Indian drama

“ But we must be prepared at the outset to allow for certain peculiarities of the Indian drama which, although by no means rendering the Hindu theatre a monopoly of the sacred caste, prevent it from being a perfect mirror of Indian life. In one respect the Indian theatre differs from that of any other people. Every play is for the greater part written in Sanskrit, although that language, probably never the vernacular of the whole country, ceased to be spoken at an early date ”

“ To the European mind the history of the Indian drama cannot but be a source of abundant interest; for here we have an important branch of literature which has had a full and varied national development, quite independent of Western influence, and which throws much light on Hindu social customs during the five or six centuries preceding the Muhammadan conquest. ”

“ The best productions of the Indian drama are nearly a dozen in number, and date from a period embracing something like four hundred years, from about the beginning of the fifth to the end of the eighth century A.D. These plays are the compositions of the great dramatists Kālidāsa and Bhavabhūti, or have come down under the names of the royal patrons Çūdraka and Çrīharsha, to whom their real authors attributed them. ”

“ While the Indian drama shows some affinities with Greek comedy, it affords more striking points of resemblance to the productions of the Elizabethan playwrights, and in particular of Shakespeare. The aim of the Indian dramatists is not to portray types of character, but individual persons; nor do they observe the rule of unity of time or place. They are given to introducing romantic and fabulous elements; they mix prose with verse; they blend the comic with the serious, and introduce puns and comic distortions of words. ”

“ The characteristic features of the Indian drama which strike the Western student are the entire absence of tragedy, the interchange of lyrical stanzas with prose dialogue, and the use of Sanskrit for some characters and of Prākrit for others. ”

“ The drama doubtless took refuge in those parts of India where Moslem power was slowest to extend, but even there Mahomedan potentates gained authority, and drama can have been seldom worth performing or composing, until the Hindu revival asserted the Indian national spirit, and gave an encouragement to the renewal of an ancient national glory. ”

“ It is, indeed, a mere phrase to call Kālidāsa the Indian Summary.Shakespeare—a title which, moreover, if intended as anything more than a synonym for poetic pre-eminence, might fairly be disputed in favour of Babhavūti; while it would be absolutely misleading to place a dramatic literature, which, like the Indian, is the mere quintessence of the culture of a caste, by the side of one which represents the fullest development of the artistic consciousness of such a people as the Hellenes. The Indian drama cannot be described as national in the broadest and highest sense of the word ”

“ System-mongers, taking the place of dramatic poets, laid down a technique and dogmatical precepts, and "set themselves to classify plays, persons, and passions until they wove a complicated web out of very spider-like materials." Seeking no initiation in the mysteries of this criticism, we shall now turn to the main characteristics already noticed as common to the Indian epics and the Indian drama—the prominence of physical Nature and the disregard of "the unities." ”

“ In general, the Indian drama indicates relations between the sexes subject to peculiar restraints of usage, but freer than those which Mahommedan example seems to have introduced into higher Indian society. The male characters are frequently drawn with skill, and sometimes with genuine force. ”

“ Reader, we are now entering upon a drama that requires an abler pen than mine, which has been used only to record the dry realities of Indian life, stripped of the delicious admixture which is sometimes presented when Cupid and civilization open their way into it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Unlike the Greek dramatic theory, it is an invariable rule of Indian dramaturgy, that every play, however much of the tragic element it may contain, must have a happy ending. The dialogue is invariably carried on in prose, plentifully interspersed with those neatly turned lyrical stanzas in which the Indian poet delights to depict some natural scene, or some temporary physical or mental condition. The most striking feature of the Hindu play, however, is the mixed nature of its language. ”

“ What among us makes for the immensity of emotion, is the great weight of accumulated emotional tradition stored up in literature and art, almost entirely wanting in the camps of the aboriginals. There the two greatest themes of modern drama, love and ambition, [Pg ix] are modified, the one by the more or less communal nature of tribal labor, the other by the plain fact that in the simple, open-air life of the Indian the physical stress of sex is actually much less than in conditions called civilized. ”

“ 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 ”

“ And he proceeds to state that “Babhavūti has given us a drama composed by him, replete with all qualities, to which indeed this sentence is applicable: ‘How little do they know who speak of us with censure! This entertainment is not for them. Possibly some one exists, or will exist, of similar tastes with myself; for time is boundless, and the world is wide!’” This disregard of popularity, springing from a consciousness of lofty aims, accounts for much that is characteristic of the higher class of Indian plays. ”

“ Hence change of scene is usually indicated in the texts; and we find5 the characters making long journeys on the stage, under the eyes of spectators not trained to demand “real” mileage.
With the solemn character of the higher kind of dramatic performances accord the rules and prohibitions defining what may be called the proprieties of the Indian drama. It has been already seen that all plays must have a happy Proprieties. ”

“ The greatest difficulty to be met in the writing of an Indian play is the extensive misinformation about Indians. Any real aboriginal of my acquaintance resembles his prototype in the public mind about as much as he does the high-nosed, wooden sign of a tobacco store, the fact being that, among the fifty-eight linguistic groups of American aboriginals, customs, traits, and beliefs differ as greatly as among Slavs and Sicilians. ”

