.

‘The stars disappear, like a favour bestowed on a worthless man; the quarters lose their radiance, like women severed from their beloved; molten by the fierce fire of Indra’s bolt, the sky, I ween, is poured down upon us in rain.’[27]

unnamati namati varṣati garjati meghaḥ karoti timiraugham

prathamaçrīr iva puruṣaḥ karoti rūpāṇy anekāni.

‘The cloud rises aloft, bows down, pours rain, sends thunder and the dark; every show it makes of its wealth like the man newly rich.’[28]

Last we may cite the rebuke of Vasantasenā to the lightning:

yadi garjati vāridharo garjatu tannāma niṣṭhurāḥ puruṣāḥ

ayi vidyut pramadānāṃ tvam api ca duḥkhaṁ na jānāsi?

‘If the cloud must thunder, then let him thunder; cruel were men ever; but, O lightning, can it be that thou too dost not know the pangs of a maiden’s love?’[29]

The merits of the play are sufficient to enable its author to dispense with praise not deserved. For Çūdraka, regarded as the author, has been credited[30] with the distinction of being a cosmopolitan; however great the difference between Kālidāsa, ‘the grace of poetry’[31] and Bhavabhūti, ‘the master of eloquence,’[32] these two authors, it is said, are far more allied in spirit than is either of them with the author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā; the Çakuntalā and the Uttararāmacarita could have been produced nowhere save in India, Çakuntalā is a Hindu maid, Mādhava a Hindu hero, while Saṁsthānaka, Maitreya, and Madanikā are citizens of the world. This claim, however, can hardly be admitted; the Mṛcchakaṭikā as a whole is a drama redolent of Indian thought and life, and none of the three characters adduced have any special claim to be more cosmopolitan than some of the [[140]]creations of Kālidāsa. The variety of the characters of the play is unquestionably laudable, but the praise in part is due to Bhāsa, and not to his successor. To the same source also must be attributed the comparative simplicity of the style, which certainly contrasts with the degree of elaboration found even in Kālidāsa, and carried much further in Bhavabhūti. The variety of incident is foreshadowed in Bhāsa, but the development of the drama must be attributed to the author, and frankly it cannot be said to be wholly artistic; that the drama is unnecessarily complex must be conceded, nor can the action be said to proceed with complete ease and conviction. The humour of the play is undoubted, but here again to Bhāsa must honour be given. Bhāsa again is the prototype for the neglect of the rule of the dramaturgy which demands the presence of the hero on the stage in each act; the naming of the play, in defiance of convention, from a minor incident may justly be ascribed to the author himself.

The real Indian character of the drama reveals itself in the demand for the conventional happy ending, which shows us every person in a condition of happiness, with the solitary exception of the evil king. Cārudatta is restored to affluence and power from the depths of infamy and misery; Vasantasenā’s virtue and fidelity are rewarded by the signal honour of restoration to the rank of one whom the hero may marry; the monk, who refuses worldly gain, has the pleasure of becoming charged with spiritual oversight, with its attendant amenities—not inconsiderable to judge from our knowledge of the wealth of Buddhist monasteries. Even Saṁsthānaka is spared, to save us, we may assume, the pain of seeing anything so unpleasant as a real, even if well deserved, death on the stage, for the king perishes at a distance from the scene. If, as Cārudatta asserts at the end of the play, fate plays with men like buckets at the well, one rising as another falls, Çūdraka is not inclined to seek realism sufficiently to permit of his introducing even a tinge of sorrow into the close of his drama.

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4. The Prākrits

No extant play exhibits anything like the variety of Prākrits found in the Mṛcchakaṭikā, which seems almost as if intended to [[141]]illustrate the precepts of the Nāṭyaçāstra in this regard.[33] The commentator obligingly provides us with the names of the dialects represented and those who speak them. Çaurasenī is spoken by the director after his Sanskrit exordium, the comedienne, Vasantasenā, Madanikā, her servant, Karṇapūraka, her slave, her mother, the wife of Cārudatta, the Çreṣṭhin or guildsman, and the officer of the court, and Radanikā, Cārudatta’s servant. Avantikā is attributed to the two policemen Vīraka and Candanaka. The Vidūṣaka speaks Prācyā. The shampooer who turns monk, Sthāvaraka, servant of the Çakāra Saṁsthānaka, Kumbhīlaka, servant of Vasantasenā, Vardhamānaka, servant of Cārudatta, and the little Rohasena speak Māgadhī. The Çakāra speaks Çākārī, the Caṇḍālas who act as headsmen Cāṇḍālī, and the chief gambler Ḍhakkī. Sanskrit, on the other hand, is spoken by the hero, the Viṭa, the royal claimant Āryaka, and the Brahmin thief Çarvilaka. This distribution of Prākrits agrees with that of the Nāṭyaçāstra as we have it in one important aspect; it ignores the Māhārāṣṭrī, though for some not obvious reason Konow claims that this was introduced into the drama by Çūdraka. On the other hand, it does not assign to slaves, Rājputs, or guildsmen the Ardha-Māgadhī of the Nāṭyaçāstra. In the case of Rohasena the Māgadhī ascribed to him has been largely converted into Çaurasenī in the manuscripts. The Çāstra ascribes Āvantī to Dhūrtas, which is interpreted as meaning gamblers; the distinction between it and Çaurasenī is minimal; it is said to have s and r and be rich in proverbs by Pṛthvīdhara, and this accords adequately with the actual speeches of the officers. But the second, Candanaka, expressly gives himself out as a southerner, and we can hardly avoid the conclusion that the dialect is Dākṣiṇātyā which the Çāstra ascribes to warriors, police officers, and gamblers. The Prācyā of the Vidūṣaka is nothing more or less than Çaurasenī, though it is given separately in the Çāstra also; it may have been an eastern dialect of the main language. The Ḍhakkī ascribed to the gamblers should probably[34] be named Ṭakkī, or Ṭākkī, an easy error because of the confusion of the letters in manuscripts. Pischel regarded it as an eastern dialect which had l, and preserved two [[142]]sibilants ç and s in which ṣ was merged; Sir G. Grierson finds in it a western dialect, which seems more probable. The Çākārī of Saṁsthānaka is nothing more or less than Māgadhī, which is given as the language of that person by the Nāṭyaçāstra, and the Cāṇḍālī is merely another variety of that Prākrit. Thus the rich variety reduces itself in effect to Çaurasenī[35] and Māgadhī with Ṭakkī, of which we have too little to say precisely what it was.

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5. The Metres

The author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā shows considerable skill in metrical handling; his favourite metre is naturally enough the Çloka, which suits his rapid style and is adapted to further the progress of the dialogue. It occurs 83 times, while the next favourite, the pretty Vasantatilaka, appears 39 times, and the Çārdūlavikrīḍita 32 times. The only other important metres are the Indravajrā (26), with the Vaṅçasthā (9), and the Upajāti combination of both (5). But there occur also the Puṣpitāgrā, Praharṣiṇī, Mālinī, Vidyunmālā,[36] Vaiçvadevī, Çikhariṇī, Sragdharā, and Hariṇī, and one irregular stanza. Of the Āryā there are 21 cases, including one Gīti, with 30 morae in each half stanza, and there are two instances of the Aupacchandasika. The Prākrit metres show considerable variety; of the Āryā type there are 53 as against 44 of other types.[37] [[143]]

[1] cxxxiii. 40. [↑]

[2] v. 2227. [↑]

[3] Lévi, TI. i. 198; Vāmana, iii. 2. 4. [↑]

[4] Rudraṭa, pp. 16 f. But see Hari Chand, Kālidāsa, pp. 78 f. [↑]

[5] iii. 343. [↑]

[6] Wilson, Works, ix. 194. [↑]

[7] IS. xiv. 147; JBRAS. viii. 240. [↑]

[8] He is later the hero of a Parikathā, the Çūdrakavadha (Rāyamukuṭa, ZDMG. xxviii. 117), and of a drama, Vikrāntaçūdraka (Sarasvatīkaṇṭhābharaṇa, p. 378). [↑]

[9] KF. pp. 107 ff. Cf. Bhandarkar, Anc. Hist. of India, pp. 64 f.; CHI. i. 311. [↑]

[10] Berichte der Sächs. Gesellsch. d. Wissenschaften, 1885, pp. 439 f. [↑]

[11] Jacobi (Bhavisattakaha, p. 83) believes in Çūdraka as a king, but thinks Kālidāsa older. [↑]

[12] See G. Morgenstierne, Über das Verhältnis zwischen Cārudatta und Mṛcchakaṭikā (1921). [↑]

[13] Jolly (Tagore Law Lectures, 1883, pp. 68 f.) compares the procedure of the Smṛtis. [↑]

[14] KSS. lviii. 2–54. [↑]

[15] Daçakumāracarita, ii. [↑]

[16] xii. 92; xviii. 121. [↑]

[17] Cf. Çlokasaṁgraha, x. 60–163. [↑]

[18] His errors in the field of mythology are appalling, e.g. Kuntī for Sītā, i. 21. [↑]

[19] Stenzler’s ed. pp. 325 ff.; Wilson, i. 177. [↑]

[20] i. 48. [↑]

[21] v. 42. [↑]

[22] i. 13; cf. Cārudatta, i. 5. [↑]

[23] i. 22; cf. Cārudatta i. 11, on which it improves. [↑]

[24] v. 49. [↑]

[25] v. 15. [↑]

[26] v. 16. [↑]

[27] v. 25. [↑]

[28] v. 26. [↑]

[29] v. 32. [↑]

[30] Ryder, The Little Clay Cart, p. xvi. [↑]

[31] Jayadeva, Prasannarāghava, i. 22. [↑]

[32] Mahāvīracarita, i. 4. [↑]

[33] Cf. Pischel, Prākrit-Grammatik, pp. 25 ff. [↑]

[34] JRAS. 1913, p. 882; 1918, p. 513. Cf. Kāvyamīmāṅsā, p. 51. [↑]

[35] Used in verse even, e.g. by the Vidūṣaka. [↑]

[36] — — — —, — — — —. In no other classical drama is it found. [↑]

[37] The apparent occurrence of Māhārāṣṭrī stanzas is in all probability not in accordance with the original text, which knew only the Prākrits given in § 4; see Hillebrandt, GN. 1905, pp. 436 ff. [↑]

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VI

KĀLIDĀSA

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1. The Date of Kālidāsa

It is unfortunate, though as in the case of Shakespeare not surprising, that we know practically nothing of the life and age of Kālidāsa save what we can infer from his works and from the general history of Sanskrit literature. There are indeed stories[1] of his ignorance in youth, until he was given poetic power by the grace of Kālī, whence his strange style of Kālidāsa, slave of Kālī, which is not one prima facie to be expected in the case of a poet who shows throughout his work the finest flower of Brahmanical culture. But these tales are late and worthless, and equally without value is the fiction that he was a contemporary of King Bhoja of Dhārā in the first half of the eleventh century A.D. As little value, however, attaches to a tale which has been deemed of greater value, the alleged death of Kālidāsa in Ceylon when on a visit there by the hand of a courtesan, and the discovery of his murder by his friend Kumāradāsa, identified with the king of that name of the early part of the sixth century A.D. The tradition, as I showed in 1901, is very late, unsupported by the earliest evidence, and totally without value.[2]

The most prevalent tradition makes Kālidāsa a contemporary of Vikramāditya, and treats him as one of the nine jewels of that monarch’s entourage. Doubtless the king meant by the tradition, which is late and of uncertain provenance, is the Vikramāditya whose name is associated with the era of 57 B.C. and who is credited with a victory over the Çakas. Whatever truth there may be in the legend, and in this regard we have nothing but conjecture,[3] there is not the slightest reason to accept so early a date for Kālidāsa, and it has now no serious supporter outside India. But, based on Fergusson’s suggestion[4] that the era of [[144]]57 B.C. was based on a real victory over Hūṇas in A.D. 544, the reckoning being antedated 600 years, Max Müller[5] adopted the view that Kālidāsa flourished about that period, a suggestion which was supported by the fact that Varāhamihira, also a jewel, certainly belongs to that century, and others of the jewels might without great difficulty be assigned to the same period. The theory in so far as it rested on Fergusson’s hypothesis has been definitely demolished by conclusive proof of the existence of the era, as that of the Mālavas, before A.D. 544, but the date has been supported on other grounds. Thus Dr. Hoernle[6] found it most probable that the victor who was meant by Vikramāditya in tradition was the king Yaçodharman, conqueror of the Hūṇas, and the same view was at one time supported by Professor Pathak,[7] who laid stress on the fact that Kālidāsa in his account of the Digvijaya, or tour of conquest of the earth, of the ancient prince Raghu in the Raghuvaṅça[8] refers to the Hūṇas, and apparently locates them in Kashmir, because he mentions the saffron which grows only in Kashmir.

