Chapter XXIII: Act III: The swing scene contains really effective lines of (2)

The Dhūrtanartaka [547] of Sāmarāja Dīkṣita is of the seventeenth century. It deals with one Mureçvara, who, though a Çaiva ascetic, is a devotee of a dancing girl whom he entrusts to his pupils on having to go away. They seek to secure the favours of the damsel and, failing in this, denounce him to the king, but Pāpācāra, Bad Conduct, is merely amused and allows the saint to keep the damsel. Rather earlier is the Kautukaratnākara [548] by the chaplain of Lakṣmaṇa Māṇikyadeva of Bhūluyā, which centres in the carrying off of the queen, though the chief of police sleeps beside her to guard her, and the adventures of the hetaera who is to take her place at the spring festival.

The Bhāṇa, despite its antiquity, attested by the theory, is not represented early in the history of the drama. To Vāmana Bhaṭṭa Bāṇa, about A.D. 1500, we owe the Çṛn̄gārabhūṣaṇa, [549] which is typical of the class. The chief Viṭa, Vilāsaçekhara, comes out to pay a visit to the hetaera Anan̄gamañjarī on the evening of the spring festival. He goes into the street of the hetaerae, and takes part in a series of imaginary conversations, giving the answers himself to his own questions, or pretending to listen to some one out of sight and then repeating the answers. He describes the hetaerae, ram-fights, cock-fights, boxing, a quarrel between two rivals, the different stages of the day, and the pleasures of the festival. Much on the same lines is the Çṛn̄gāratilaka [550] or Ayyābhāṇa of Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita, which was written to rival the Vasantatilaka [551] or Ammābhāṇa of Varadācārya or Ammāl Ācārya, the Vaiṣṇava. The play was written for performance at the festival of the marriage of Mīnākṣī, the deity of Madurā. Bhujan̄gaçekhara, the hero, is vexed at the departure of his beloved Hemān̄gī, but is assured of meeting her again, despite her return to her husband. He makes the usual promenade in the hetaerae’s street, has the usual imaginary conversations and describes the ordinary sights, including snake charmers and magic shows of gods and their mountains and so forth. Finally he succeeds in rejoining Hemān̄gī. We have similar lengthy descriptions in the Çāradātilaka [552] of Çan̄kara, who places the scene in the feigned city of uproar, Kolāhalapura, and whose satire extends to the Jan̄gamas or Çaivas and the Vaiṣṇavas. Nallā Kavi (c. A.D. 1700) is responsible for the Çṛn̄gārasarvasva, [553] which deals with Anan̄gaçekhara, who has to part from his beloved Kanakalatā, but he is helped to meet her by the advent of an elephant which terrifies all the others in the street, but is worshipped by the lover as Gaṇeça and Çiva’s answer to his prayer for help. A slight variant is presented by the Rasasadana [554] by a Yuvarāja from Koṭilin̄ga in Kerala; the hero here is a chief Viṭa who has promised his friend Mandāraka to look after his loved one for him. He goes about with her to a temple, and then to his house; wanders out into the street, talks and describes at large, and finally, after accepting the invitation of a lady from a neighbouring town to pay her a visit, goes back home to find the lovers united again.

The Prahasanas and Bhāṇas are hopelessly coarse from any modern Europe standpoint, but they are certainly often in a sense artistic productions. The writers have not the slightest desire to be simple; in the Prahasana their tendency to run riot is checked, as verse is confined to erotic stanzas and descriptions, and some action exists. In the Bhāṇa, on the other hand, the right to describe is paramount, and the poets give themselves full rein. They exhibit in this comic monologue precisely the same defects as are seen in the contemporary Nāṭaka; all is reduced to a study of stylistic effects, especially as regards sound. They rejoice in exhibiting their large command of the Sanskrit vocabulary, as obtained from the lexica, and the last thing desired is simplicity or perspicuity. Nothing more clearly indicates the close connexion of the two styles than the fact that we find a type of mixed Bhāṇa in the Mukundānanda [555] of Kāçīpati Kavirāja, who is certainly not earlier than the thirteenth century. The adventures recounted by Bhujan̄gaçekhara, the hero, allude also to the sports of Kṛṣṇa and the cowherdesses, a double allusion which explains the difficulty of the style asserted by the author.

7. MINOR DRAMATIC TYPES

The Vyāyoga seems not to have been often written, despite the example of Bhāsa. The Pārthaparākrama [556] of Prahlādanadeva falls in the period between A.D. 1163 and half a century later, for its author was the brother of Dhārāvarṣa, son of Yaçodhavala, and lord of Candrāvatī, whose reign ranks honourably in the records of the Paramāras of Mount Ābu. It was acted on the occasion of the festival of the investment of Acaleçvara, the tutelary deity of Mount Ābu with the sacred thread, and claims to exhibit the sentiment of excitement (dīptarasa). The story, taken from the Virāṭa Parvan of the Mahābhārata, is the well-known one of the recovery by Arjuna of the cows of Virāṭa, raided by the Kauravas, and the defeat of the raiders. It accords, therefore, well with the definition in the text-books, for the struggle which it describes is not caused by a woman, the feminine interest is restricted to the colourless figures of Draupadī and Uttarā, and the hero is neither a divine being nor a king. The poet, whose fame as a warrior and whose princely generosity are extolled by Someçvara, claims for his poetry the merits of smooth composition and clearness, and these may be admitted, though the play does not rise above mediocrity. Technically the play is of some interest, in so far as after the Nāndī the Sthāpaka enters, recites a couple of stanzas, and then an actor comes on the stage who addresses him, but is answered by the Sūtradhāra; apparently the two terms were here synonymous to the author of the play or the later tradition. Moreover the final benediction is allotted, not to Arjuna, the hero of the play, but to Vāsava, who appears at the close of the play in a celestial chariot in company with the Apsarases to bestow applause and blessing. Prahlādana wrote other works, of which some verses are preserved in the anthologies, and must have been a man of considerable ability and merit.