“ A drama with Indian actors, in Indian costume, upon an Indian stage, is historical, whether it happened two hundred years since in the northeast, or five years since in the northwest corner of our country. ”

“ In thus depicting the higher and better life of the Indian race, their mode of living, dress, pastimes, feats of skill, dances, wooings, wedding feasts, festivities, death scenes and legends, the author has adhered to the original language of the poem as closely as is consistent with a faithful dramatization thereof. ”

“ There was poetry in their faith, in their customs, in their language, at once laconic and picturesque—and even in the names they bestowed on each tribe, each chief and warrior, on mountain and river. One can hardly suppress a feeling of regret that so much of wild romance and valor should have been swept from the face of the earth, unless we call to mind the shadow of the picture—the Indian’s cruelty, perfidiousness and savage lust. ”

“ It is not so musical as rich, and falls on the ear like the deep voice of the cataract, rather than the low murmuring rill. But those who think the Indian has no vein of humor and no love of pleasantry, should listen to him when he is surrounded only by his kindred—those who can appreciate him, and whom he can trust. Solemnity, enthusiasm, and mirthfulness, play alternately upon the features of the assembly, but there is in him so great a regard for decorum, that nothing like levity or untimely restlessness ever disturbs an Indian audience. ”

“ A camp-fire of blazing pine or sage boughs illumines a group of dusky faces intent with expectation, and the old man begins his story, talking and acting; the elders receiving his words with reverence, while the younger persons are played upon by the actor until they shiver with fear or dance with delight. An Indian is a great actor. The conditions of Indian life train them in natural sign language. ”

“ When it was announced that the meat was ready, the butchers threw open an aperture in the wall of the ration-house, and the Indians huddled before it as if they had flung themselves against the house in a mass. I have seen boys do the same thing at the opening of a ticket window for the sale of gallery seats in a theatre. There was no fighting or quarrelling, but every Indian pushed steadily and silently with all his or her might. When one got his share he tore himself away from the crowd as briers are pulled out of hairy cloth. They are a hungry and an economical people. ”

“ When once they have drunk of English literature they see the world from a new stand-point, their intellectual centre of gravity is permanently changed, and they judge every question by reference to their new standard of the duty of independent private judgment. Some English writers have imagined that the European culture which Indians acquire is never more than a veneer, and they have drawn fanciful pictures of the way in which the Indian reverts under the stress of excitement to the ways and feelings of his forefathers. ”

“ Of course the Indian, his life and surroundings, are favorite themes of romance. These have been already wrought into the fancies and charms of poetry. Such uses they will serve more richly in the future. The less we see and know of real Indians, the easier will it be to make and read poems about them. The themes of epics will yet be found in them, and distinctive American literature for time to come will draw inspiration, eloquence, and fascination from the heroes and the fortunes, it may be, of a vanished race, — vanished with the primeval forests and the wild game. ”

“ It has often been a matter of regret to me that I was shut out from the most peculiar field of American fiction by an inability to see any romance, or poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the Indian character, at least till such traits were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place in our literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. ”

“ DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL MANNERS OF THE INDIANS, WHILE ON THEIR WINTERING GROUNDS.
The Indian, who takes his position as an orator, in front of his people, and before a mixed assemblage of white men, is to be regarded, in a measure, as an actor, who has assumed a part to perform. He regards himself as occupying a position in which all eyes are directed upon him, in scrutiny, and he fortifies himself for the occasion, by redoubled efforts in cautiousness and studied stoicism. ”

“ The very delicacy of the sentiment, combined with a certain want of action, renders them incapable of producing a powerful effect on an audience. The best representatives of the romantic drama of India are Çakuntalā and Vikramorvaçī. Dealing with the love adventures of two famous kings of ancient epic legend, they represent scenes far removed from reality, in which heaven and earth are not separated, and men, demigods, nymphs, and saints are intermingled. ”

“ His physical system, in the mean while, deprived as it is of the forest atmosphere, in which it was alone fitted to exist and reach its greatest perfection, suffers even more than his mental one. And his whole man, both mental and physical, begins to degenerate, and soon dwindles into insignificance. Yes, it is only in his native forests that the Indian appears in his wild and peculiar dignity of character. There only can he become a being of romance, and there only a hero. ”

“ Perhaps no other people enjoy good stories better, and are more apt at telling them, than are the Indians. This art, most highly prized in a race without books, serves as a necessary outlet to their imaginations, and wonderfully enlivens their social and family life. The time for telling Indian stories is in the evening—best of all, around a glowing wood fire, on the long nights of winter. Here, every accent, every gesture, has its meaning, no faintest shade of which is lost upon the circle of attentive listeners. ”

“ The absence of dates and facts, to mark the course of his migration, remits us to conjecture, or the scarcely more reliable resource of tradition—the want of history has made him a character of romance. The mere name of Indian gives the impression of a shadowy image, looming, dim but gigantic, through a darkness which nothing else can penetrate. ”