An earlier date, to bring Kālidāsa under the Guptas, has been favoured by other authorities, who have found that the reference to a conquest of the Hūṇas must be held to be allusion to a contemporary event. This date is attained on second thoughts by Professor Pathak,[9] who places the Hūṇas on the Oxus on this view, and holds that Kālidāsa wrote his poem shortly after A.D. 450, the date of the first establishment of their empire in the Oxus valley, but before their first defeat by Skandagupta, which took place before A.D. 455, when they were still in the Oxus valley and were considered the most invincible warriors of the age. On the other hand, Monmohan Chakravarti,[10] who converted Professor Pathak to belief in the contemporaneity of Kālidāsa with the Guptas, places the date at between A.D. 480 and 490, on the theory that the Hūṇas were in Kālidāsa’s time in Kashmir. The whole argument, however, appears fallacious; Raghu is represented as conquering the Persians, and there is no [[145]]contemporary ground for this allegation; manifestly we have no serious historical reminiscences, but, as is natural in a Brahmanical poet, a reference of the type of the epic which knows perfectly well the Hūṇas. The exact identity of the Hūṇas of the epic is immaterial; as the name had penetrated to the western world by the second century A.D. if not earlier, there is no conceivable reason for assuming that it could not have reached India long before the fifth or sixth centuries A.D.[11]

Other evidence is scanty. Mallinātha, as is notorious, finds in verse 14 of the Meghadūta a reference to a poet Nicula, a friend of Kālidāsa, and an enemy Dignāga; the latter would be the famous Buddhist logician, and, assuming that his date is the fifth century A.D., we have an argument for placing Kālidāsa in the fifth or sixth century A.D. But the difficulties of this argument are insurmountable. In the first place, it is extremely difficult to accept the alleged reference to Nicula, who is otherwise a mere name, and to Dignāga; why a Buddhist logician should have attacked a poet does not appear, especially as every other record of the conflict is lost. Nor is the double entendre at all in Kālidāsa’s manner;[12] such efforts are little in harmony with Kālidāsa’s age, while later they are precisely what is admitted, and are naturally seen by the commentators where not really intended. It is significant that the allusion is not noted by Vallabhadeva, and that it first occurs in Dakṣināvarta Nātha (c. A.D. 1200) and Mallinātha (fourteenth century), many centuries after the latest date assignable to Kālidāsa. Even, however, if the reference were real, the date of Dignāga can no longer be placed confidently in the fifth century A.D., or with other authorities in the sixth century. On the contrary, there is a good deal of evidence which suggests that A.D. 400 is as late as he can properly be placed.[13]

As little can any conclusion be derived from the allusion in Vāmana to a son of Candragupta in connexion with Vasubandhu, which has led to varied efforts at identification, based largely on the fifth century as the date of Vasubandhu. But it is far more [[146]]probable that Vasubandhu dates from the early part of the fourth century, and nothing can be derived hence to aid in determining the period of Kālidāsa.[14]

More solid evidence must be sought in the astronomical or astrological data which are found in Kālidāsa. Professor Jacobi has seen in the equalization of the midday with the sixth Kāla in the Vikramorvaçī a proof of Kālidāsa’s having lived in the period immediately subsequent to the introduction from the west of the system of reckoning for ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horās, Kāla being evidently used as Horā. The passage has been interpreted by Huth as referring to a sixteenfold division, and the argument to be derived from it is not established, but Huth, on the other hand, manifestly errs by making Kālidāsa posterior to Āryabhaṭa (A.D. 499) on the score that in the Raghuvaṅça he refers to eclipses as caused by the shadow of the earth, the reference being plainly to the old doctrine of the spots on the moon. It is, however, probable that Kālidāsa in the Vikramorvaçī refers to the figure of the lion in the zodiac, borrowed from the west, and it is certain that he was familiar with the system of judicial astrology, which India owes to the west, for he alludes both in the Raghuvaṅça and the Kumārasambhava to the influence of the planets, and above all uses technical terms like ucca and even jāmitra, borrowed from Greece. A date not probably prior to A.D. 350 is indicated by such passages.[15]

Similar evidence can be derived from Kālidāsa’s Prākrit, which is plainly more advanced than that of Bhāsa, while his Māhārāṣṭrī can be placed with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier Māhārāṣṭrī lyric, which may have flourished in the third and fourth centuries A.D. He is also earlier than the Aihole inscription of A.D. 634, where he is celebrated, than Bāṇa (A.D. 620), and above all than Vatsabhaṭṭi’s Mandasor Praçasti of A.D. 473. It is, therefore, most probable that he flourished under Candragupta II of Ujjayinī, who ruled up to about A.D. 413 with the style of Vikramāditya, which is perhaps alluded to in the [[147]]name Vikramorvaçī, while the Kumārasambhava’s title may well hint a compliment on the birth of young Kumāragupta, his son and successor.[16] The Mālavikāgnimitra with its marked insistence on the horse sacrifice of the drama seems to suggest a period in Kālidāsa’s early activity when the memory of the first horse sacrifice for long performed by an Indian king, that of Samudragupta, was fresh in men’s minds. Moreover the poems of Kālidāsa are essentially those of the Gupta period, when the Brahmanical and Indian tendencies of the dynasty were in full strength and the menace of foreign attack was for the time evanescent.

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2. The Three Dramas of Kālidāsa

The Mālavikāgnimitra[17] is unquestionably the first dramatic work[18] of Kālidāsa; he seeks in the prologue to excuse his presumption of presenting a new play when tried favourites such as Bhāsa, Saumilla, and the Kaviputras exist, and in the Vikramorvaçī also he shows some diffidence, which has disappeared in the Çakuntalā. The great merits of the poet are far less clearly exhibited here than in his other plays, but the identity of authorship is unquestionable, and was long ago proved by Weber against the doubts of Wilson.

The play, performed at a spring festival, probably at Ujjayinī, is a Nāṭaka in five Acts, and depicts a love drama of the type seen already in Bhāsa’s plays on the theme of Udayana. The heroine Mālavikā is a Vidarbha princess, who is destined as the bride of Agnimitra; her brother, Mādhavasena, however, is captured by his cousin Yajñasena; she escapes and seeks Agnimitra, but en route to his capital in Vidiçā her escort is attacked [[148]]by foresters, perhaps by order of the rival Vidarbha prince; she escapes again, however, and reaches Vidiçā, where she finds refuge in the home of the queen Dhāriṇī, who has her trained in the art of dancing. The king happens to see a picture in which she is depicted, and falls in love with her. To arrange an interview is not easy, but Gautama, his Vidūṣaka, provokes a quarrel between two masters of the dance, who have recourse to the king to decide the issue of superiority. He in turn refers the matter to the nun Kauçikī, who is in reality a partisan of Mālavikā, who had been in her charge and that of her brother, who was killed when the escort was dispersed. She bids the masters produce each his best pupil; Gaṇadāsa brings out Mālavikā, whose singing and dancing delight all, while her beauty ravishes the king more than ever. She is victorious. In Act III the scene changes to the park, whither comes Mālavikā at the bidding of Dhāriṇī to make the Açoka blossom, according to the ancient belief, by the touch of her foot. The king hidden with the Vidūṣaka behind a thicket watches her, but so also does Irāvatī, the younger of Agnimitra’s queens, who is suspicious and jealous of any rival in the king’s love. The king overhears Mālavikā’s conversation with her friend, and realizes that his love is shared; he comes forth and embraces her, but Irāvatī springs out of her hiding-place and insults the king. Dhāriṇī has Mālavikā confined to prevent any further development of the intrigue. The Vidūṣaka, however, proves equal to the occasion with the aid of Kauçikī; he declares himself bitten by a snake; the only remedy proves to require the use of a stone in the queen’s ring, which is accorded for that purpose, but employed for the more useful end of securing the release of Mālavikā, and the meeting of the lovers, which Irāvatī, who has excellent grounds for her vigilance, again disturbs. The king’s embarrassment is fortunately mitigated by the necessity of his going to the rescue of the little princess Vasulakṣmī, whom a monkey has frightened. Act V cuts the knot by the advent of two unexpected pieces of news; envoys come bearing the report of victory over the prince of Vidarbha and conveying captives; two young girls introduced before the queen as singers recognize both Kauçikī and their princess Mālavikā among the queen’s attendants, and Kauçikī explains her silence on the [[149]]princess’s identity by obedience to a prophecy. Further, Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra’s father, sends tidings of victory from the north; the son of Dhāriṇī, Vasumitra, has defeated the Yavanas on the bank of the Indus, while guarding the sacrificial horse, which by ancient law is let loose to roam for a year unfettered before a king can perform rightfully the horse sacrifice, which marks him as emperor. Dhāriṇī already owes Mālavikā a guerdon for her service in causing the Açoka plant to blossom; delighted by the news of her son’s success, she gladly gives Agnimitra authority to marry Mālavikā, Irāvatī begs her pardon, and all ends in happiness.

Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra, and Vasumitra are clearly taken from the dynasty of the Çun̄gas, formed by the first through the deposition of the last Maurya in 178 B.C.[19] Contact with Yavanas in his time is recorded and the horse sacrifice is doubtless traditional, but equally it may reflect the sacrifice of Samudragupta, the most striking event of the early Gupta history, since it asserted the imperial sway of the family. The rest of the play is based on the normal model.