The Kirātārjunīya [557] is a Vyāyoga based on Bhāravi’s epic by Vatsarāja, who calls himself the minister of Paramardideva of Kālañjara, who reigned from A.D. 1163 to 1203. Vatsarāja is interesting as a good specimen of the poet of decadence; we have from him six plays illustrating each a different type of drama. The Karpūracaritra is a Bhāṇa of orthodox type; the gambler Karpūraka describes in monologue his revelry, gambling, and love. The Hāsyacūḍāmaṇi is a farce in one act which has as its hero an Ācārya of the Bhāgavata school, styled Jñānarāçi, who professes the possession of supernatural knowledge, enabling him to trace lost articles and buried treasure, and who carries out his professions by various tricks and fooleries. He has an irresistible pupil, who is sadly lacking in respect for his teacher, and delights in interpreting literally his remarks. The Kirātārjunīya has no special merit, but is technically interesting; after a Nāndī celebrating Çiva’s consort, the Sūtradhāra enters, immediately followed by the Sthāpaka, who insists on his reciting a further Nāndī of the trident of Çiva, on the score that the play is heroic in sentiment and should be appropriately introduced. This play was produced later than the other five, for it came out under Trailokyavarmadeva, successor of Paramardi. The other three plays, an Īhāmṛga, Ḍima, and Samavakāra will be noticed below.

We have also a Vyāyoga by Viçvanātha, the Saugandhikāharaṇa, [558] of about A.D. 1316, which deals with Bhīma’s visit to Kubera’s lake to fetch water-lilies for Draupadī, his struggle first with Hanumant and then with the Yakṣas, and his final victory; the Pāṇḍavas meet at Kubera’s home and Draupadī obtains her desired flowers. Of unknown date is the Dhanaṁjayavijaya [559] of Kāñcana Paṇḍita, son of Nārāyaṇa, which deals with the prowess of Arjuna in the defeat of Duryodhana and the Kauravas when they raid the cattle of Virāṭa, evidently a special favourite of the dramatic authors. The description of the contest in which Arjuna uses magic weapons is given by Indra and a couple of his celestial entourage; the play ends with the giving to Arjuna’s son Uttarā, daughter of the king Virāṭa, in marriage. A manuscript of A.D. 1328 is extant of the Bhīmavikramavyāyoga [560] of Mokṣāditya, while the Nirbhayabhīma [561] of Rāmacandra belongs to the second half of the twelfth century A.D.

Of the type Īhāmṛga we have a specimen by Vatsarāja in the Rukmiṇīharaṇa, which in four Acts deals with the success of Kṛṣṇa in depriving Çiçupāla of Cedi of Rukmiṇī, his promised bride. The play opens with a dialogue between the Sūtradhāra who enters, after a Nāndī in a couple of stanzas has been pronounced, and the Sthāpaka, which tells us that the play was performed at moonrise during the festival of Cakrasvāmin. The action of the play is languid, and the author has had trouble to spread it out over four Acts; the characters are conventional; Rukmiṇī the heroine is a nonentity, and neither Çiçupāla nor Rukmin, the objects of Kṛṣṇa’s enmity, has any distinct characterization. Kṛṣṇa goes into a state of trance on the stage in Act IV to produce the presence of Tārkṣya to enable him to complete his victory. The female character, Subuddhi, uses Sanskrit in lieu of Prākrit.

Other dramas of this type [562] are the late Vīravijaya of Kṛṣṇamiçra, and the Sarvavinodanāṭaka of Kṛṣṇa Avadhūta Ghaṭikāçata Mahākavi.

To Vatsarāja also we owe a specimen of the Ḍima, the Tripuradāha in four Acts, which describes the destruction of the capital of Tripurāsura by Çiva. The idea of writing such a piece was doubtless given by the mention of a work of this name in the Nāṭyaçāstra, and the play is extremely insipid; the numerous figures who crowd the stage are lifeless, and the celestial weapons which overcome the Asuras lack reality; the convenances are duly observed; Kumāra in the full flight of his triumph is stayed by his father’s commands, and Çukra delightedly records this act of courtesy on the part of the god, despite his anger with the Dānavas. The play closes with the homage paid by the gods and the seers alike to Maheça, who is bashful, and the benediction is pronounced by Indra, not by the hero of the drama.

Other Ḍimas are late; thus we have one by the ubiquitous Ghanaçyāma, the Kṛṣṇavijaya of Ven̄kaṭavarada, and the Manmathonmathana [563] of Rāma, a drama of 1820.

Vatsarāja is also responsible for a Samavakāra, the Samudramathana, in three Acts, which again owes its existence doubtless to the naming of a work with a kindred title in the Nāṭyaçāstra as the model of a Samavakāra. Here again we find after a Nāndī of two stanzas the Sūtradhāra and the Sthāpaka engaged in conversation. The former and his eleven brothers seek simultaneously to attain wealth; how is this possible? The Sthāpaka suggests either homage to Paramardi or to the ocean, a statement duly caught up by a voice behind the stage, which asserts that from the ocean comes the fulfilment of wishes, followed by the entry of Padmaka. The play is based on the legend of the churning of the ocean by the gods and demons with its sequel, the winning by Viṣṇu of Lakṣmī and the gaining of other desired objects by the participators in the enterprise. The treatment fails to rise above the commonplace; Lakṣmī appears in Act I with Lajjā and Dhṛti, her companions, in the normal occupation of gazing on a picture of her beloved, who later appears also on the scene. The artificiality of the type is proved by the absence of other dramas of this kind.

