CHAPTER IV.
WORLD-LITERATURE IN INDIA AND CHINA.
§ 76. If Israel and Hellas have respectively offered us examples of world-literature in which the social and individual spirits predominate, the characteristics of Indian literature may be found in its apparently peaceful union of these conflicting spirits, accompanied by a sentiment of the beautiful in nature equally removed from the humanising nature-poetry of the Greek and the monotheistic feelings of the Hebrew, who heard the voice of Yâhveh in the thunder, and saw his arrows in the lightning shot forth on the wings of the wind. But in its earliest beginnings Indian literature contained little indication of the widely philosophic course it was to pursue, or the union of the individual and social spirits it was to attain.
Taking a bird's-eye view of Indian development—for it is a mere error of ignorance to suppose that the East in general, and India in particular, have always been the home of social stagnation—we may divide it into certain periods derived either from social or linguistic facts. In the earliest, or Vedic,[1] age (so called from the collection of hymns believed to represent it) we find the Indian Aryans making their settlements in the Panjab. The earliest memorial of these settlements, the Rig-Veda, is a hymnal of unknown age, though from astronomical dates it has been inferred with some probability by European scholars that about 1400 B.C. its composition was still going on. Containing 1017 short hymns, consisting in all of 10,580 verses, the Rig-Veda displays a picture of social life in many respects different from any we might imagine from later Indian literature. Among the Aryans, now on the banks of the Indus, the agricultural village community has not yet completely. supplanted the "cattle-pens" of an older pastoral life; and, as in Homeric, early Hebrew, and early Arab times, the chief symbol of wealth is cattle. Divided into various tribes, sometimes at war with themselves, these conquering Aryans occasionally unite against the "black-skinned" aborigines whom they call Dasyus, or "enemies," and Dásas, or "slaves." But though they pride themselves on their fair complexion, and though the Sanskrit word for "colour" (varna) is destined to mark this old difference between the fair-skinned Aryan and his dusky foes by becoming a synonym for "race" or "caste," the system of caste in its later sense is still unknown. "Each father of the family," says Dr. Hunter, whose valuable works on Indian history and social life should be in the hands of every student of Indian languages and antiquities, "is the priest of his own household. The chieftain acts as father and priest to the tribe; but at the greater festivals he chooses some one specially learned in holy offerings to conduct the sacrifice in the name of the people." Thus the Bráhman priesthood, destined to become the great organisers of caste, have as yet no fixed place in the social order. Moreover, kingship seems to be elective; and not only do women enjoy a high position (marriage being held sacred, husband and wife being alike dampatí, or "rulers of the house," and the burning of widows on their husbands' funeral piles being unknown), but even "some of the most beautiful of the hymns were composed by ladies and queens."
Among these Indian Aryans, as everywhere in early communities, the rude beginnings of literature are found in close union with religion; and here at the very outset we meet one of the great characteristics of Indian literature—the love of Nature. The divinities of the Aryan housefathers—at once priests and warriors and husbandmen—are, as Professor Monier Williams has observed, idealised and personified powers of Nature—the wind, the storm, the fire, the sun—on which, as an agricultural and pastoral people, their welfare depended. Such deities of Nature are Dyaush-pitar (Diespiter or Jupiter of Rome, Zeus of Greece), or the sky-father; Varuna,[2] or the encompassing air; Indra, or the aqueous vapour that brings the rains, to whom many of the hymns are addressed; Agni, the god of fire, whose name is the Latin Ignis; Ushas, the dawn, the Greek Eôs; Vaya, the wind; Mitra the sunshine; and the Maruts, or storm-gods. As a specimen of the hymns we may select one to the Maruts and Indra which is peculiarly interesting from its rudely dramatic form. The translation, it should be added, is by Professor Max Müller, to whom all students of Sanskrit are so deeply indebted.
"Prologue. The Sacrificer speaks; 1. With what splendour are the Maruts all equally endowed, they who are of the same age and dwell in the same house? With what thoughts? From whence are they come? Do their heroes sing forth their (own) strength because they wish for wealth? 2. Whose prayers have the youth accepted? Who has turned the Maruts to his own sacrifice? By what strong devotion may we delight them, they who float through the air like hawks?