The Vikramorvaçī,[20] by many reckoned as the last work[21] in drama of Kālidāsa, seems rather to fall in the interval between the youthful Mālavikāgnimitra and the mature perfection of the Çakuntalā. The theme is that of the love of Purūravas, a king, and Urvaçī, an Apsaras, or heavenly nymph. The prologue, which has been unjustly suspected of being proof of the incompleteness and therefore later date of the drama, is followed by screams of the nymphs from whom Urvaçī on her return from Kailāsa has been torn away by a demon; the king hastens to her aid, recovers her, and restores her first to her friends, and then to the Gandharva king, but not before both have fallen desperately in love. In the entr’acte a servant of the queen extracts cleverly from the Vidūṣaka the secret of the change which has come over the king, his love for Urvaçī. The king himself then appears; in conversation with the Vidūṣaka he [[150]]declares his love, to meet with scant sympathy; Urvaçī and a friend appear in the air, and Urvaçī drops a letter written on birch bark breathing her love; the king reads it and gives it to the Vidūṣaka; Urvaçī’s friend appears, and finally Urvaçī herself, but after a brief exchange of love passages Urvaçī is recalled to play a part in heaven in a drama produced by Bharata. The message, unluckily, falls into the queen’s hands, and she refuses to be appeased by Purūravas’s attempts to soothe her. In the entr’acte before Act II we learn from a conversation between two pupils of Bharata that Urvaçī was so deeply in love that she played badly her part in the piece on Lakṣmī’s wedding; asked whom she loved, she answered Purūravas instead of Puruṣottama, Viṣṇu’s name, and Bharata cursed her; but Indra intervened and gave her leave to dwell on earth with her love until he had seen the face of her child. The Act that follows shows the king, anxious to please the queen, engaged with her in celebrating the festival of the moon’s union with Rohiṇī; Urvaçī and her friend, in disguise and unseen by the king in a fairy mist, watch his courtesy which fills the nymph with anguish, though her friend assures her that it is mere courtesy. To her joy she finds that the queen has decided to be reconciled, and to permit the king the enjoyment of his beloved; pressed to stay with the king, she refuses, and Urvaçī joins Purūravas, her friend leaving her, bidding Purūravas to care for her so that she may not miss her friends in the sky.

The prelude to Act IV tells us of misfortune; the nymphs who mourn by the sea her absence learn that, angry at her husband for some trivial cause, she had entered the grove of Kumāra, forbidden to women, and been turned into a creeper. In distraction[22] the king seeks for her; he deems the cloud a demon which has stolen her away, demands of the peacock, the cuckoo, the flamingo, the bee, the elephant, the boar, the antelope what has become of her; he deems her transformed into the stream, whose waves are the movements of her eyebrows while the rows of birds in its waters are her girdle; he dances, sings, cries, faints in his madness, or deems the echo to be answering [[151]]him, until a voice from heaven tells him of a magic stone, armed with which he grasps a creeper which in his embrace turns into Urvaçī.

From this lyric height the drama declines in Act V. The king and his beloved are back in his capital; the moon festival is being celebrated, but the magic stone is stolen by a vulture, which, however, falls pierced by the arrow of a youthful archer; the arrow bears the inscription, ‘the arrow of Āyus, son of Urvaçī and Purūravas’. The king had known nothing of the child, but, while he is amazed, a woman comes from a hermitage with a gallant boy, who, educated in the duties of his warrior caste, has by his slaying the bird violated the rule of the hermitage and is now returned to his mother. Urvaçī, summoned, admits her parentage, but, while Purūravas is glad, she weeps to think of their severance, now inevitable, since he has seen his son. But, while Purūravas is ready to abandon the realm to the boy and retire to the forest in grief, Nārada comes with a message of good tidings; a battle is raging between the gods and the demons; Purūravas’s arms will be necessary, and in reward he may have Urvaçī’s society for his life.

The play has come down in two recensions, one preserved in Bengālī and Devanāgarī manuscripts and commented on by Ran̄ganātha in A.D. 1656, and the other in South Indian manuscripts, commented on by Kāṭayavema, minister of the Reḍḍi prince, Kumāragiri of Koṇḍavīḍu about A.D. 1400. The most important among many differences is the fact that in Act IV the northern manuscripts give a series of Apabhraṅça verses, with directions as to the mode of singing and accompanying them, which are ignored in the southern manuscripts. The northern text calls the play a Troṭaka, apparently from the dance which accompanied the verses, the southern a Nāṭaka which it in essentials is. The arguments against the authenticity of the verses are partly the silence of the theorists, the fact that the existence in Kālidāsa’s time of Apabhraṅça of the type found is more than dubious,[23] that there is sometimes a degree of discrepancy between the verses and the prose of the drama, and that in the many imitations of the scene (Mālatīmādhava, Act IX, Bālarāmāyaṇa, Act V, Prasannarāghava, Act VI, and Mahānāṭaka, [[152]]Act IV) there are no similar verses. These reasons are on the whole conclusive, and the problematic fact that the Prākrit of the northern recension is better is not of importance.

The Çakuntalā[24] certainly represents the perfection of Kālidāsa’s art, and may justly be assumed to belong to his latest period of work. The prologue with his usual skill leads us up to the picture of the king in swift pursuit of an antelope entering the outskirts of the hermitage; warned of the sacred character of the spot, the king alights from his chariot and decides to pay his respects to the holy man whose hermitage it is; he is absent, but Çakuntalā, his foster-daughter, is there with her friends; pursued by a bee she calls for help; they reply that Duḥṣanta the king should aid as the hermitage is under his protection, and the king gallantly comes forward to help. From the maidens he elicits the tale of Çakuntalā’s birth; she is daughter of Viçvāmitra and Menakā, and is being reared not for the religious life but for marriage to some worthy one. The king loves and the maiden begins to reciprocate his affection, when the news that a wild elephant is menacing the hermitage takes him away. Act II reveals his Vidūṣaka groaning over the toils of the king’s hunting. But the king gives order for the hunt to end, not to please the Vidūṣaka but for Çakuntalā’s sake, and, while he recounts his feelings to his unsympathetic friend, receives with keen satisfaction the request of the young hermits to protect the hermitage against the attacks of demons. The Vidūṣaka he gets rid of by sending him back to the capital to take part in a festival there, assuring him, in order to prevent domestic trouble, that his remarks about Çakuntalā were not serious. In the entr’acte before Act III a young Brahmin praises the deeds of Duḥṣanta, and we learn that Çakuntalā is unwell, and her maidens are troubled regarding her state, as she is the very life breath of Kaṇva. The Act itself depicts Çakuntalā with her maidens; she is deeply in love and writes a letter at their suggestion: the king who has overheard all comes on the scene and a dialogue follows, in which both the king and the maiden express their feelings; the scene is [[153]]ended by the arrival of the nun Gautamī to fetch away her charge. The entr’acte that follows tells us from the conversation of Priyaṁvadā and Anasūyā, Çakuntalā’s dear friends, that the king after his marriage with Çakuntalā has departed and seems to have forgotten her; while Kaṇva is about to return and knows nothing of the affair. A loud cry interrupts them; Çakuntalā in her love-sickness has failed to pay due respect to the harsh ascetic Durvāsas, who has come to visit the hermitage: he curses her, and all the entreaties of her friends succeed in no more than mitigating the harshness of his curse; she will be forgotten by her husband, not indeed for ever, but until she presents to him the ring he gave her in token of their union. The curse is essential; the whole action of the play depends on it. The Act itself tells us that the difficulty regarding Kaṇva has been solved; a voice from the sky has informed him at the moment of his return of the marriage and Çakuntalā’s approaching maternity. He has decided to send her under escort to the king. Then follows a scene of intense pathos; the aged hermit unwillingly parts with his beloved foster-daughter, with words of advice for her future life, and Çakuntalā is desolated to leave him, her friends, and all that she has loved at the hermitage.

Act V shows us the king in his court, overwhelmed with the duties of office, for Kālidāsa takes care to show us Duḥṣanta as the great and good monarch. News is brought that hermits with women desire an interview, while a song is heard in which the queen Haṅsavatī laments the king’s faithlessness to her; the king dispatches the Vidūṣaka to solace her, and receives in state the hermits. They bring him his wife, but, under the malign influence of the curse, he does not recognize her and cannot receive her. The hermits reprove him, and insist on leaving her, refusing her the right to go with them, since her duty is by her husband’s side. The king’s priest is willing to give her the safety of his house till the babe be born, but a figure of light in female shape appears and bears Çakuntalā away, leaving the king still unrecognizing, but filled with wonder. In the entr’acte which follows a vital element is contributed; policemen mishandle a fisherman accused of theft of a royal ring found in a fish which he has caught; it is Duḥṣanta’s ring which Çakuntalā had dropped while bathing. The Act that follows tells us of the [[154]]recognition by the king of the wrong unwittingly done and his grief at the loss of his wife; he seeks to console himself with her portrait, when he is interrupted by a lady of the harem, and then by the minister, who obtains from him the decision of a law case involving the right of succession; the episode reminds the king of his childlessness. From his despair the king is awakened by the screams of the Vidūṣaka who has been roughly handled by Mātali, Indra’s charioteer, as an effective means of bringing the king back to the realization that there are duties superior to private feeling. The gods need his aid for battle. In Act VII Duḥṣanta is revealed victorious, and travelling with Mātali in a divine car high through the air to Hemakūṭa, where dwells in the place of supreme bliss the seer Mārīca and his wife. Here the king sees a gallant boy playfully pulling about a young lion to the terror of two maidens who accompany him in the dress of the hermitage; they ask the king to intervene with the child in the cub’s interest, and the king feels a pang as he thinks of his sonlessness. To his amazement he learns that this is no hermit’s son, but his own; Çakuntalā is revealed to him in the dress of an ascetic, and Mārīca crowns their happiness by making it clear to Çakuntalā that her husband was guiltless of the sorrow inflicted upon her.

A drama so popular has naturally enough failed to come down to us in a single recension.[25] Four are normally distinguished, Bengālī, Devanāgarī, Kāçmīrī, and South Indian, while a fifth may also be traced. There are, however, in reality, two main recensions, the Bengālī, with 221 stanzas, as fixed by the commentators Çan̄kara and Candraçekhara, and the Devanāgarī, with 194 stanzas, of Rāghavabhaṭṭa; the Kāçmīrī, which supplies an entr’acte to Act VII, is in the main an eclectic combination of these two representatives of North Indian texts, and the South Indian is closely akin to the Devanāgarī; Abhirāma and Kāṭayavema among others have commented on it. The evidence of superior merit is conflicting; Pischel[26] laid stress on the more correct Prākrit of the Bengālī and the fact that some readings in [[155]]the Devanāgarī are best explained as glosses on the Bengālī text, while Lévi[27] proved that Harṣa and Rājaçekhara knew the Bengālī recension in some shape. On the other hand, Weber[28] contended for the priority of the Devanāgarī; certainly some readings there are better, and some of the Bengālī stanzas are mere repetitions of others found in both texts. Unless we adopt the not very plausible view of Bollensen that the Devanāgarī version is the acting edition of the play revised for representation, we must hold that neither recension is of conclusive value: the argument from the Prākrit is not conclusive, for it may merely rest on the superior knowledge of the copyists from whom the Bengālī original ultimately issued.[29]

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3. Kālidāsa’s Dramatic Art

The order of plays here adopted is in precise harmony with the development in a harmonious manner of Kālidāsa’s dramatic art. The Mālavikāgnimitra is essentially a work of youthful promise and some achievement;[30] the theme is one less banal probably in Kālidāsa’s time than it became later when every Nāṭikā was based on an analogous plot, and there is some skill in the manner in which the events are interlaced; the Vidūṣaka’s stratagems to secure his master the sight of his beloved are amusing, and, though Agnimitra appears mainly as a love-sick hero, the reports of battles and victories reminds us adequately of his kingly functions and high importance. The most effective characterization, however, is reserved for the two queens, Dhāriṇī and Irāvatī: the grace and dignity, and finally the magnanimity of the former, despite just cause for anger, are set off effectively against the passionate impetuosity of the latter, which leads her to constant eavesdropping, and to an outbreak against the king, forgetful of his rank and rights. The heroine is herself but faintly presented, but her friend Kauçikī, who has been driven by a series of misfortunes to enter the religious life, is a noble [[156]]figure; she comforts and distracts the mind of Dhāriṇī; she is an authority on the dance and on the cure for snake bite, and alone among the women she speaks Sanskrit. The Vidūṣaka is an essential element in the drama, and he plays rather the part of a friend and confidant of the king than his jester; without his skilled aid Agnimitra would have languished in vain for his inamorata. But on the other hand he contributes comparatively little to the comic side of the drama.

