Sanskrit drama

“ So powerful has been the strength of the Sanskrit drama that it is only in the nineteenth century that vernacular drama has exhibited itself in Hindi, and in general it is only very recently that the drama has seemed proper for vernacular expression. But the writing in artificial languages has revenged itself on the writers; their works are reminiscent of modern copies of Greek or Latin verses, which only too painfully reveal through all the artifices suggested by careful study the impossibility of the production of real poetry, not to mention drama, in dead languages. ”

“ The Sanskrit drama of the theorists is, despite its complexity, essentially intended for performance, nor is there the slightest doubt that the early dramatists were anything but composers of plays meant only to be read. They were connoisseurs, we may be certain, in the merits which would accrue to their works from the accessories of the dance, music, song, and the attractions of acting; the Vikramorvaçī must, for instance, have had much of the attraction of an opera, and as a mere literary work loses seriously in attraction. ”

“ 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.2 He justly pays the full penalty for insolence and contempt of Viṣṇu. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ More complex still is the question of the Nāndī or benediction. Most Sanskrit dramas open with a verse or verses of this type, followed by the remark, ‘At the close of the Nāndī the Sūtradhāra enters,’ but in Bhāsa’s dramas, in old manuscripts of the Vikramorvaçī, and now and then in South Indian manuscripts of such plays as the Nāgānanda, the Mudrārākṣasa, and other more modern dramas,129 we find the play begun with these words, and a verse or verses following. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Sanskrit period, embracing in general secular subjects, achieved distinction in many branches of literature, in national as well as court epic, in lyric and especially didactic poetry, in the drama, in fairy tales, fables, and romances. Everywhere we find much true poetry, the beauty of which is, however, marred by obscurity of style and the ever-increasing taint of artificiality. But this period produced few works which, regarded as a whole, are dominated by a sense of harmony and proportion. Such considerations have had little influence on the æsthetic notions of India. ”

“ The voice only is its means of expression; women may not use it, and the men must speak Sanskrit; these actors bear the name Bharata, which is appropriated to this manner. It is adapted to all the sentiments, or, according to the Nāṭyaçāstra, only to those of heroism, wonder, and fury. Its elements are, in true scholastic fashion, likewise reckoned as four; two of them, the propitiation (prarocanā) , and the introduction (āmukha, prastāvanā) , essentially belong to the prologue of the drama, and will be considered in that connexion ”

“ For love of style slowly strangled originality and enterprise in Indian poets, and ultimately proved the death of Sanskrit literature. Now just at this point, where other Hindu writers are weak, Shūdraka stands forth preeminent. Nowhere else in the hundreds of Sanskrit dramas do we find such variety, and such drawing of character, as in The Little Clay Cart; and nowhere else, in the drama at least, is there such humor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the Sanskrit drama deals usually with love, the theory has another division of types of hero based on their attitude to women.47 The courteous (dakṣiṇa) hero is one who can find room in his heart for more loves than one; he seeks another to the deep grief of the old, but he does not cease to feel affection for his earlier love; such are the heroes of the Nāṭikā, or short heroic comedy, like Vatsa. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whatever its date, the Mudrārākṣasa4 is one of the great Sanskrit dramas, although in India itself its merits have long been underrated, because it does not conform to the normal model. It is a drama of political intrigue, centred in the person of Rākṣasa, formerly minister of the Nandas, who is now sworn to revenge their destruction on Cāṇakya, the Brahmin who vowed to ruin them, and who, in pursuance of this end, secured an alliance between Candragupta, their rival, and Parvateça5 and attacked Pāṭaliputra. ”

“ 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 spirit of the lyrical passages is, therefore, probably best reproduced by using blank verse as the familiar metre of our drama. The prose of the dialogue in the plays is often very commonplace, serving only as an introduction to the lofty sentiment of the poetry that follows.
In accordance with their social position, the various characters in a Sanskrit play speak different dialects. Sanskrit is employed only by heroes, kings, Brahmans, and men of high rank; Prākrit by all women and by men of the lower orders. ”

“ The proneness of the Indian mind to reflection not only produced important results in religion, philosophy, and science; it also found a more abundant expression in poetry than the literature of any other nation can boast. Scattered throughout the most various departments of Sanskrit literature are innumerable apophthegms in which wise and noble, striking and original thoughts often appear in a highly finished and poetical garb. These are plentiful in the law-books; in the epic and the drama they are frequently on the lips of heroes, sages, and gods ”

“ A drama like the Sanskrit demanded the full attention of a cultivated audience, and it is assumed or expressly asserted, as in the dramas of Kālidāsa, Harṣa, and Bhavabhūti, that the spectators are critical and experienced. ”

“ The lyric stanzas, at first sight strangely undramatic,4 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 ”

“ The improbability of the theory is emphasised by the still greater affinity of the Indian drama to that of Shakespeare. It is doubtful whether Greek plays were ever actually performed in India; at any rate, no references to such performances have been preserved. The earliest Sanskrit plays extant are, moreover, separated from the Greek period by at least four hundred years. The Indian drama has had a thoroughly national development, and even its origin, though obscure, easily admits of an indigenous explanation. ”

“ How serious a limitation in dramatic outlook is produced by the Brahmanical theory of life, the whole history of the Sanskrit drama shows.5 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 laments of the hero to his confidant, the jester, serve to introduce lyrical stanzas descriptive of the beauties of nature, the wiles and graces of woman, and the tender passion which fills the hero's heart for some fair maiden or celestial nymph. According to the Sanskrit treatises on dramatic art the subject of a nāṭaka is to be taken from some famous legend, and its hero must be high-minded and of noble birth, sprung from a race of gods or kings. [2] The expression of all feelings is allowed, but preponderance is to be given to love and heroism. ”