"Dialogue. The Maruts speak; 3. From whence, O Indra, dost thou come alone, thou who art mighty? O lord of men, what has thus happened to thee? Thou greetest (us) when thou comest together with (us), the bright Maruts? Tell us, then, thou with thy bay horses, what thou hast against us!
"Indra speaks; 4. The sacred songs are mine, (mine are) the prayers; sweet are the libations! My strength rises, my thunderbolt is hurled forth. They call for me, the prayers[3] yearn for me. Here are my horses, they carry me towards them.
"The Maruts speak; 5. Therefore in company with our strong friends, having adorned our bodies, we now harness our fallow deer with all our might; for, Indra, according to thy custom thou hast been with us.
"Indra speaks; 6. Where, O Maruts, was that custom of yours, that you should join me who am alone in the killing of Ahi? I, indeed, am terrible, strong, powerful—I escaped from the blows of every enemy.
"The Maruts speak; 7. Thou hast achieved much with us as companions. With the same valour, O hero, let us achieve then many things, O thou most powerful, O Indra! whatever we, O Maruts, wish with our hearts.
"Indra speaks; 8. I slew Vrita, O Maruts, with (Indra's) might, having grown strong through my own vigour; I, who hold the thunderbolt in my arms, have made these all-brilliant waters to flow freely for man. "The Maruts speak; 9. Nothing, O powerful lord, is strong before thee; noone is known among the gods like unto thee. No one who is now born will come near, no one who has been born. Do what has to be done, thou who art grown so strong.
"Indra speaks; 10. Almighty power be mine alone, whatever I may do, daring in my heart; for I, indeed, O Maruts, am known as terrible; of all that I throw down, I, Indra, am the lord.
"Indra speaks; 11. O Maruts, now your praise has pleased me, the glorious hymn which you have made for me, ye men!—for me, for Indra, for the powerful hero, as friends for a friend, for your own sake and by your own efforts.
"Indra speaks; 12. Truly, there they are, shining towards me, assuming blameless glory, assuming vigour. O Maruts, wherever I have looked for you, you have appeared to me in bright splendour; appear to me also now!
"Epilogue. The Sacrificer speaks; 13. Who has magnified you here, O Maruts? Come hither, O friends, towards your friends. Ye brilliant Maruts, cherish these prayers and be mindful of these my rites. 14. The wisdom of Mânya has brought us to this, that we should help as the poet helps the performer of a sacrifice: bring them hither quickly, Maruts, on to the sage these prayers the singer has recited for you. 15. This your praise, O Maruts, this your song comes from Mândârya, the son of Mâna, the poet. Come hither with rain! May we find for ourselves offspring, food, and a camp with running water."
§ 77. Such a hymn as this shows the beginnings of a studied ceremonial sharing in that dramatic character which is more or less common to all rituals, and which in the Medieval Mass directly contributed to the creation of our European theatres. Religion is becoming something more than a spontaneous worship offered up by the father of the family, who is at once its prophet, priest, and king; the poet helps the performer of the sacrifice, the singer recites the poet's studied prayer; and the prologue—which reminds us of the religious prologues to the much later Indian dramas—the dialogue, and epilogue, even if they are quite unconnected with the development of the Indian theatre, are at least signs of a literary class. The rise of this literary class forms the second great period into which the evolution of Indian life may be divided.
The earliest Vedic hymns exhibit the Indian Aryans still to the north of the Khaibar Pass, in Kábul; the later bring them as far as the Ganges, and "their victorious advance eastwards through the intermediate tract can be traced in the Vedic writings almost step by step." In the train of conquest came the development of a higher social organisation than that of the pastoral communities which had been attracted by the steady water-supply of the Panjab, and had settled in scattered groups of husbandmen. In these old Aryan colonies of the Panjab division of mental and manual labour had been wanting; "each housefather had been husbandman, warrior, and priest. But by degrees certain gifted families, who composed the Vedic hymns or learned them off by heart, were always chosen by the king to perform the great sacrifices. In this way probably the priestly caste sprang up." Fortunate warriors or companions of the king, too, like the comitatus of German tribes, received grants of conquered territory which the non-Aryans cultivated as serfs; hence the warrior-caste, called Rajputs or Kshattriyas—the latter term meaning "of the royal stock"—and the Sudras or non-Aryans reduced by conquest to serfdom. Moreover, the agricultural settlers, Vaisyas, who in the early Vedic period had included all Aryans, came to be distinguished alike from the warriors and the serfs; and so there came to be four castes, three of Aryan descent, known as the "Twice-born," and one non-Aryan.