In the Vikramorvaçī Kālidāsa shows a marked advance in imagination. We have no precise information of the source he followed; the story is old, it occurs in an obscure form in the Ṛgveda, and is degraded to sacrificial application in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa; it is also found in a number of Purāṇas, and in the Matsya[31] there is a fairly close parallel to Kālidāsa’s version, for the motif of the nymph’s transformation into a creeper, instead of a swan, is already present, Purūravas’s mad search for her is known as well as his rescue of her from a demon. The passionate and undisciplined love of Urvaçī is happily displayed, but it is somewhat too far removed from normal life to charm; her magic power to watch her lover unseen and to overhear his conversation is as unnatural as the singular lack of maternal affection which induces her to abandon forthwith her child rather than lose her husband; her love is selfish; she forgets her duty of respect to the gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is the direct outcome of a fit of insane jealousy. The hero sinks to a diminutive stature beside her, and, effective in the extreme as is his passionate despair in Act IV, his lack of self-restraint and manliness is obvious and distasteful. The minor characters are handled with comparative lack of success; the incident of the boy Āyus is forced, and the ending of the drama ineffective and flat. The Vidūṣaka, however, introduces an element of comedy in the stupidity by which he allows himself to be cheated out of the name of Urvaçī, and the clumsiness which permits the nymph’s letter to fall into the hands of the queen. The latter, Auçīnarī, is a dignified and more attractive figure than the nymph; [[157]]like Agnimitra in his scene with Irāvatī, Purūravas cuts a sorry figure beside her, seeing how just cause she had to be vexed at his lack of faith and candour towards her.

In the Çakuntalā Kālidāsa handles again with far more perfect art many of the incidents found in his earlier drama. He does not hesitate to repeat himself; we have in the first and third Acts the pretty idea of the king in concealment hearing the confidential talk of the heroine and her friends; the same motif is found in Act III of the Mālavikāgnimitra. Like Urvaçī, Çakuntalā, when she leaves the king, makes a pretext—her foot pricked by a thorn and her tunic caught by a branch—to delay her going; in the same way both express their love by letters; the snatching by a bird of the magic stone in the Vikramorvaçī is paralleled by Mātali’s seizure of the Vidūṣaka in Act VI; Āyus has a peacock to play with, as the little Bharata a lion, but in each case the comparison is all to the good of the Çakuntalā. The same maturity is seen in the changes made in the narrative of the Mahābhārata[32] which the poet had before him. The story there is plain and simple; the king arrives at the hermitage; the maiden recounts to him her ancestry without false shame; he proposes marriage; she argues, and, on being satisfied of the legality of a secret union, agrees on the understanding that her son shall be made heir apparent. The king goes away; the child grows up, until at the due season the mother, accompanied by hermits, takes him to court; the hermits leave her, but she is undaunted when the king out of policy refuses to recognize her; she threatens him with death and taunts him with her higher birth; finally, a divine voice bids the king consecrate the child, and he explains that his action was due solely in order to have it made plain that the child was the rightful prince. This simple tale is transformed; the shy heroine would not dream of telling her birth; her maidens even are too modest to do more than hint, and leave the experienced king to guess the rest. Çakuntalā’s dawning love is depicted with perfect skill; her marriage and its sequel alluded to with delicate touches. The king’s absurd conduct is now explained; a curse produces it, and for that curse Çakuntalā was not without responsibility, for she allowed her [[158]]love to make her forgetful of the essential duty of hospitality and reverence to the stranger and saint. Before the king she utters no threat but behaves with perfect dignity, stunned as she is by his repudiation of their love. The king is a worthy hero, whose devotion to his public duties and heroism are insisted on, and who deserves by reason of his unselfishness to be reunited with his wife. His love for his son is charmingly depicted, and, accepting as an Indian must do the validity of the curse,[33] his conduct is irreproachable; it is not that he despises the lovely maiden that he repulses her, but as a pattern of virtue and morality he cannot accept as his wife one of whom he knows nothing. Çakuntalā’s own love for him is purified by her suffering, and, when she is finally united to him, she is no longer a mere loving girl, but one who has suffered tribulation of spirit and gained in depth and beauty of nature.

The other characters are models of skilful presentation. Kālidāsa here shakes himself free from the error of presenting any other woman in competition with Çakuntalā; Duḥṣanta is much married, but though Haṅsavatī deplores his faithlessness he does not meet her, and, when Vasumatī enters in Act VI, the effect is saved by the entry of the minister to ask the king to decide a point of law. The Vidūṣaka, who would have ruined the love idyll, is cleverly dismissed on other business in Act II, while he serves the more useful end of introducing comic relief; Mātali playfully terrifies him to rouse the king from his own sorrows. Kaṇva is a delightful figure, the ascetic, without child, who lavishes on his adopted daughter all the wealth of his deep affection, and who sends her to her husband with words of tender advice; he is brilliantly contrasted with the fierce pride and anger of Durvāsas who curses Çakuntalā for what is no more than a girlish fault, and the solemn majesty of Mārīca, who, though married, has abandoned all earthly thoughts and enjoys the happiness of release, while yet contemplating the affairs of the world and intervening to set them in order with purely disinterested zeal The companions of the heroine are painted with delicate taste; both are devoted body and soul to their mistress, but Anasūyā is serious and sensible; Priyaṁvadā [[159]]talkative and gay. There is a contrast between the two hermits who take Çakuntalā to the court; Çārn̄garava shows the pride and hauteur of his calling, and severely rebukes the king; Çāradvata is calm and restrained and admonishes him in lieu. Equally successful is the delineation of the police officers, whose unjust and overbearing conduct to the fisherman represents the spirit of Indian police from the first appearance in history. The supernatural, which is in excess in the Vikramorvaçī, is reduced to modest dimensions, and intervenes hardly at all in the play, until we come to the last Act, where the theory permits and even demands that the marvellous should be introduced, and the celestial hermitage is a fit place for the reunion of two lovers severed by so hard a fate. The episode of the ring whose loss prevents the immediate recognition of the heroine is effectively conceived and woven into the plot.

Kālidāsa excels in depicting the emotions of love, from the first suggestion in an innocent mind to the perfection of passion; he is hardly less expert in pathos; the fourth Act of the Çakuntalā is a model of tender sorrow, and the loving kindness with which even the trees take farewell of their beloved one contrasts with the immediate harsh reception which awaits her at the royal court. Kālidāsa here, as in the fourth Act of the Vikramorvaçī and in the garden scenes of the Mālavikāgnimitra, displays admirably his love for nature and his power of description of all the stock elements of Indian scenery, the mango, the Bimba fruit, the Açoka, the lotus, and his delicate appreciation of the animal world of India. In the last Act of the Çakuntalā also we have the graceful picture of the appearance of the earth viewed in perspective from the celestial car of Mātali.

The humour of the Vidūṣaka is never coarse; his fondness for food is admitted; cakes and sugar suggest themselves to him when the hero admires the moon or is sick of love; heroics he despises: the king is summarily compared to a thief in his dislike for discovery; if caught, he should imitate the latter who explains that he was learning the art of wall breaking. Or again, he is in his contempt for the ladies of his harem like one sated of sweet dates and desiring the bitter tamarind. Mālavikā is summarily treated; she is like a cuckoo caught by a cat when Dhāriṇī places her in confinement, but he is no more respectful [[160]]of himself, for, seized by Mātali, he treats himself as a mouse in mortal fear of a cat. Best of all is his description in Act II of the miseries brought on him by Duḥṣanta’s hunting; the Brahmins were no admirers of the sport, though they had to acquiesce in it in kings, and the Vidūṣaka’s picture is vivid in the extreme.

The range of Kālidāsa’s technical knowledge is apparent in his skilled use of the dance and song to set off his dramas; the Mālavikāgnimitra contains an interesting exposition by the dancing master of the theory of the art and its importance; not only is Mālavikā a dancer, but Çakuntalā shows her skill in movement in Act I. The songs of the trees and of Haṅsavatī in the same play enable him to add a fresh interest to the drama, and in the Vikramorvaçī spectacular effects seem to have been aimed at, while in the Bengālī recension song is prominently introduced in Act IV of the Vikramorvaçī.

Admirable as is Kālidāsa’s work, it would be unjust to ignore the fact that in his dramas as in his epics he shows no interest in the great problems of life and destiny. The admiration of Goethe and the style of the Shakespeare of India accorded by Sir William Jones,[34] the first to translate the Çakuntalā, are deserved, but must not blind us to the narrow range imposed on Kālidāsa’s interests by his unfeigned devotion to the Brahmanical creed of his time. Assured, as he was, that all was governed by a just fate which man makes for himself by his own deeds, he was incapable of viewing the world as a tragic scene, of feeling any sympathy for the hard lot of the majority of men, or appreciating the reign of injustice in the world. It was impossible for him to go beyond his narrow range; we may be grateful that, confined as he was, he accomplished a work of such enduring merit and universal appeal as Çakuntalā, which even in the ineffective guise of translations has won general recognition as a masterpiece.

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4. The Style

Kālidāsa represents the highest pitch of elegance attained in Sanskrit style of the elevated Kāvya character; he is master of the Vaidarbha style, the essentials of which are the absence of [[161]]compounds or the rare use of them, and harmony of sound as well as clearness, elevation, and force allied to beauty, such as is conveyed to language by the use of figures of speech and thought. He is simple, as are Bhāsa and the author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, but with an elegance and refinement which are not found in these two writers; Açvaghoṣa, we may be sure, influenced his style, but the chief cause of its perfection must have been natural taste and constant reworking of what he had written, a fact which may easily explain the discrepancies between the recensions of his work. But his skill in the Çakuntalā never leads him into the defect of taste which betrayed his successors into exhibiting their skill in the wrong place; skilled as he is in description, and ready as he is to exhibit his power, in the fifth Act he refrains from inserting any of these ornamental stanzas which add nothing to the action, however much honour they may do to the skill of the poet. His language has also the merit of suggestiveness; what Bhavabhūti, the greatest of his successors, expresses at length, he is content to indicate by a touch. He is admirably clear, and the propriety of his style is no less admirable; the language of the policeman and the fisher is as delicately nuanced as that of the domestic priest who argues at once in the best style of the philosophical Sūtras. The Prākrit which he ascribes to the maidens of his play has the supreme merit that it utterly eschews elaborate constructions and long compounds, such as Bhavabhūti places without thought of the utter incongruity in the mouths of simple girls.