The An̄ka, or one-Act play, is represented by very few specimens. The term is often applied to denote a play within a play, in the Bālarāmāyaṇa the name Prekṣaṇaka is applied generally to such plays. The same name is also given to the Unmattarāghava [564] of Bhāskara Kavi, of unknown date, though the Vidyāraṇya mentioned in it may be Sāyaṇa or his contemporary. The play is a stupid imitation of Act IV of the Vikramorvaçī; while Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa pursue the golden gazelle, Sītā, by the curse of Durvāsas, is changed into a gazelle herself; Rāma returns and wanders miserably in search of her, but finally wins her by the help of Agastya.

The term Prekṣaṇaka is also applied to the Kṛṣṇābhyudaya of Lokanātha Bhaṭṭa, written for the raintime procession of the Lord of Hastigiri, Viṣṇu, in Kāñcī. A number of modern plays, which may be styled An̄kas, are also known, while the Çarmiṣṭhāyayāti in the Sāhityadarpaṇa may be identical with the work of that name by Kṛṣṇa Kavi. [565]

Of the types of Uparūpaka, other than the Nāṭikā and Saṭṭaka, there are very few represented, and these only obviously written in accord with the text-book definitions. Thus Rūpa Gosvāmin has left a Bhāṇikā, the Dānakelikaumudī, [566] among his varied efforts to adapt the drama to the tenets of his faith, and the Subhadrāharaṇa [567] of Mādhava, son of the Maṇḍaleçvara Bhaṭṭa and Indumatī, and brother of Harihara, styles itself a Çrīgadita. As it describes itself in terms similar to those used in the Sāhityadarpaṇa, it is quite possibly posterior to that work, and, on the other hand, there exists a manuscript of A.D. 1610. The story of the play is the old legend of the elopement of Kṛṣṇa’s friend Arjuna with Subhadrā, whom he meets by going to her father’s house as a beggar. The presence of a narrative verse has suggested comparison with a shadow-drama, but for this there is inadequate evidence.

8. THE SHADOW PLAY

It is extremely doubtful at what date the shadow-drama appeared in India; the first play which we can be certain was represented in this way is the Dharmābhyudaya [568] of Meghaprabhācārya, which in the stage direction mentions once clearly a puppet (putraka) and calls itself a Chāyānāṭyaprabandha. Unluckily the age of this work does not seem to be ascertainable with any certainty.

It is natural to suggest, as did Pischel, that the Dūtān̄gada of Subhaṭa, which is styled a Chāyānāṭaka, really was a shadow play. On the other hand, Rājendralālamitra [569] suggested that the drama was perhaps simply intended as an entr’acte, and this may be justified on the interpretation of the term of drama in the form of a shadow: i.e. reduced to the minimum for representation in such a form. The play itself unluckily contains nothing to help us to a decision as to its real character. It was represented in A.D. 1243 in honour of the dead king Kumārapāla at the court of Tribhuvanapāla, a Caulukya of Aṇahilapāṭaka, and it has come down to us in various forms. A longer and shorter recension may be distinguished, though not very definitely; in the longer form occur epic verses, and an introduction is prefixed in thirty-nine stanzas, partly placed in the mouths of Rāma and Hanumant, describing the finding of Sītā’s hiding-place. The story is the simple one of An̄gada’s mission as an ambassador to Rāvaṇa to demand back Sītā; Rāvaṇa endeavours to persuade An̄gada that Sītā is in love with him. An̄gada is not deceived, and leaves Rāvaṇa with threats, and we learn shortly afterwards that Rāvaṇa has met his doom. The merits of the work are negligible.

We have no other play of which we can say with even the slightest plausibility that it was a real shadow-drama. There are three works by Vyāsa Çrīrāmadeva from the fifteenth century, his patrons being Kalacuri princes of Raypur. The first, the Subhadrāpariṇayana, produced under Brahmadeva or Haribrahmadeva, deals with the threadworn topic of the winning of Arjuna’s bride; the second, the Rāmābhyudaya appeared under the Mahārāṇa Meru, and deals with the conquest of Lan̄kā, the fire ordeal of Sītā, and the return to Ayodhyā; the third, the Pāṇḍavābhyudaya, written under Raṇamalladeva, describes in two Acts Draupadī’s birth and marriage. But that these were really shadow-dramas is not indicated by anything save the title, for they resemble ordinary dramas in all other respects. The Sāvitrīcarita of Çan̄karalāla, son of Maheçvara, calls itself a Chāyānāṭaka, but the work, written in 1882, is an ordinary drama, and Lüders [570] is doubtless right in recognizing that these are not shadow dramas at all. On the other hand, he adds to the list the Haridūta, which tells the story given in the Dūtavākya of Bhāsa of the mission of Kṛṣṇa to the Pāṇḍavas’ enemies to seek to attain peace. This drama, however, does not describe itself as a Chāyānāṭaka, and the argument is, accordingly, without value. But what is most significant, there is no allusion to this sort of drama in the theory which suggests that its introduction was decidedly late.

9. DRAMAS OF IRREGULAR TYPE

Professor Lüders [571] adds to the almost non-existing list of shadow dramas, the Mahānāṭaka. He does this on the strength of the fact that it is written mainly in verse, with little of prose; that the verse is decidedly at times of the narrative as opposed to the dramatic type; there is no Prākrit; the number of persons appearing is large, and there is no Vidūṣaka, and these characteristics are found in the Dūtān̄gada, which is a Chāyānāṭaka in name. The argument is clearly inadequate in the absence of any real evidence, and the Mahānāṭaka can be explained in other ways.