How far this social classification was the work of the Bráhmans, or priestly caste, during or after their struggle for supremacy with the Kshattriyas, it is clearly impossible now to decide with precision—especially since the very idea of caste in modern India has been rendered exceedingly complex by countless varieties of castes due, not to these facts of ancient Indian history, nor to direct Bráhmanic creation, but merely to the hereditary character of trades and occupations. But, since the Bráhmans have ever been the makers of Indian literature, the problem of the "natural" versus the artificial development of caste need not here be discussed. Whatever different causes, however, have contributed to create the Indian caste-system—ancient clan life, the village community, differences of race and occupation, priestly law-books and ritual—it is plain that the influence of a social fact and idea which must so profoundly affect the conception of individuality cannot be overlooked in any view of Indian literature however brief. But before we trace some Bráhmanic influences on Indian literature we shall turn aside for a moment to compare the beginnings of literature in China with the Vedic hymns.
§ 78. The ancient collection of Chinese odes known as the Shih King offers the most striking contrasts in form and spirit, in social and individual characteristics, to these ancient hymns of India. China, like India, was destined to give birth to a literature which, reflecting human life on a vast scale and deeply imbued with sentiments of Nature, was to expand its horizon beyond national destinies and become a world-literature full of philosophic efforts to explain the past, the present, and the future of the human species. But China, like India, had her day of small things, of local distinctions, of feudal states; and from this early period the Shih, or at least some of its odes, would seem to date.
The Shih, consisting of 305 pieces, the most recent of which are assigned to B.C. 606–586, the oldest to the period of the Shang dynasty 1766–1123 B.C., is divided into four parts. 1. The Kwo Făng, "Manners of the different States,” or, as Dr. Legge prefers to translate, "Lessons from the States," are 160 short pieces descriptive of manners and events in the feudal states of Kâu. 2. The Hsiâo Yâ, or "Minor Odes of the Kingdom," are 74 pieces, "sung at the gatherings of the feudal princes and their appearances at the royal court." 3. The Yâ Yâ, or "Major Odes of the Kingdom," are 31 pieces, "sung on great occasions at the royal court and in the presence of the king." 4. Lastly, the Sung consist of 40 pieces, 31 of which belong to the sacrificial services at the royal court of Kâu, the rest to those of the marquises of Lû and the kings of Shang. Chinese authorities speak of the Sung as "songs for the music of the ancestral temple," and "songs for the music at sacrifices;" and Dr. Legge, uniting these definitions, would call them "odes of the temple and the altar."
It would seem that some at least of these odes were collected in the capital from the music-masters of the various states; and their repetitions or refrains indicate a spirit at once secular and musical, which, like the four-syllabled lines in which they are for the most part composed, contrasts remarkably with the difficult metrical forms and highly religious tone of the Indian hymns. The subordination of the sacrificial to the secular aspect, moreover, is supplemented by a wide difference in the spirit of the pieces which are professedly religious compared with the Indian hymns. It is the ancestral worship of the family which is celebrated in the Sacrificial Odes of the Shih, a worship destined to afford no scope for the development of caste or Bráhman priesthood; and, though some of the odes are in worship of Nature, they remind us rather of the utilitarian mythology of early Rome than the splendid adoration of Nature in the Vedas. Not that Nature is less prominent in the Shih than in the Indian hymns; for there is scarcely an ode of the Shih which does not turn upon some aspect of Nature—"the ospreys with their kwan-kwan on the islet in the river," "the yellow birds flying about the spreading dolichos." Almost every ode is decked with phrases borrowed from physical or animal life—"the swallows flying about with their wings unevenly displayed," "the wind that blows with clouds of dust," "the dead antelope in the wild wrapped up in the white grass." But in these and similar expressions we have rather simple family life enjoying the sights and sounds of Nature than any of that majestic imagery and profound reverence for Nature's life which the Sanskrit poems reveal. The same homely sympathy with Nature is to be found in certain specimens of ancient Chinese poetry, which have been assigned (but on questionable grounds, in Dr. Legge's opinion) as high or even higher antiquity than the Shih King. Among these may be quoted the "Song of the Peasants in the time of Yaou:"—
"We rise at sunrise,
We rest at sunset,
Dig wells and drink,
Till our fields and eat—
What is the strength of the emperor to us?"