The rhetoricians[35] extol the merits of Kālidāsa in metaphor, and they repeatedly cite his skill in the use of figures of speech, sound and thought, which they divide and subdivide in endless variety. He excels in vivid description (svabhāvokti) as when he depicts the flight of the antelope which Duḥṣanta pursues to the hermitage:

grīvābhan̄gābhirāmam muhur anupatati syandane baddhadṛṣṭiḥ

paçcārdhena praviṣṭaḥ çarapatanabhayād bhūyasā pūrvakāyam

darbhair ardhāvalīḍhaiḥ çramavivṛtamukhabhraṅçibhiḥ kīrṇavartmā

paçyodagraplutatvād viyati bahutaraṁ stokam urvyāṁ prayāti.

[[162]]

‘His glance fixed on the chariot, ever and anon he leaps up, gracefully bending his neck; through fear of the arrow’s fall he draws ever his hinder part into the front of his body; he strews his path with the grass, half chewed, which drops from his mouth opened in weariness; so much aloft he bounds that he runs rather in the air than on earth.’ Inferential knowledge is illustrated by a brilliant stanza:[36]

çāntam idam āçramapadaṁ sphurati ca bāhuḥ phalam ihāsya

atha vā bhavitavyānāṁ dvārāṇi bhavanti sarvatra.

‘This is the hermitage where all desires are stilled; yet my arm throbs; how can here be found the fruit of such a presage? Nay, the doors of fate are ever open.’ The rôle of conscience in human action is finely portrayed:[37]

asaṁçayaṁ kṣatraparigrahakṣamā: yad āryam asyām abhilāṣi me manaḥ

satāṁ hi saṁdehapadeṣu vastuṣu: pramāṇam antaḥkaraṇapravṛttayaḥ.

‘Assuredly the maiden is meet for marriage to a warrior, since my noble mind is set upon her; for with the good in matters of doubt the final authority is the dictate of conscience.’ Of the departing Çakuntalā after her rejection the king says:[38]

itaḥ pratyādeçāt svajanam anugantuṁ vyavasitā

muhus tiṣṭhety uccair vadati guruçiṣye gurusame

punar dṛṣṭiṁ bāṣpaprasarakaluṣām arpitavatī

mayi krūre yat tat saviṣam iva çalyaṁ dahati mām.

‘When I rejected her she sought to regain her companions, but the disciple, in his master’s stead, loudly bade her stay; then she turned on cruel me a glance dimmed by her falling tears, and that now burns me like a poisoned arrow.’ At his son’s touch he says:[39]

anena kasyāpi kulān̄kureṇa: spṛṣṭasya gātreṣu sukhaṁ mamaivam

kāṁ nirvṛttiṁ cetasi tasya kuryād: yasyāyam an̄gāt kṛtinaḥ prarūḍhaḥ?

‘When such joy is mine in the touch on my limbs of a scion of some other house, what gladness must not be his, from whose [[163]]loins, happy man, this child is sprung?’ The punishment of the king for his disloyalty is severe:[40]

prajāgarāt khilībhūtas tasyāḥ svapne samāgamaḥ

bāṣpas tu na dadāty enāṁ draṣṭuṁ citragatām api.

‘My sleeplessness forbids the sight of her even in a dream; my tears deny me her pictured form.’ On reunion the picture is very different:[41]

çāpād asi pratihatā smṛtirodharūkṣe: bhartary apetatamasi prabhutā tavaiva

chāyā na mūrchati malopahataprasāde: çuddhe tu darpaṇatale sulabhāvakāçā.

‘Thou wert rejected by thy husband, cruel through the curse that robbed him of memory; now thy dominion is complete over him whose darkness is dispelled; on the tarnished mirror no image forms; let it be cleaned and it easily appears.’

There is pathos in Purūravas’s reproach to Urvaçī:[42]

tvayi nibaddharateḥ priyavādinaḥ: praṇayabhan̄gaparān̄mukhacetasaḥ

kam aparādhalavam mama paçyasi: tyajasi mānini dāsajanaṁ yataḥ?

‘My delight was ever in thee, my words ever of love; what suspicion of fault dost thou see in me that, O angry one, thou dost abandon thy slave?’ The metrical effect is here, as usual, extremely well planned. His vain efforts to attain his beloved are depicted forcibly:[43]

samarthaye yat prathamam priyām prati: kṣaṇena tan me parivartate ‘nyathā

ato vinidre sahasā vilocane: karomi na sparçavibhāvitapriyaḥ.

‘Whatever I deem to be my beloved in a moment assumes another aspect. I will force my eyes to be sleepless, since I have failed to touch her whom I adore.’ There are no limits to the strength of his love:[44]

idaṁ tvayā rathakṣobhād an̄genān̄gaṁ nipīḍitam

ekaṁ kṛti çarīre ’smiñ çeṣam an̄gam bhuvo bharaḥ.

[[164]]

‘In this body no member has value save that which, thanks to the movement of the chariot, she has touched; all else is a mere burden to the earth.’ Hyperbole[45] is permissible:

sāmantamaulimaṇirañjitapādapīṭham: ekātapatram avaner na tathā prabhutvam

asyāḥ sakhe caraṇayor aham adya kāntam: ājñākaratvam adhigamya yathā kṛtārthaḥ.

‘Despite the radiance shed on my footstool by the jewelled diadems of vassal princes, despite the subjection of the whole earth to my sway, not so much joy did I gain from attaining kingship as the satisfaction won from paying homage to the feet of that lady, O my friend.’ The recovery of the nymph from her faint caused by the savage onslaught upon her is described in a happy series of similes:[46]

āvirbhūte çaçini tamasā ricyamāneva rātrir

naiçasyārcir hutabhuja iva cchinnabhūyiṣṭhadhūmā

mohenāntar varatanur iyaṁ lakṣyate mucyamānā

gan̄gā rodhaḥpatanakaluṣā gacchatīva prasādam.

‘As the night, freed from the darkness when the moon has appeared, as the light of a fire in the evening when the smoke has nearly all gone, so appears this lady fair, recovering from her faint, and winning back her calmness, like the Ganges after her stream has been troubled by the falling of her banks.’

The Mālavikāgnimitra, it is true, has far fewer beauties of diction than the other two dramas, but it contains many verses which are unmistakably the work of Kālidāsa, though they present much less than the maturity of his later style. The figure of discrepancy (viṣama) is illustrated by the description of the god of love whose bow, so innocent in seeming, can yet work such ill:[47]

kva rujā hṛdayapramāthinī: kva ca te viçvasanīyam āyudham

mṛdutīkṣṇataraṁ yad ucyate: tad idam manmatha dṛçyate tvayi.

‘How strange the difference between this pain that wrings the heart, and thy bow to all seeming so harmless. That which is [[165]]most sweet and most bitter at once is assuredly found in thee, O God of Love.’ Agnimitra is ready enough with a pun, when Mālavikā, on being bidden to show fearlessly her love towards him, slyly reminds him that she has seen him as terrified as herself of the queen:[48]

dākṣiṇyaṁ nāma bimboṣṭhi baimbikānāṁ kulavratam

tan me dīrghākṣi ye prāṇās te tvadāçānibandhanāḥ.

‘Politeness, O Bimba-lipped one, is the family tradition of the descendants of Bimbaka; nevertheless, what life I have depends entirely on the hope of thy favour.’ The excellent Kauçikī consoles and comforts Dhāriṇī with her approval of her acts:[49]

pratipakṣeṇāpi patiṁ sevante bhartṛvatsalāḥ sādhvyaḥ

anyasaritām api jalaṁ samudragāḥ prāpayanty udadhim.

‘Even to the extent of admitting a rival, noble ladies, who love their spouses, honour their husbands; the great rivers bear to the ocean the waters of many a tributary stream.’ There is an amusing directness and homeliness in the king’s utterance on learning of the true quality of Mālavikā:[50]

preṣyabhāvena nāmeyaṁ devīçabdakṣamā satī

snānīyavastrakriyayā patrorṇaṁ vopayujyate.

‘This lady, fit to bear the title of queen, has been treated as a maid-servant, even as one might use a garment of woven silk for a bathing cloth.’ But Kālidāsa shows himself equal to the expression of more manly sentiments as well; the nun thus tells of her brother’s fall in the effort to save Mālavikā when the foresters attack them:[51]

imām parīpsur durjāte parābhibhavakātarām

bhartṛpriyaḥ priyair bhartur ānṛṇyam asubhir gataḥ.

‘Eager in this misfortune to protect her, terrified by the enemy’s onslaught, he paid with his dear life his debt of affection to the lord whom he loved.’ The king’s reply is manly: bhagavati tanutyajām īdṛçī lokayātrā: na çocyaṁ tatrabhavān saphalīkṛtabhartṛpiṇḍaḥ. ‘O lady, such is the fate of brave men; thou must not mourn for him who showed himself thus worthy of his master’s salt.’ [[166]]

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5. The Language and the Metres

In Kālidāsa we find the normal state of the Prākrits in the later drama, Çaurasenī for the prose speeches, and Māhārāṣṭrī for the verses.[52] The police officers and the fisher in the Çakuntalā use Māgadhī, but the king’s brother-in-law, who is in charge of the police and is a faint echo of the Çakāra, speaks, as we have the drama, neither Çākārī nor Māgadhī nor Dākṣiṇātyā but simply Çaurasenī. By this time, of course, we may assume that Prākrit for the drama had been stereotyped by the authority of Vararuci’s Prākrit grammar, and that it differed considerably from the spoken dialect; there would be clear proof if the Apabhraṅça verses of the Vikramorvaçī could safely be ascribed to Kālidāsa. The Māhārāṣṭrī unquestionably owes its vogue to the outburst of lyric in that dialect, which has left its traces in the anthology of Hāla and later texts, and which about the period of Kālidāsa invaded the epic.[53]

Kālidāsa’s Sanskrit is classical; here and there deviations from the norm are found, but in most instances the expressions are capable of defence on some rule or other, while in others we may remember the fact of the epic tradition which is strong in Bhāsa.

The metres of Kālidāsa show in the Mālavikāgnimitra a restricted variety; the Āryā (35) and the Çloka (17) are the only metres often occurring. In the Vikramorvaçī the Āryā (29) and the Çloka (30) are almost in equal favour, while the Vasantatilaka (12) and the Çārdūlavikrīḍita (11) make a distinct advance in importance. In the Çakuntalā the Āryā (38) and Çloka (36) preserve their relative positions, while the Vasantatilaka (30) and Çārdūlavikrīḍita (22) advance in frequency of use, a striking proof of Kālidāsa’s growing power of using elaborate metrical forms. The Upajāti types increase to 16. The other metres used in the drama are none of frequent occurrence; common to all the dramas are Aparavaktra,[54] Aupacchandasika,[55] and Vaitālīya, Drutavilambita, Puṣpitāgrā, Pṛthvī, Mandākrāntā, Mālinī, Vaṅçasthā, Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Çikhariṇī, and Hariṇī; the Mālavikāgnimitra [[167]]and the Çakuntalā share also Praharṣiṇī, Rucirā,[56] Çālinī, and Sragdharā; the latter adds the Rathoddhatā,[57] the Vikramorvaçī a Mañjubhāṣiṇī.[58] The earliest play has one irregular Prākrit verse, the second two Āryās, and 29 of varied form of the types measured by feet or morae, and the last seven Āryās and two Vaitālīyas. The predominance of the Āryā is interesting, for it is essentially a Prākrit metre, whence it seems to have secured admission into Sanskrit verse.