The history of this play is curious. It is preserved in two recensions, one in nine or ten Acts redacted by Madhusūdana and one in fourteen by Dāmodaramiçra. The stories given by the commentator Mohanadāsa and the Bhojaprabandha, agree in effect that the play was put together by order of Bhoja from fragments found on rocks, which were fished out of the sea; the tradition was that Hanumant himself wrote the work, which, therefore, is called Hanumannāṭaka, but that to please Vālmīki, who recognized that it would eclipse his great epic, the generous ape permitted his rival to cast into the sea the drama which he had inscribed on the rocks. This certainly suggests that some old matter was embodied in the play, and this view has been strengthened by the fact that Ānandavardhana cites three verses out of the play, but without giving any source, as also do Rājaçekhara in the Kāvyamīmāṅsā and Dhanika in his Daçarūpāvaloka, so that the evidence is not of much worth, for the work, as we have it, plagiarizes shamelessly from the dramas of Bhavabhūti, Murāri, and Rājaçekhara, and even from Jayadeva’s Prasannarāghava, unless we are to suppose that in the latter case the borrowing is the other way. The question which is the earlier of the two recensions is unsolved; the one with fewer Acts has 730 as opposed to 581 verses, and of these about 300 are in common. [572]

There is a brief benediction, but no prologue, and narrative follows down to the arrival of Rāma at Mithilā for the winning of Sītā by breaking the bow of Çiva; this part of the action is given in a dialogue between Sītā, Janaka, Rāma, and others. More narrative leads up to a scene with Paraçurāma, then narrative follow to Sītā’s marriage. Act II is undramatic, being a highly flavoured description of Sītā’s love passages with Rāma. Act III again is mainly descriptive, carrying the story down to the departure of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa in chase of Mārīca in deer shape. Act IV carries the story down to Rāma’s return to the deserted hut; in Act V Rāma seeks Sītā and sends Hanumant to Lan̄kā; in the next Act Hanumant consoles Sītā and returns; in Act VII the host of apes crosses the ocean; in Act VIII, which is much more dramatic than usual, we have An̄gada’s mission to Rāvaṇa; and the rest of the Acts drag out the wearisome details of the conflict, often in so imperfect a manner as to be unintelligible without knowledge of the Rāmāyaṇa and the earlier dramas. The two versions generally correspond, but not with any precision in detail.

The exact purpose of such a play is not obvious, but it looks rather like a literary tour de force, possibly in preparation for some form of performance [573] at which the dialogue was plentifully eked out by narrative by the director and the other actors. It is incredible, however, that, as we have it, it can ever have served any practical end, and its chief value, such as it is, is to reflect possibly the form of drama of a period when the drama had not yet completely emerged from the epic condition. We should thus have the old work of the Granthikas reinforced by putting part of the dialogue in the mouths of real actors. But it would be dangerous in so late a production to lay any stress on the possibility of deriving hence evidence for the growth of the early drama. It is, however, legitimate to note that there are similarities between the type and that of the performance of a Tamil version of the Çakuntalā. [574] The curious number of Acts has been suggested as indicating that the original was otherwise divided than a normal drama, but on this it would be dangerous to lay much stress.

The metre of the play exhibits the extraordinary fact of 253 Çārdūlavikrīḍita stanzas to 109 Çloka, 83 Vasantatilaka, 77 Sragdharā, 59 Mālinī, and 55 Indravajrā type. This fact, in the version of Madhusūdana, is sufficient to show how far we are removed from anything primitive.

The type of the Mahānāṭaka may be compared with the Gītagovinda, [575] which, written by Jayadeva under Lakṣmaṇasena in the twelfth century A.D., exhibits songs sung by Kṛṣṇa, Rādhā, and her companion, intermingled with lyric stanzas of the poet, describing their position, or the emotions excited, and addressing prayer to Kṛṣṇa. The work is a poem, and can be enjoyed simply as such, but it is also capable of a quasi-dramatic presentment. It reveals a highly-developed outcome of the simple Yātrās of the Kṛṣṇa religion.

In the Gopālakelicandrikā [576] of Rāmakṛṣṇa of Gujarāt, of unknown date, but certainly later than the Mahānāṭaka and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, we have an irregular drama whose form has excited a large number of conjectures, including the inevitable but absurd solution of a shadow play. The nearest parallel of those suggested in this case and in that of the Mahānāṭaka [577] is the Swāng of North-West India, in that the actors recite the narrative parts as well as take part in the dialogue. There seems no special reason to doubt that the same thing might have taken place in this case, though it is conceivable that it was an imitation of the type of entertainment in which a Brahmin says the spoken parts, while his small pupils go through the action of the drama, possibly a far-off parallel to the Çaubhikas as far as the action is concerned. But it is quite possibly no more than a literary exercise, and the same judgement may apply to the Mahānāṭaka. The fact that both talk as if there were action is no sign of real representation. The modern written drama is full of stage directions, though it may never succeed in obtaining a performance on the stage, and we have not the slightest reason to deny the existence of the literary drama in India. [578] The piece is highly stylized, and could only be understood, if at all, by a cultivated audience.