And from the same specimens the "Prayer at the Winter Thanksgiving," "Shun's Song of the South Wind," the "Song of the Fern-Gatherers," and the "Cowfeeder's Song," beginning—
"On the bare southern hill
The white rocks gleam"—
might be cited as also illustrating ancient Chinese sympathies with Nature as a good friend rather than a great god.
In fact, the religious sentiments of the Chinese were with their social evolution assuming a different channel from that of the Indian Aryans; and though we have early Chinese songs to the powers of Nature as productive agents, the most profound sentiments of Chinese religion were turned away from Nature to the ancestors of the human family, the centre of all Chinese passions and emotions. Accordingly, while the Bráhmans were building up their sacred hymnal to Nature in her grandest forms, the ancestral spirits were in China receiving the mead of sacrificial song. With a specimen of such song[4] we shall conclude this brief contrast of early Indian and Chinese poetry.
"Ah, ah, our meritorious ancestor!
Permanent are the blessings coming from him,
Repeatedly confirmed without end:—
They have come to you in this place.
"The clear spirits are in our vessels,
And there is granted to us the realisation of our thoughts.
There are also the well-tempered soups
Prepared beforehand, the ingredients rightly proportioned.
By these offerings we invite his presence, without a word,
Nor is there now any contention (in any part of the service).
He will bless us with the eyebrows of longevity,
With the grey hair and wrinkled face in unlimited degree.
With the naves of their wheels bound with leather, and their ornamented yokes,
With the eight bells at their horses' bits all tinkling,
(The Princes) come and assist at the offerings.
We have received the appointment in all its greatness,
And from Heaven is our prosperity sent down,
Fruitful years of great abundance.
(Our ancestor) will come and enjoy (our offerings),
And confer (on us) happiness without limit.
"May he regard our sacrifices in summer and winter,
(Thus) offered by the descendant of Y'ang."
§ 79. During the growth of the Bráhman caste in India, the old ritual-book of the Rig-Veda was supplemented by the addition of three other service-books. The Rig-Veda had been the hymns in their simplest form; by degrees were added the Sáma-Veda, or hymns of the Rig-Veda, to be used at the Soma sacrifice, the Yajur-Veda "consisting not only of Rig-Vedic hymns, but also of prose sentences to be used at the great sacrifices, and divided into two editions, called the Black and White Yajur," and the Atharva-Veda, consisting of the least ancient hymns at the end of the Rig-Veda and of later poems. To each of these four Vedas prose works were in time attached, called Bráhmanas, explaining the sacrifices and duties of the priests, and forming with the Vedas the sruti—"things heard from God"—or revealed scriptures of the Hindus. "The Vedas supplied their divinely inspired psalms, and the Bráhmanas their divinely inspired theology or body of doctrine." Afterwards were added the Sútras—"strings of pithy sentences"—on laws and ceremonies, for the Bráhmans, like the Hebrew priests, were not only the holy guardians of religious ritual, but, like the Irish Brehons, interpreters and co-ordinators of law never in India very distinctly separated from religion. Later on, the Upanishads, treating of God and the soul, exemplified that development of philosophy out of religion which can be easily illustrated elsewhere than in India; the Aranyakas, or "tracts for the forest recluse," marked the rise of that ascetic spirit which Christian monasticism has made so familiar to Europe; and, long afterwards, came the Puránas, or "traditions of old." These writings, however, as distinct from the Vedas and Bráhmanas, are not sruti, or divinely inspired; they are only smriti—"things remembered"—that is, sacred traditions.