Not unnaturally, efforts[59] have been made on the score of metre to ascertain the dates of the plays inter se, and in relation to the rest of the acknowledged work of Kālidāsa. The result achieved by Dr. Huth would place the works in the order Raghuvaṅça, Meghadūta, Mālavikāgnimitra, Çakuntalā, Kumārasambhava, and Vikramorvaçī. But the criteria are quite inadequate; the Meghadūta has but one metre, the Mandākrāntā, which occurs so seldom in the other poems and plays that any comparison is impossible,[60] and the points relied upon by Dr. Huth are of minimal importance; they assume such doctrines as that the poem which contains the fewest abnormal caesuras is the more metrically perfect and therefore the later, while the poem which has the largest number of abnormal forms of the Çloka metre is artistically the more perfect and so later. A detailed investigation of the different forms of abnormal caesuras reveals the most perplexing counter-indications of relative date, and the essential impression produced by the investigations is that Kālidāsa was a finished metrist, who did not seriously alter his metrical forms at any period of his career as revealed in his poems, and that there is no possibility of deducing any satisfactory conclusions from metrical evidence. The fact that the evidence would place the mature and meditative Raghuvaṅça,[61] which bears within it unmistakable proofs of the author’s old age, before the Meghadūta and long before the Kumārasambhava, both redolent of love and youth, is sufficient to establish its total untrustworthiness. [[168]]

[1] Hillebrandt, Kālidāsa (1921), pp. 7 ff. [↑]

[2] JRAS. 1901, pp. 578 ff. [↑]

[3] e.g. Konow, SBAW. 1916, pp. 812 ff. [↑]

[4] JRAS. xii. (1880), 268 f. [↑]

[5] India (1883), pp. 281 ff. [↑]

[6] JRAS. 1909, pp. 89 ff. [↑]

[7] JBRAS. xix. 39 ff. [↑]

[8] iv. 68. [↑]

[9] Meghadūta (ed. 2), pp. vii ff. In v. 67 he reads Van̄kṣū = Oxus, for Sindhu; see Haranchandra Chakladar, Vātsyāyana, p. 23. [↑]

[10] JRAS. 1903, pp. 183 f.; 1904, pp. 158 f. [↑]

[11] Huth, Die Zeit des Kâlidâsa, pp. 29 ff. [↑]

[12] Thomas’s suggestion (Hillebrandt, p. 12) of a reference to the Sārasvata school in the same passage only adds to the improbability of the reference. [↑]

[13] Keith, Indian Logic, p. 28. [↑]

[14] Pathak, IA. xl. 170 f.; Hoernle, 264; Haraprasād, JPASB. i. (1905), 253; JBORS. ii. 35 f.; 391 f. [↑]

[15] Jacobi, ZDMG. xxx. 303 ff.; Monatsber. d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W., 1873, pp. 554 ff.; Huth, op. cit., pp. 32 ff., 49 ff. [↑]

[16] Keith, JRAS. 1909, pp. 433 ff.; Bloch, ZDMG. lxii. 671 ff.; Liebich, IF. xxxi. 198 ff.; Konow, ID., pp. 59 f.; Winternitz, GIL. iii. 43 f. [↑]

[17] Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1879; trs. A. Weber, Berlin, 1856; V. Henry, Paris, 1889; C. H. Tawney, London, 1891. The existence of a variant recension is shown by the divergence of a citation from it in comm. on DR. iii. 18 from the manuscript tradition. [↑]

[18] That the Meghadūta is younger is suggested, not proved, by the lesser lyric power shown (Huth, p. 68). The Ṛtusaṁhāra, however, is doubtless earlier; its authenticity is demonstrated by me in JRAS. 1912, pp. 1066 ff.; 1913, pp. 410 ff. The relation of the Kumārasambhava and Raghuvaṅça to the two later dramas is uncertain. [↑]

[19] For the history, see CHI. i. 519 f. [↑]

[20] Ed. F. Bollensen, Leipzig, 1846; S. P. Paṇḍit, Bombay, 1901; M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1898; trs. E. B. Cowell, Hertford, 1851; L. Fritze, Leipzig, 1880; E. Lobedanz, Leipzig, 1861. The Bengālī recension is ed. Pischel, Monatsber. d. kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. W., 1875, pp. 609 ff. [↑]

[21] Cf. Huth, op. cit., pp. 63 ff. [↑]

[22] The prototype here is clearly Rāma’s search for Sītā; Rāmāyaṇa, iii. 60. The Sudhanāvadāna, cited by Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19, 29) draws probably from the same source. [↑]

[23] Jacobi, Bhavisattakaha, p. 58; Bloch, Vararuci und Hemacandra, pp. 15 f. [↑]

[24] Bengālī recension, R. Pischel, Kiel, 1877; M. Williams, Hertford, 1876, and M. R. Kale, Bombay, 1908, represent the Devanāgarī version, and so mainly S. Ray, Calcutta, 1908; C. Cappeller, Leipzig, 1909. There are South Indian edd., Madras, 1857, 1882. See also Burkhard, Die Kaçmîrer Çakuntalā-Handschrift, Vienna, 1884. [↑]

[25] Konow, ID., pp. 67 f.; Hari Chand, Kālidāsa, pp. 243 ff.; B. K. Thakore, The Text of the Śakuntalā (1922); Windisch, Sansk. Phil. pp. 344 f. [↑]

[26] De Kâlidâsae Çâkuntali recensionibus (1870); Die Recensionen der Çakuntalā (1875). [↑]

[27] TI. ii. 37. The erotic passages in Act III in the Bengālī recension must be judged by Indian taste; cf. Thakore, p. 13 for a condemnation. [↑]

[28] IS. xiv. 35 ff., 161 ff. Cf. Bühler, Kashmir Report, pp. lxxxv ff. [↑]

[29] Cf. above, p. 121, n. 1 as to the variation in correctness in different classes of MSS. [↑]

[30] For a warm eulogy, see V. Henry, Les littératures de l’Inde, pp. 305 ff. [↑]

[31] xxiv; Viṣṇu, iv. 6; Bhāgavata, ix. 14; Pischel and Geldner, Ved. Stud. i. 243 ff.; L. v. Schroeder, Mysterium und Mimus, pp. 242 ff. A. Gawroński (Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 19 ff.) suggests a popular legend, comparing the Sudhanāvadāna, No. 30 of the Divyāvadāna. [↑]

[32] i. 74. Winternitz’s denial (GIL., i. 319 f.) of priority is impossible; cf. Gawroński, Les sources de quelques drames indiens, pp. 40, 91. [↑]

[33] The absurd silence as to Mālavikā’s origin in the Mālavikāgnimitra is rendered acceptable by belief in prophecy. [↑]

[34] See S. D. and A. B. Gajendragadkar, Abhijñānaçakuntalā, pp. xxxvi ff.; below, chap. xii. [↑]

[35] See Hari Chand, Kālidāsa et l’art poétique de l’Inde (1917), pp. 68 ff. On his suggestiveness, cf. Ekāvalī, p. 52. [↑]

[36] Çakuntalā, i. 15. [↑]

[37] Ibid., i. 20. [↑]

[38] Ibid., vi. 9. [↑]

[39] Ibid., vii. 19. [↑]

[40] Ibid., vi. 22. [↑]

[41] Ibid., vii. 32. [↑]

[42] Vikramorvaçī, iv. 55. [↑]

[43] Ibid., iv. 68. [↑]

[44] Ibid., iii. 11; for the text see Hari Chand, Kālidāsa, p. 231. [↑]

[45] Vikramorvaçī, iii. 19. [↑]

[46] Ibid., i. 9. The parallelism is, of course, complete in Sanskrit, but inexpressible directly in English. [↑]

[47] Mālavikāgnimitra, iii. 2. [↑]

[48] Ibid., iv. 14. [↑]

[49] Ibid., v. 19. [↑]

[50] Ibid., v. 12. [↑]

[51] Ibid., v. 11. [↑]

[52] Traces of Çaurasenī in verses appear in the Çakuntalā. Cf. Hillebrandt, Mudrārākṣasa, p. iii; GN. 1905, p. 440. [↑]

[53] Cf. Pravarasena’s Setubandha. On Hāla and Kālidāsa, cf. Weber’s ed., p. xxiv. [↑]

[54] ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — | ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — bis. [↑]

[55] 16 + 18 bis: normal type ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — — | ⏑ ⏑ — — ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ — —. [↑]

[56] ⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —. [↑]

[57] — ⏑ — ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — ⏑ —. [↑]

[58] ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ —, ⏑ ⏑ ⏑ — ⏑ — — ⏑ —. [↑]

[59] Huth, op. cit., Table. [↑]

[60] Hillebrandt (Kālidāsa, p. 157) points out the complexity of the position. [↑]

[61] H. A. Shah (Kauṭilya and Kālidāsa (1920), p. 5), argues that Raghuvaṅça, ix. 53, shows a more advanced view of hunting as a useful sport when regulated (Arthaçāstra, p. 329) than the Çakuntalā. But the dramatic propriety of the passage of the Çakuntalā renders the contention uncertain. Whether Kālidāsa knew precisely our Arthaçāstra is also uncertain. [↑]

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VII

CANDRA, HARṢA, AND MAHENDRAVIKRAMAVARMAN

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1. Candra or Candraka

Some mystery exists as to the identity and character of Candra as a dramatist.[1] We have in a Tibetan version a Lokānanda, a Buddhist drama telling of a certain Maṇicūḍa, who handed over his wife and children to a Brahmin as a sign of supreme generosity, which is ascribed to Candragomin, the grammarian, in whose Çiṣyalekhā is found a verse ascribed to Candragopin in the Subhāṣitāvali. If this is the dramatist Candaka or Candraka, who is placed by Kalhaṇa under Tuñjina of Kashmir, and who rivalled the author of the Mahābhārata in a drama, is wholly uncertain. The grammarian must have lived before A.D. 650, as he is cited in the Kāçikā Vṛtti though not by name; a more precise date it is impossible to give, for his reference to a victory of a Jarta over the Hūṇas cannot be made precise until we know what Jāṭ prince is referred to, though Yaçodharman has been suggested. The identification by Lévi of Candra with a person of that name mentioned by I-Tsing as living in his time is seemingly impossible, though I-Tsing ascribes to him the verse found in the Çiṣyalekhā mentioned above; the verse is lacking in the Tibetan version and I-Tsing may have made a slip. His contemporary seems to have been a Candradāsa, and to have dramatized the Viçvantara legend.

To Candaka is ascribed in the Subhāṣitāvali[2] a fine verse of martial tone:

eṣā hi raṇagatasya dṛḍhā pratijñā: drakṣyanti yan na ripavo jaghanaṁ hayānām

yuddheṣu bhāgyacapaleṣu na me pratijñā: daivaṁ yad icchati jayaṁ ca parājayaṁ ca.

[[169]]

‘I go to battle, and I swear that my foes shall never see the backs of my steeds; for the rest, fate directs the destiny of the wavering fight; I promise nothing, but shall take defeat or victory as it pleases destiny.’ A verse of love is:[3]

prasāde vartasva prakaṭaya mudaṁ saṁtyaja ruṣam

priye çuṣyanty an̄gāny amṛtam iva te siñcatu vacaḥ

nidhānaṁ saukhyānāṁ kṣaṇam abhimukhaṁ sthāpaya mukham

na mugdhe pratyetum bhavati gataḥ kālahariṇaḥ.