The connexion of the play with the Hanumannāṭaka is expressly admitted in the prologue; the actress, who enters with the usual inquiry in Prākrit as to the business to be undertaken, is informed by the Sūtradhāra that this is not a case for Prākrit, but for Sanskrit, alone worthy of an audience of Viṣṇu devotees. The actress, not unnaturally, asks how a drama is possible without Prākrit, to be comforted by the parallel of the Hanumannāṭaka. This seems a clear enough indication that the work is a literary exercise rather than a genuine stage play representing a living form of dramatic representation. From an ordinary play it is distinguished by the fact that we have stanzas and prose of merely narrative character, and we learn from one passage that these parts are directed by the Sūcaka to the spectator. The Sūcaka may be equated, on the authority of Hemacandra, with the Sūtradhāra, and if we assume that the play was actually performed, [579] all we need do is to assume that the director thus intervened from time to time to help on the action of the play. We are, in any case, very far from the primitive drama, as the long compounds of the prose show, reminding us of the worst eccentricities of Bhavabhūti.

The work begins with an act of religious devotion, the performance of the ceremony of the waving of a lamp in honour of Kṛṣṇa, who appears in the vesture of a herdsman, and thus receives in person the worship of his votaries. The play is essentially religious and mystic, despite the fact that the sports of Kṛṣṇa and his comrades, and of Rādhā and her friends, are duly introduced. In Act III we have from the mouth of Vṛndā, that is Lakṣmī, a series of verses setting out the mystic doctrine of the identity of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā; Kṛṣṇa is the highest being, descended to earth in the guise of a herdsman, and Rādhā represents his Çakti. In Act IV we have the usual scene of the theft by Kṛṣṇa of the clothes of the maidens when they bathe in the Yamunā, but the restoration is made a test of their faith; Kṛṣṇa demands their devotion as the price of their garments, and asserts that faith in him is superior to the Vedas, to asceticism, and to sacrifice as a means of securing knowledge of him. In the last Act we find the spirits of the night of full moon and of autumn lamenting that the maidens are not dancing the Rāsa with Kṛṣṇa, who appears, and whom they remind of this duty of his. He summons his magic power (yogamāyā) and bids her proceed to the station of the herders to summon the maidens to the dance. Then it is narrated how he himself goes there, and with his flute draws out the maidens to join him, while the gods come in multitudes to pay him honour. Many verses from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa are here borrowed. Finally the god accepts the homage of the maidens and leads them in the dance, as is described again in narrative, until the director breaks off the piece with the assertion that it is impossible to represent adequately the greatness of the god. We can see at once, even if we were not told, that the author was under the influence of Rāmānuja, and the fact that his father bears the name of Devajī [580] suggests a decidedly modern date.

A glimpse into a form of entertainment not represented by any Sanskrit drama so far published is given by the changes made in the fourth Act of the Vikramorvaçī at an unknown date. The Apabhraṅça stanzas introduced into that Act cannot be assigned to the period of Kālidāsa, unless we are to rewrite the history of the language; Apabhraṅça represents not a vernacular but a definitely literary language in which the vocabulary is based on Prākrit, and the inflexions on a vernacular with free use of Prākrit forms as well. Guhasena of Valabhī, of whom we have inscriptions of A.D. 559–69, was celebrated as a composer in Apabhraṅça as well as in Sanskrit and Prākrit, and the new literary form may have arisen in the sixth century A.D. as an effort to produce something nearer the vernacular than Prākrit, but yet literary, much as the modern dialects have evolved literatures largely by reliance on Sanskrit. It can hardly be doubted that the Apabhraṅça stanzas represent the libretto of a pantomime (nṛtya). Such pantomimes are well known as a form of the nautch at Rājput courts; the dancers perform a well-known scene, and sing verses to a musical accompaniment; the chief element, however, is the gestures and postures. In the case of the pantomime based on the Vikramorvaçī, the verses placed in the mouth of the king may have been sung by an actor, while those regarding the forsaken elephant and the Haṅsas may have been sung by singers, male or female, acting under him. There is an introduction in Prākrit for the libretto, which very possibly as inserted in the drama has not come down to us in full, though in any case the libretto in such instances is of only secondary importance and never adequate. It is a plausible suggestion that the introduction of the libretto into the Vikramorvaçī was the outcome of the difficulty felt by the ordinary audience in picking up the sense of the fourth Act of the play, which contains in overwhelming measure Sanskrit stanzas, and, therefore, must have been extremely difficult for the audience to follow. The date of the change is uncertain; on linguistic grounds it has been placed after Hemacandra and before the date of the Prākṛta Pin̄gala. [581]

XII

THE CHARACTERISTICS AND ACHIEVEMENT OF THE SANSKRIT DRAMA

The Sanskrit drama may legitimately be regarded as the highest product of Indian poetry, and as summing up in itself the final conception of literary art achieved by the very self-conscious creators of Indian literature. This art was essentially aristocratic; the drama was never popular in the sense in which the Greek drama possessed that quality. From an early period in Indian history we find the distinction of class reflected in a distinction of language; culture was reserved largely for the two higher castes, the Brahmin and the Kṣatriya or ruling class. It was in this rarified atmosphere that the Sanskrit drama came into being, and it was probably to litterati of high cultivation that its creation from the hints present in religion and in the epic was due. The Brahmin, in fact, much abused as he has been in this as in other matters, was the source of the intellectual distinction of India. As he produced Indian philosophy, so by another effort of his intellect he evolved the subtle and effective form of the drama. Brahmins, it must be remembered, had long been the inheritors of the epic tradition, and this tradition they turned to happy use in the evolution of the drama.

The drama bears, therefore, essential traces of its connexion with the Brahmins. They were idealist in outlook, capable of large generalizations, but regardless of accuracy in detail, and to create a realistic drama was wholly incompatible with their temperament. The accurate delineation of facts or character was to them nothing; they aimed at the creation in the mind of the audience of sentiment, and what was necessary for this end was all that was attempted. All poetry was, in the later analysis, which is implicit in the practice of the earlier poets, essentially a means of suggesting feeling, and this function devolved most of all on the drama. Nothing, therefore, is of value save what tends to this end, and it is the function of the true dramatist to lay aside everything which is irrelevant for this purpose.

