Chapter XXVI: Act IV: , and the remaining portion of that Act gives the conclusion

So far there is obviously force and reason in the analysis, which, if in needless elaboration, recognizes the essential need of a dramatic conflict, of obstacles to be overcome by the hero and heroine in their efforts to secure abiding union. The classification of elements of the plot is perhaps superfluous beside the junctures; its parallelism to the other two divisions is faulty, for it is admitted that the episode is not confined to the development, as it should be, but may extend into the pause and even into the conclusion. [620] The episode again is credited with sub-junctures, to be fewer in number than the junctures, and even the incident is permitted on one view to have incomplete junctures. [621] But far more complex is the insistence on the subdivision of the five junctures into 64 members (12, 13, 12, 13, and 14 respectively). The distribution, however, has no real value, for, though Rudraṭa [622] asserts that the members should only be used in the juncture to which they are assigned, other authorities decline to admit this view, on the score of the usage of the dramatists, which is the supreme norm. Not all of these members need be used; it is a fault in the Veṇīsaṁhāra that the poet drags in the separation of Duryodhana from Bhānumatī in Act II for no better reason than to comply with the rules. [623] When used, they should be essentially subservient to the sentiment which the piece seeks to create; [624] they should either treat the subject chosen, expand the plot, increase interest, produce surprise, represent the parties in action, or conceal what should be concealed; the hero or his rival should appear in them, or at any rate they should flow from the germ and lead up to the dénouement. Some must be included in any drama, since one without any would be like a man without limbs, and, adroitly used, they may give merit to a mediocre subject-matter. But the definitions and the classifications are without substantial interest or value.

A distinction must be made between such things as can properly be shown on the stage, and such as must only be alluded to. [625] What is seen should essentially serve to produce the sentiment aimed at, and it must avoid offending the feelings of the audience. Hence it is improper to portray on the stage such events as a national calamity, the downfall of a king, the siege of a town, a battle, killing, or death, all of them painful. It is equally forbidden to depict a marriage or other [626] religious rite, or such domestic details as eating, sleeping, bathing, or anointing the body, amorous dalliance, scratching with nails or teeth, or such ill-omened things as curses. But these rules are not without exception early or late; if Bhāsa does not hesitate as in the Ūrubhan̄ga to depict death on the stage, Rājaçekhara in his Viddhaçālabhañjikā describes the marriage ceremonial in Act III, and in the following Act shows us the wife of Cārāyaṇa asleep, while the author of the Pārvatīpariṇaya does not hesitate to choose as his theme the nuptials of Çiva and Pārvatī. Nor do dramatists decline to represent death if the dead person is restored to life, as in the Nāgānanda. [627] A long journey, or calling from a distance, [628] is excluded from representation for obvious reasons of practicability.

Such matters as are appropriate for presentation must be presented in Acts, and each Act must contain only such events as can naturally, or by skilful management, be made to occupy the duration of a single day, [629] a requisite which is obeyed by Bhavabhūti in his Mahāvīracarita and by Rājaçekhara in his Bālarāmāyaṇa despite the difficulties presented by the effort thus to condense the epic. But it is essential that the events described shall not be disconnected; they must flow from the same cause, or issue naturally from one another. There should be an effective development of the plot within the Act; at the time when it comes to an end by the departure of the actors—three or four at most, one of whom should be the hero—at the moment when they seemed to have attained their immediate aims, a new motive should come into play, and a fresh impetus be given to the movement of the drama. But it is neither necessary nor usual that Act should follow Act without interval; on the contrary, anything up to a year may intervene between the action of one Act and that of the next; if the events as recorded in history covered more than that time, as in the case of Rāma’s fourteen years of banishment in the forest, the poet must reduce the period to a year or less. To reveal to the audience the events during such intervals the theory permits a choice of five forms of scenes of introduction (arthopakṣepaka), which serve also to narrate things, whose performance on the stage is forbidden by the etiquette of the drama. [630]

Two of these are the Viṣkambha or Viṣkambhaka and the Praveçaka, which are both explanatory scenes, but between which the theory draws fine distinctions. The Viṣkambhaka is performed by not more than two persons, [631] never of chief rank; it serves to explain the past or the future, and it may be used at the beginning of a drama where it is not desired to arouse sentiment at the outset. It is pure (çuddha) if the performers are of middle rank and speak Sanskrit; mixed (saṁkīrṇa) when the characters are of middle and inferior class and use also Prākrit. The Praveçaka cannot be used at the beginning of a drama, and is confined to inferior characters, who use Prākrit. Thus in the Çakuntalā Act III is introduced by a Viṣkambhaka, in which a young disciple of the sage Kaṇva tells us in Sanskrit of the king’s stay at the hermitage, while in Act VI a Praveçaka gives the episode of the fisherman and the police. An abbreviated mode of producing the same result is the Cūlikā, [632] in which a voice from behind the curtain narrates some essential event, as when in Act IV of the Mahāvīracarita we learn thus of the defeat of Paraçurāma by Rāma. In the An̄kamukha, or anticipatory scene, at the close of one Act a character alludes to the subject of the following Act; thus at the end of Act II in the Mahāvīracarita Sumantra announces the arrival of Vasiṣṭha, Viçvāmitra, and Paraçurāma, and these three open Act III. A different view is taken by Viçvanātha, who makes it out to be a part of an Act in which allusion is made to the subject-matter of the following Acts and the whole plot, as is done in the dialogue of Avalokitā and Kāmandakī in