‘Be gentle; show a little joy; lay aside thy anger; beloved, my limbs are dried up, let thy speech pour ambrosia upon them. Turn to me for a moment thy face, the abode of happiness; foolish one, time is an antelope which, gone, cannot be recalled.’ The other citations we have show skill both in tragic and erotic sentiment.

Candraka was evidently admired by the authorities on poetics; we find in the commentary on the Daçarūpa[4] a verse, elsewhere ascribed to him, cited as an example where diverse sentiments blend but where one, that of coming parting of lovers, is predominant:

ekenākṣṇā paritataruṣā vīkṣate vyomasaṁstham

bhānor bimbaṁ sajalalulitenāpareṇātmakāntam

ahnaç chede dayitavirahāçan̄kinī cakravākī

dvau saṁkīrṇau racayati rasau nartakīva pragalbhā.

‘With one angry eye she gazes on the orb of the sun as it tarries on the horizon; with the other, dimmed by her tears, she looks on her soul’s beloved; thus the mate of the Cakravāka, feeling the approach at nightfall of separation from her dear one, expresses two emotions, even as a clever actress.’

Curiously enough we have no less than four stanzas of benediction ascribed to him, which illustrate a formal feature of the Sanskrit drama, the introduction of each play with one or more stanzas involving divine favour. The verses are interesting, not so much for the intrinsic merits of their poetry, which frankly are not great, but because of the curious manner in which Indian poetry treats its deities; the greatest of gods nevertheless in his sportive moods is yet made the prototype of the human lover:[5] [[170]]

cyutām indor lekhāṁ ratikalahabhagnaṁ ca valayam

çanair ekīkṛtya hasitamukhī çailatanayā

avocad yam paçyety avatu sa çivaḥ sā ca girijā

sa ca krīḍācandro daçanakiraṇapūritatanuḥ.

‘Smiling, the daughter of the mountain wrought into one a digit fallen from the moon and a bracelet broken in a love quarrel, and said to her lord, “Behold my work”. May he, Çiva, protect you, and the lady of the mountain, and that moon of dalliance all covered with bites and rays.’

mātar jīva kim etad añjalipuṭe tātena gopāyyate

vatsa svādu phalam prayacchati na me gatvā gṛhāṇa svayam

mātraivam prahite guhe vighaṭayaty ākṛṣya saṁdhyāñjalim

çambhor bhinnasamādhir uddharabhaso hāsodgāmaḥ pātu vaḥ.

‘O mother.—My life.—What is it that my father guards so carefully in the palm of his hand?—Dear one, it is a sweet fruit.—He will not give me it.—Go thyself and take it.—Thus urged by his mother, Guha seizes the closed hands of his sire as he adores the Twilight and drags them apart; Çiva, angry at the interruption of his devotion, stays his wrath at sight of his son and laughs: may that laughter protect you.’[6]

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2. The Authorship of the Dramas ascribed to Harṣa

Three dramas, as well as some minor poetry, have come down to us under the name of Harṣa, unquestionably the king of Sthāṇvīçvara and Kanyakubja, who reigned from about A.D. 606 to 648,[7] the patron of Bāṇa who celebrates him in the Harṣacarita and of the Chinese pilgrim Hiuan-Tsang who is our most valuable source of information on his reign. That the three plays are by one and the same hand is made certain in part by the common ascription in a verse in the prologue mentioning Harṣa as an accomplished poet, partly by the recurrence of two verses in the Priyadarçikā and the Nāgānanda and of one in the former play and the Ratnāvalī, and above all by the absolute similarity of style and tone in the three works, which renders any effort to [[171]]dissociate them wholly impossible. The question of their actual authorship was raised in antiquity; for, while Mammaṭa in his Kāvyaprakāça[8] merely refers to the gift of gold to Bāṇa—or Dhāvaka in some manuscripts—by Harṣa, the commentators explain this of the Ratnāvalī, which was passed off in Harṣa’s name. This is, however, not in any way borne out by early tradition; I-Tsing[9] clearly refers to the dramatization of the subject of the Nāgānanda by Harṣa and its performance, and in the Kuṭṭanīmata[10] of Dāmodaragupta, who lived under Jayāpīḍa of Kashmir (A.D. 779–813), a performance of the Ratnāvalī, ascribed to a king, is mentioned. The ascription to Bāṇa has nothing even plausible in it, so disparate are the styles of the dramas and the Harṣacarita, and we have the option of believing that Harṣa wrote them himself with such aid as his Paṇḍits might give, or of accepting them as the work of some unknown dramatist, who allowed the king to claim the credit for them.

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3. The Three Dramas

The Ratnāvalī and the Priyadarçikā are closely connected both in subject-matter and form; they are Nāṭikās, each in four Acts; their common hero is Udayana, whom Bhāsa already celebrated, and the common theme one of his numerous amourettes. The Ratnāvalī,[11] in special, has found favour in the text-books of the drama, and has served to illustrate the technical rules.

The ubiquitous Yaugandharāyaṇa, insatiable in seeking his master’s welfare, has planned marriage for him with the daughter of the king of Ceylon, but to attain this end has been difficult; to avoid vexing the queen Vāsavadattā, he has kept her in the dark, and has spread a rumour which he has had conveyed by Bābhravya, the king’s chamberlain, of the death of Vāsavadattā in a fire at Lāvāṇaka. The king of Ceylon then yields the hand of his daughter, and dispatches her in the care of the chamberlain and his minister Vasubhūti to Vatsa, but, wrecked at sea, she is rescued by a merchant of Kauçāmbī, taken there, and handed [[172]]over to Vāsavadattā who, seeing her beauty, decides to keep her from contact with her inconstant spouse. But fate is adverse; at the spring festival which she celebrates with Vatsa, Sāgarikā, as the princess is called from her rescue from the sea, appears in the queen’s train; hastily sent away, she lingers concealed, watches the ceremony of the worship of the god Kāma, thinking Vatsa is the god in bodily presence, but is undeceived by the eulogy of the herald announcing the advent of evening. In Act II Sāgarikā is presented with her friend Susaṁgatā; she has depicted the prince on a canvas, and Susaṁgatā in raillery adds her beside him; she admits her love, but the confidence is broken by the alarm created by the escape of a monkey from the stables. In its mad rush it breaks the cage in Sāgarikā’s keeping, and the parrot escapes. The king and the Vidūṣaka enter the grove where the bird is, hear it repeat the maidens’ talk, and find the picture. The maidens returning for the picture overhear the confidences of the king and the Vidūṣaka, until Susaṁgatā sallies out and brings the lovers face to face. Their meeting is cut short by the advent of the queen, who sees the picture, realizes the position, and departs without manifesting the deep anger which she feels and which the king vainly seeks to assuage. In Act III the Vidūṣaka proves to have devised a scheme to secure a meeting of the lovers; Sāgarikā dressed as the queen and Susaṁgatā as her attendant are to meet Vatsa, but the plot is overheard, and it is Vāsavadattā herself who keeps the rendezvous; she listens to Vatsa’s declarations of love, and then bitterly reproaches him, rejecting his attempts to excuse himself. Sāgarikā, who had come on the scene too late, hears the king’s plight; weary, she ties a noose to her neck, when she is saved by the advent of the Vidūṣaka and the king, who naturally mistakes her for Vāsavadattā whom he fears his cruelty has driven to suicide. He joyously recognizes his error, but the queen, who, ashamed of her anger, has returned to make friends with her husband, finds the lovers united, and in violent anger carries off the maiden and the Vidūṣaka captive. But in Act IV we find the Vidūṣaka released and forgiven, but Sāgarikā in some prison, the king helpless to aid her. Good news, however, arrives; the general Rumaṇvant has won a victory over the Kosalas and slain the king. A magician enters and is allowed to display his art, [[173]]but the spectacle is interrupted by the advent of Vasubhūti and Bābhravya, who also have escaped the shipwreck. They tell their tale of disaster, when another interruption occurs; the harem is on fire; Vāsavadattā, shocked, reveals that Sāgarikā is there; Vatsa rushes to aid her, and emerges with her in chains, for the fire has been no more than a device of the magician. Bābhravya and Vasubhūti recognize in Sāgarikā the princess, and Yaugandharāyaṇa arrives to confess his management of the whole plot and the magician’s device. Vāsavadattā gladly gives the king to Ratnāvalī, since her husband will thus be lord of the earth, and Ratnāvalī is her full cousin.

The Priyadarçikā[12] introduces us in a speech by his chamberlain, Vinayavasu, to the king Dṛḍhavarman, whose daughter is destined for wedlock with Vatsa despite the demand for her hand made by the king of Kalin̄ga, who revenges himself during Vatsa’s imprisonment at the court of Pradyota by attacking and driving away Dṛḍhavarman. The maid is carried away by the chamberlain and is received and sheltered by Vindhyaketu, her father’s ally, but he offends Vatsa, is attacked and killed by his general Vijayasena, who brings back as part of the booty the unlucky Priyadarçikā; the king allots her to the harem as attendant on Vāsavadattā with the name Āraṇyikā (Āraṇyakā). In Act II we find the king, who has fallen in love with the maiden, seeking to distract himself with his Vidūṣaka. Āraṇyikā enters, to pluck lotuses, with her friend; she tells her love, which the king overhears; a bee attacks her when her friend leaves her, and in her confusion she runs into the arms of the king. Vatsa rescues her, but retires when her confidante returns. Act III tells that the aged confidante of the queen, Sāṁkṛtyāyanī, has composed a play on the marriage of Vatsa and Vāsavadattā which the queen is to see performed; the rôle of queen is to be played by Āraṇyikā, and Manoramā is to act the part of king, but she and the Vidūṣaka have arranged to let the king take the part. The performance causes anxiety to the queen, so ardent is the love-making, though Sāṁkṛtyāyanī reminds her it is but play-making; she leaves the hall, and finds the Vidūṣaka asleep; rudely wakened, he lets out the secret and the queen refuses to listen to Vatsa’s lame excuses. Act IV reveals Āraṇyikā in [[174]]prison, the king in despair, and the queen in sorrow, as she has learned from a letter from her mother that Dṛḍhavarman, her aunt’s husband, is in bondage, needing Vatsa’s aid. But Vijayasena brings news of the defeat of the Kalin̄ga king and the re-establishment of Dṛḍhavarman, and the chamberlain of the latter brings his thanks, his one sorrow being his daughter’s loss. Manoramā enters in terror; Āraṇyikā has poisoned herself, Vāsavadattā, filled with remorse, has her fetched, as Vatsa can cure her; the chamberlain recognizes his princess, Vatsa’s magic arts bring her back to consciousness, and Vāsavadattā recognizes in her her cousin, and grants her hand to the king.