It follows from this principle that the plot is a secondary element [582] in the drama in its highest form, the heroic play or Nāṭaka. To complicate it would divert the mind from emotion to intellectual interest, and affect injuriously the production of sentiment. The dramatist, therefore, will normally choose a well-known theme which in itself is apt to place the spectator in the appropriate frame of mind to be affected by the appropriate emotion. It is then his duty by the skill with which he handles his theme to bring out in the fullest degree the sentiment appropriate to the piece. This is in essentials the task set before themselves by the great dramatists; Kālidāsa makes subtle changes in the story of Çakuntalā, not for the sake of improving the plot as such, but because the alterations are necessary to exhibit in perfection the sentiment of love, which must be evoked in the hearts of the audience. The crudities of the epic tale left Çakuntalā a business-like young woman and Duḥṣanta a selfish and calculating lover; both blemishes had to be removed in order that the spectator might realize within himself, in ideal form, the tenderness of a girl’s first affection, and the honourable devotion of the king, clouded only by a curse against which he had no power.

The emotions which thus it was desired to evoke were, however, strictly limited by the Brahminical theory of life. The actions and status of man in any existence depend on no accident; they are essentially the working out of deeds done in a previous birth, and these again are explained by yet earlier actions from time without beginning. Indian drama is thus deprived of a motif which is invaluable to Greek tragedy, and everywhere provides a deep and profound tragic element, the intervention of forces beyond control or calculation in the affairs of man, confronting his mind with obstacles upon which the greatest intellect and the most determined will are shattered. A conception of this kind would deprive the working of the law of the act of all validity, and, however much in popular ideas the inexorable character of the act might be obscured by notions of an age before the evolution of the belief of the inevitable operation of the act, in the deliberate form of expression in drama this principle could not be forgotten. We lose, therefore, the spectacle of the good man striving in vain against an inexorable doom; we lose even the wicked man whose power of intellect and will make us admire him, even though we welcome his defeat. The wicked man who perishes is merely, in the view of the Sanskrit drama, a criminal undergoing punishment, for whose sufferings we should feel no sympathy whatever; such a person is not a suitable hero for any drama, and it is a mere reading of modern sentiment into ancient literature to treat Duryodhana in the Ūrubhan̄ga as the hero of the drama. [583] He justly pays the full penalty for insolence and contempt of Viṣṇu.

It follows, therefore, that the sentiments which are to be evoked by a Sanskrit Nāṭaka are essentially the heroic or the erotic, with that of wonder as a valued subordinate element, appropriate in the dénouement. The wonderful well consorts with the ideal characters of legend, which accepts without incredulity or discomfort the intervention of the divine in human affairs, and therefore follows with ready acceptance the solution of the knot in the Çakuntalā or the Vikramorvaçī. Heroism and love, of course, cannot be evoked without the aid of episodes which menace the hero and heroine with the failure to attain their aims; there must be danger and interference with the course of true love, but the final result must see concord achieved. Hence it is impossible to expect that any drama shall be a true tragedy; in the long run the hero and the heroine must be rewarded by perfect happiness and union. The Nāgānanda of Harṣa illustrates the rule to perfection; the sublimity of self-sacrifice suggests real tragedy, but this would be wholly out of harmony with the spirit of India, and the intervention of Gaurī is invoked to secure that the self-sacrifice is crowned by a complete and immediate reward in this life. The figure of an Antigone might have been paralleled in Indian life; it would not be acceptable to the spirit of Indian drama.

Idealist as it is, the spirit of the drama declines to permit of a division of sentiment; it will not allow the enemy of the hero to rival him in any degree; nothing is more striking than the failure to realize the possibility of a great dramatic creation presented by the character of Rāvaṇa as the rival of Rāma for Sītā’s love. Rāvaṇa varies in the hands of the dramatists, but all tend to reduce him to the status of a boastful and rather stupid villain, who is inferior at every point to his rival. Equally effectively the drama banishes from the possibilities the conception of a struggle of conscience in the mind of the hero or the heroin; [584] if this were represented, it would create a similar struggle in the mind of the audience, and destroy the unity and purity of the sentiment, which it is the part of the drama to generate.

The style similarly is explained and justified by the end of suggesting sentiment. The lyric stanzas, at first sight strangely undramatic, [585] find their full explanation when it is remembered how effective each is in exciting the appropriate emotion in the mind of the audience, which, deeply versed in Sanskrit poetry, is keen to appreciate the effect of each stanza. The simplicity or even negligence of the prose of the drama is thus also explained and excused. It is not necessary to excite sentiment; it serves merely as the mode of communicating facts, and of enabling the audience to follow the action, until an opportunity is afforded to excite feeling by the melody of a verse, all the more effective from its sudden emergence from the flatness of its environment. The same consideration explains the importance of those elements of which we can form so faint an impression, the dance, music, song, and the mimetic art. The elaborate code of gestures laid down in the theory, and unquestionably bulking large in practice, was all intended to produce in cultivated spirits the sentiments appropriate to the play.

The ideal character of the heroic drama extends itself even to the Nāṭikā, where a closer approach to real life might be expected. The dramatists, however, make no attempt at realism; they choose their subjects from the legend, and they cast over the trivial amourettes of their heroes the glamour derived from the assurance that the winning in marriage of a maiden will assure them universal rule. The action of the play is thus not suffered to degenerate into a portrayal of the domestic difficulties of the harem system under polygamic conditions; the dramatists do not seek realism, but are content to reproduce a stereotyped scheme of love, jealousy, parting, and reunion, a sequence well calculated to evoke the sentiment of love in the mind of the audience. Even in the Prakaraṇa, in which realism might be expected, seeing that it condescends to heroes of less than royal or divine status, there is no actual exception: though the author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā has had the power to infuse a semblance of life and actuality into his characters, Bhavabhūti shows us in the Mālatīmādhava nothing but types suggesting the erotic sentiment. Equally ideal is the Vyāyoga with its suggestion of heroism and its deliberate selection of its subject from the epic tradition.

Tragedy proper is denied us by these conditions of Indian thought, and comedy in any of its higher forms is also difficult; it might legitimately be expected to prevail in the Nāṭikā or the Prakaraṇa, but it is unduly subordinated to the erotic sentiment and, though not absent, is comparatively undeveloped. The Prahasana and the Bhāṇa indeed appeal to the comic sentiment, but only in an inferior and degraded form, a fact expressed in the failure of the classical drama to preserve a single specimen of either form of composition.

Limited by the nature of the intellectual movement which produced it, the Sanskrit drama could never achieve the perfection of Greek tragedy or comedy. Kālidāsa, greatest of Indian dramatists, experiences no uneasiness at the structure of life or the working of the world. He accepts without question or discontent the fabric of Indian society. When Goethe writes of him:

Willst du die Blüthe des frühen, die Früchte des späteren Jahres,
Willst du, was reizt und entzückt, willst du, was sättigt und nährt,
Willst du den Himmel, die Erde, mit einem Namen begreifen,
Nenn’ ich Çakuntalā dich, und so ist alles gesagt,

the praise is doubtless just in a measure, but it may easily be pressed further than is justifiable. For the deeper questions of human life Kālidāsa has no message for us; they raised, so far as we can see, no question in his own mind; the whole Brahmanical system, as restored to glory under the Guptas, seems to have satisfied him, and to have left him at peace with the universe. Fascinating and exquisite as is the Çakuntalā, it moves in a narrow world, removed far from the cruelty of real life, and it neither seeks to answer, nor does it solve, the riddles of life. Bhavabhūti, it is true, shows some sense of the complexity and difficulty of existence, of the conflict between one duty and another, and the sorrow thus resulting, but with him also there prevailed the rule that all must end in harmony. Sītā, who in the older story is actually finally taken away from the husband who allowed himself to treat her as if her purity were sullied by her captivity in Rāvaṇa’s hands, is restored to Rāma by divine favour, an ending infinitely less dramatic than final severance after vindication. How serious a limitation in dramatic outlook is produced by the Brahmanical theory of life, the whole history of the Sanskrit drama shows. [586] Moreover, acceptance of the Brahmanic tradition permits the production of such a play as the Caṇḍakauçika, where reason and humanity are revolted beyond measure by the insane vengeance taken by the sage Viçvāmitra on the unfortunate king for an act of charity.

The drama suffered also from its close dependence on the epic, and the failure of the poets to recognize that the epic subjects were often as a whole undramatic. Hence frequently, as in the vast majority of the Rāma dramas and those based on the Mahābhārata, we have nothing but the recasting of the epic narrative into a semi-dramatic form, without real dramatic structure. There was nothing in the theory to hint at the error of such a course; on the contrary, to the poets the subject was one admirably suitable, since in itself it suggested the appropriate sentiments, and therefore left them merely the duty of heightening the effects. This led on the high road to the outward signs of the degradation of the drama, the abandoning of any interest in anything save the production of lyric or narrative stanzas of perfection of form, judged in accordance with a taste which progressively declined into a rejection of simplicity and the search for what was recondite. To the later poets the drama is an exercise in style, and that, as contrasted with the highest products of Indian literature, a fantastic and degraded one.

To the Brahmin ideal individuality has no appeal; the law of life has no room for deviation from type; the caste system is rigid, and for each rank in life there is a definite round of duties, whence departure is undesirable and dangerous. The drama likewise has no desire for individual figures, but only for typical characters. The defect from the Aristotelian as from the modern point of view of the Rāma dramas is simply that Rāma is conceived as an ideal, a man without faults, and therefore for us lacking in the essential traits of humanity. Similarly, in the style of the drama we are denied any differentiation of individuals as contrasted with classes. The divergence in the use of Sanskrit or Prākrit, and in the different kinds of Prākrit, marks the essential distinction of men and women, and of those of high and those of humble rank, but beyond this characterization does not go. We are treated to an artificial court speech, which assorts with stereotyped emotions, refined, elegant, sentimental, rich in the compliments of court gallantly, often pathetic, marked with a distinct strain of philosophical commonplace, and fond of suggested meanings and double entendres, hinting at the events yet to come. But the dramatists made no serious attempt to create individual characters, and to assign to them a speech of their own; they vary greatly in merit as regards characterization, but even the best dramas paint types, not individuals.

Indifference to individuality necessarily meant indifference to action, and therefore to plot, and this lies at the basis of the steady progress by which the dialogue was neglected in favour of the stanzas. The latter express the general; they draw highly condensed, but also often extremely poetical, pictures of the beauty of nature in one of its many aspects, or of the charms of the beloved; or they enunciate the Brahmanical solutions of the problems of life and conduct. In them the individual has no place; the beloved may be described, but she is merely typical. These stanzas appealed to the audience; we have no echo in India of the criticisms which were levelled in Greece against Euripides, for the introduction of sentiments unfitted to his characters and the scenes involved, and we have no hint that Indian theory ever recognized that the drama by the tenth century A.D. was in a state of decadence.