The Nāgānanda[13] performed at a festival of Indra, perhaps in the autumn, differs from these dramas in its form, for it is a Nāṭaka in five Acts, and in its inspiration; those are variants by Harṣa on the theme of Vatsa’s loves, this is the dramatization of a Buddhist legend, the self-sacrifice of Jīmūtavāhana, which was told in the Bṛhatkathā, whence it appears in the later versions of that text[14] and in the Vetālapañcaviṅçati.[15] Jīmūtavāhana is a prince of the Vidyādharas, who has induced his father to resign his kingship, and give himself up to a life of calm; he has made the acquaintance of Mitrāvasu, the prince of the Siddhas, who has a sister. She has had a dream in which Gaurī has revealed to her her future husband, and Jīmūtavāhana hidden behind a thicket overhears her confiding this dream to her friend; the Vidūṣaka forces a meeting on the timid lovers, who shyly confess their affection, when an ascetic from the hermitage arrives to take the maiden away. In Act II Malayavatī is love-sick, resting on a stone seat in the garden; a sound makes her move away, when the king enters, equally oppressed, declares his love and paints his fancy. Mitrāvasu comes to offer him his sister’s hand; the king declines it, ignorant of whom he loves; she deems herself disdained and seeks to hang herself, but her friends rescue her and call for aid. Jīmūtavāhana appears, and proves that she is his love by showing the picture. The two exchange vows, and the marriage is concluded. In Act III, after a comic interlude, we find them walking in the park in happiness; Jīmūtavāhana is [[175]]apprised of the seizure of his kingdom, but accepts the news gladly. But the last two Acts change the topic. While strolling with Mitrāvasu one day, Jīmūtavāhana sees a heap of bones and learns that they are the bones of serpents daily offered to the divine bird Garuḍa; he resolves to save the lives of the serpents at the cost of his own, gets rid of Mitrāvasu, and goes to the place of offering. He hears the sobs of the mother of Çan̄khacūḍa, whose son is about to be offered, consoles her by offering himself in ransom, but is refused with admiration for his gallantry. But, when the two have entered the temple to pray before the offering, he gives himself to Garuḍa as substitute and is borne away. The last Act opens with the anxiety of the parents of Jīmūtavāhana, to whom and his wife is borne a jewel fallen from his crown; Çan̄khacūḍa, also, emerged from the temple, finds the sacrifice made and reveals to Garuḍa his crime. It is too late; the hero expires as his parents arrive. Garuḍa is ashamed, and Gaurī appears to cut the knot, revive the prince, and re-establish him in his realm, in order to keep faith with Malayavatī; by a shower of ambrosia the snakes slain by Garuḍa revive, and he promises to forego his cruel revenge.

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4. Harṣa’s Art and Style

Comparison with Kālidāsa is doubtless the cause why Harṣa has tended to receive less praise than is due to his dramas. The originality of his Nāṭikās is not perhaps great, but he has effectively devised the plot in both; the action moves smoothly and in either play there is ingenuity. The scene of the magician’s activity in the Ratnāvalī is depicted with humour and vivacity; the parrot’s escape and its chatter are sketched with piquancy, and the exchange of costumes in the Ratnāvalī is natural and effective. The double comedy in the Priyadarçikā is a happy thought, the intrigue in Act IV is neatly conducted, so as to show us Vāsavadattā in the light of an affectionate niece, and the scene with the bee is attractive. It is true that the plays are full of reminiscences of the Mālavikāgnimitra, such as the escape in the Ratnāvalī of the monkey, and the monkey that there frightens the little princess while Sāṁkṛtyāyanī is Kauçikī revived. But in this artificial comedy elegance is sought, not [[176]]originality,[16] and Harṣa is a clever borrower. The similarity of development of both plays is perhaps more to be condemned; they are too obviously variations of one theme.

The dominant emotion in either is love of the type which appertains to a noble and gay (dhīralalita) hero, who is always courteous, whose loves, that is to say, mean very little to him, and who does not forget to assure the old love of his devotion while playing with the new. This is a different aspect of Vatsa’s character from that displayed by Bhāsa, and admittedly a much inferior one. Vāsavadattā suffers equal deterioration, for she is no longer the wife who sacrifices herself for her husband’s good; she is rather a jealous, though noble and kind-hearted woman, whose love for her husband makes her resent too deeply his inconstancy. The heroines are ingénues with nothing but good looks and willingness to be loved by the king, whom they know, though he does not, to be destined by their fathers as their husband. In neither case is any adequate reason[17] suggested for the failure to declare themselves in their true character, unless we are to assume that they would not, in the absence of sponsors, have been believed. Susaṁgatā, the friend of the heroine in the Ratnāvalī, is a pleasant, merry girl who makes excellent fun of her mistress. The Vidūṣaka[18] in both plays is typical in his greediness, but his figure lacks comic force; he is, however, a pleasant enough character, for his love for his master is genuine; he is prepared to die with him in the Ratnāvalī, though he thinks his action in rushing into the fire quixotic. The magician is an amusing and clever sketch of great pretensions allied to some juggling skill.

The Nāgānanda reveals Harṣa in a new light in the last two Acts. His liking for the marvellous is exhibited indeed in the last Acts of both the Nāṭikās in accord with the theory, but it has a far wider scope in the Nāgānanda, where the supernatural freely appears, and, though the drama be Buddhist in inspiration, Gaurī is introduced to solve the difficulty of restoring [[177]]Jīmūtavāhana. Harṣa here rises to the task of depicting the emotions of self-sacrifice, charity, magnanimity, and resolution in the face of death; Jīmūtavāhana, however bizarre his setting, is one of the ideals of Buddhism, a man seized with the conviction that to sacrifice oneself for others is the highest duty. Çan̄khacūḍa and his mother too appear as noble in character, far superior to the savage Garuḍa. There is, it must be admitted, a decided lack of harmony between the two distinct parts of the drama, but the total effect is far from unsuccessful. Perhaps as a counterpoise to the seriousness of the last part, Harṣa has introduced effective comedy in Act III. The Vidūṣaka, Ātreya, is hideous and stupid; as he lies sleeping, covered by a mantle to protect him from the bees, the Viṭa, Çekharaka, sees him, mistakes him for his inamorata, embraces him and fondles him. Navamālikā enters, and, indignant, the Viṭa makes the Vidūṣaka, though a Brahmin, bow before her and drink alcohol. A little later Navamālikā makes fun of him before the newly married couple by painting his face with Tamūla juice.

Harṣa is fond of descriptions in the approved manner; the evening, midday, the park, the hermitage, the gardens, the fountain, the marriage festival, the hour for the bath, the mountain Malaya, the forest, the palace, are among the ordinary themes beloved in the Kāvya. In imagination and grace he is certainly inferior to Kālidāsa, but he possesses the great merit of simplicity of expression and thought; his Sanskrit is classical, and precise; his use of figures of speech and thought restrained and in good taste. There is fire in his description of a battle:[19]

astravyastaçirastraçastrakaṣaṇaiḥ kṛttottamān̄ge muhur

vyūḍhāsṛksariti svanatpraharaṇair gharmodvamadvahnini

āhūyājimukhe sa Kosalādhipatir bhagne pradhāne bale

ekenaiva Rumaṇvatā çaraçatair mattadvipastho hataḥ.

‘Heads were cleft by the blows of swords on helmets sore smitten; blood flowed in torrents, fire flashed from the ringing strokes; when his main host had been broken, Rumaṇvant challenged in the forefront of the battle the lord of Kosala, who rode on a maddened elephant, and alone slew him with a hundred arrows.’ The matching of the sound to the sense [[178]]is admirable, while a delicate perception is evinced in the line describing the king’s success in soothing the wounded queen:[20]

savyājaiḥ çapathaiḥ priyeṇa vacasā cittānuvṛttyādhikam

vailakṣyeṇa pareṇa padapatanair vākyaiḥ sakhīnāṁ muhuḥ

pratyāsattim upāgatā na hi tathā devī rudatyā yathā

prakṣālyeva tayaiva bāṣpasalilaiḥ kopo ’panītaḥ svayam.

‘It was not so much by my false oaths of devotion, my loving words, my coaxing, my depths of dejection, and falling at her feet, or the advice of her friends, that the queen was appeased as that her anger was wiped away by the cleansing water of her own bitter tears.’ Pretty, if not appropriate, is the king’s address to the fire:[21]

virama virama vahne muñca dhūmānubandham: prakaṭayasi kim uccair arciṣāṁ cakravālam?

virahahutabhujāhaṁ yo na dagdhaḥ priyāyāḥ: pralayadahanabhāsā tasya kiṁ tvaṁ karoṣi?

‘Stay, stay, fire; cease thy constant smoke; why dost thou raise aloft thy circle of flames? What canst thou avail against me, whom the fire of severance from my beloved, fierce as the flame that shall consume the universe, could not consume?’ There is excellent taste and propriety in Vatsa’s address to the dead Kosala king:[22] mṛtyur api te çlāghyo yasya çatravo ’py evaṁ puruṣakāraṁ varṇayanti. ‘Even death for thee is glorious when even thy foes must thus depict thy manly prowess.’ Such a phrase may reveal to us the true Harṣa himself, the winner of many victories, and the hero of one great disaster.

The Nāgānanda strikes varied notes; there is fire and enthusiasm in the assurances which Mitrāvasu gives the prince of the swift overthrow of his enemy, Matan̄ga, at the hands of his faithful Siddhas, will he but give the word:[23]

saṁsarpadbhiḥ samantāt kṛtasakalaviyanmārgayānair vimānaiḥ

kurvāṇāḥ prāvṛṣīva sthagitaravirucaḥ çyāmatāṁ vāsarasya

ete yātāç ca sadyas tava vacanam itaḥ prāpya yuddhāya siddhāḥ

siddhaṁ codvṛttaçatrukṣayabhayavinamadrājakaṁ te svarājyam.

‘With their chariots, meeting together and o’erspreading the whole surface of the sky as they speed along, darkening the day [[179]]as when the sun’s rays are hidden in the rain, my Siddhas await but the bidding to fare forthwith hence to the battle; but say the word and thy haughty foe shall fall, and thy kingdom be restored to thee, while the princes bow before thee in fear of his fate.’

Jīmūtavāhana, however, has other views of his duty:[24]

svaçarīram api parārthe yaḥ khalu dadyām ayācitaḥ kṛpayā

rājyasya kṛte sa katham prāṇivadhakrauryam anumanye?

‘Gladly, unasked, would I give my own life for another in compassion; how then could I consent to the cruel slaughter of men merely to win a realm?’ The saying is essential to the drama, for it leads immediately to the determination of the prince to sacrifice himself for the Nāga.

There is dignity and force in the admonition addressed by the dying hero to the repentant Garuḍa who begs him to command him:[25]

nityam prāṇātipātāt prativirama kuru prākkṛte cānutāpam

yatnāt puṇyapravāhaṁ samupacinu diçan sarvasattveṣv abhītim

magnaṁ yenātra nainaḥ phalati parimitaprāṇihiṅsāttam etad

durgāḍhāpāravārer lavaṇapalam iva kṣiptam antar hradasya.

‘Cease for ever from taking life; repent of thy past misdeeds; eagerly accumulate a store of merit, freeing all creatures from fear of thee, so that, lost in the infinite stream of thy goodness, the sin of slaying creatures, in number limited, may cease to fructify, even as a morsel of salt cast in the unfathomable depths of a great lake.’

Though Buddhist the drama, the benediction is enough to show how effectively the spirit of the Nāṭikā has been introduced into the legend:[26]

dhyānavyājam upetya cintayasi kām unmīlya cakṣuḥ kṣaṇam?

paçyānan̄gaçarāturaṁ janam imaṁ trātāpi no rakṣasi