The peculiar and limited view of the drama was intimately connected with its Brahmanical character. The drama of Greece was popular; it appealed to all free Athenian citizens, [587] an infinitely wider class than that for which the dramas of India in Sanskrit and Prākrit were composed, and it was written in a language easily comprehended by all those who viewed the spectacle. From the period of the earliest dramas known to us the full comprehension of the words can have been confined to a limited section of the audience, which, however, had sufficient pleasure in the spectacle, in the song, the pantomimic dances, and the music, and sufficient general comprehension of the drama to follow it adequately enough. Such an audience, however, acted as a stimulus to refinement and elaboration; the dramatist could neglect the prime necessity of being understood which weighed on the Greek dramatist, and indulge in the production of something recondite, calculated to manifest his skill in metrical form and management of words. The fact that Sanskrit was not a normal living language presented him with the temptation, to which none of the later dramatists rises superior, of the free use of the vast store of alleged synonyms presented by the lexica, [588] freed from any inconvenient necessity, such as exists in every living language, of using words only in that precise nuance which every synonym possesses in a living dialect.

The same tendency to artificiality was undoubtedly stimulated by the fact that plays for their reputation must have depended largely on being read, not witnessed, however important it may have been for the poet to secure the honour of public performance. The popularity and number of the Kāvyas which have come down to us attests the existence of an effective public which, if it did not read the works, at least enjoyed having them read aloud, and the dramatist was thus encouraged, while adhering to the dramatic form, to vie in this genre of literature with the effects produced in the Kāvya. The Kāvya, however, was undergoing throughout its history a tendency to seek mere stylistic effects, and this influence must largely have contributed to the elaboration of style of the drama. It is significant that the Kāvyas and dramas of Kālidāsa show a relative simplicity which contrasts effectively with the complexities of Bhavabhūti in drama, and Bhāravi and Māgha in the Kāvya.

To understand the Indian drama we have aid from a work of curious character and importance, the Kāmaçāstra or Kāmasūtra of Vātsyāyana, [589] which was doubtless familiar to the dramatists from Kālidāsa onwards. The world which produced the classical drama was one in which the pessimism of Buddhism, with its condemnation of the value of pleasure, had given way to the worship of the great sectarian divinities Çiva and Viṣṇu, in whose service the enjoyment of pleasure was legitimate and proper. The Buddhists themselves admittedly felt the force of the demand for a life of ease; we have preserved verses satirizing their love of women, wine, soft living, and luxury, and there is abundant evidence of the decline of austerity in the order. The eclecticism of Harṣa is sufficiently significant; the policy which at the great festival at Prayāga reported by Hiuan-Tsang resulted in the dedication of a statue to the Buddha on the first day, to the sun, the favourite deity of his father, on the second, and to Çiva on the third, excludes any possibility of belief in the depth of Harṣa’s Buddhist beliefs. If there were any doubt as to the strange transformation of feeling among Buddhists, it would be removed by the benediction which opens the Nāgānanda, where the Buddha is invoked as rallied on his hardheartedness by the ladies of Māra’s train. The process of accommodation had evidently gone very far. The philosophy of the age shows equally the lack of serious interest in the old tenets of Buddhism; we have the great development of logical studies in lieu of insistence on the truths of misery and the path to its removal, while the chef-d’œuvre of the period outside Buddhist circles is the complicated and fantastic system of the Sāṁkhya philosophy, which adequately reflects the artistic spirit of the time in its comparison of nature with a dancer who makes her début, and gracefully retires from the stage when she has satisfied her audience. The spirit of Açoka has entirely disappeared from the royal families of India, and the courts demanded amusement with refinement, just as they sought for elegance in art. The interests of this world are centred in the pleasures of life, the festivals which amused the court and the people by the pomp of their celebration from time to time, and in the intervals the amusements of the palace and the harem, sports in the water, the game of the swing, the plucking of flowers, song, dance, pantomime, and such other diversions as were necessary to while away the endless leisure of princes, who left the business of their realms to ministers and soldiers, while they spared themselves any fatigue more serious than that of love encounters. The manners of their princes were aped by their rich subjects, and there was no dearth of courtiers and parasites to aid them in their diversions. The man about town (nāgaraka) as sketched by the Kāmasūtra [590] is rich and cultivated; devoted to the niceties of attire and personal adornment, perfumed, pomaded, and garlanded; he is a musician, and a lover of books; cage-birds afford him pleasure of the eyes, and diversion in teaching them speech; a lovely garden with an arbour presents facilities for amusement and repose. In the daytime the care of the toilet, cock fights, ram fights, excursions in the neighbouring country, fill his time; while at night, after a concert or ballet, there are the joys of love, in which the Kāmasūtra gives him more elaborate instruction than the Ars Amoris ever contemplated. The luxury of polygamy did not suffice such a man; he is allowed to enjoy the society of courtesans, and in them, as in Athens, he finds the intellectual interests which are denied to his legitimate wives. With them and the more refined and cultured of the band of hangers-on, high and low, with whom he is surrounded, he can indulge in the pleasures of the discussion of literature, and appreciate the fine efforts of the poets and dramatists. From such a nature, of course, anything heroic cannot be expected, and the poets recognize this state of affairs; but it demands refinement, beauty, luxury, and the demand is fully met. Love is naturally a capital theme, but the dramatists suffer from one grave difficulty from the condition of the society which they depict. The ideal of a romantic love between two persons free and independent, masters of their own destinies, is in great measure denied to them, and they are reduced to the banality of the intrigue between the king and the damsel who is destined to be his wife, but who by some accident has been introduced into his harem in a humble position.