How did the Bráhmans manage to retain a monopoly of this politico-religious literature? How did they prevent any such popularisation of their legal knowledge as, for example, followed the publication of the XII. Tables at Rome? They prevented publication by preferring to hand down their learning by memory within the sacred circle of their caste, even though as early as 250 B.C. two alphabets or written characters were used in India. "Good Bráhmans had to learn the Veda by heart, besides many other books. This was the easier, as almost all their literature was in verse (slokas). In the very ancient times, just after the Vedic hymns, a pure style of prose, simple and compact, had grown up. But for more than two thousand years the Bráhmans have always composed in verse; and prose-writing has been a lost art in India."
The Bráhman period of Indian literature reaches backwards and forwards into very different social and linguistic conditions of Indian life in general and of the Bráhman priesthood in particular. In the earlier period the Bráhmans are struggling into independence from the control of the military class, and with difficulty establishing their priestly ceremonial over the local worships of the House-fathers. As yet "Sanskrit," as the peculiar language of the educated, is unknown; for the language destined to become the sacred language of the Brahmans is still the Aryan vernacular speech, the true maker of the "simple and compact prose" which (as Albrecht Weber, in his History of Sanskrit Literature, observes) had been gradually developed in the Vedic period. The scientific student of literature should note some of the causes which checked the growth of Indian prose.
The development of prose is to a certain extent necessarily democratic—it is the everyday speech of some social group; for example, the explanation of the prominence of Arabic prose in Arabic literature is to be found in its close correspondence with the polished speech of the Koreish. Critics have shown how Athenian conversation, in public or private, is the true source of that splendid instrument of thought we call Attic prose; and any one who takes the trouble to trace the beginnings of prose in England, France, Germany, will soon discover the powerful influences of the language actually spoken at court, or in the public assemblies, or in the private meetings of the educated classes. The Bráhman caste clearly lacked the freedom and variety of social status which in the West contributed so largely to the growth of prose. Moreover, prose must be written; for, if there is any point in which students of early literature are at length tolerably unanimous, it is the impossibility of making and retaining a prose work by the aid of the memory alone. But here the exclusiveness of Bráhman learning, the desire to prevent popularisation by writing, threw a serious obstacle in the way of prose development. Again, in the extended conquests of the Aryans—as was afterwards to happen to Latin and Arabic—the purity of the old Aryan tongue was being impaired by contact with barbarian languages, and the need of a uniform standard in Aryan speech was more and more experienced; and so the Bráhmans, as the keepers of the most ancient records, possessed a monopoly not only of religious and political knowledge, but also of the purer literary language. Hence, by degrees, popular Prákritic dialects arose out of the ancient Indo-Aryan vernacular, and marked differences began to manifest themselves between these spoken dialects and the language of the educated class or "Sanskrit." The latter gradually ceasing to be a spoken language, and becoming the peculiar property of a class which desired as little as possible to entrust its knowledge to a written form in which it might cease to be a monopoly, it is easy to see why the prose-form, of days when the speech of the educated and uneducated had been the same, was abandoned, and (as Weber says) "a rhythmic one adopted in its stead, which is employed exclusively even for strictly scientific explanation." Indian prose, indeed, we have in the grammatical and philosophical Sútras, but a prose "characterised by a form of expression so condensed and technical that it cannot properly be so called. Apart from this, we have only fragments of prose, occurring in stories which are now and then found cited in the great epic; and, farther, in the fable literature and in the drama; but they are uniformly interwoven with rhythmical portions. It is only in the Buddhist legends that a prose style has been retained. … Anything more clumsy than the prose of the later Indian romances and of the Indian commentaries can hardly be conceived; and the same may be said of the prose of the inscriptions. … Works of poetry, of science and art, and works relating to law, custom, and worship, all alike appear in a poetic form; and while, on the one hand, the poetic form has been extended to all branches of the literature, upon the other, a good deal of practical prose has entered into the poetry itself, imparting to it the character of poetry with a purpose" (Weber).
§ 80. It is evident that a language which had thus fallen into the possession of a priestly caste is not likely to enshrine a literature in any sense of the word popular. But in dealing with the literature of India we must remember that it is really an error to transfer our European conceptions of "people" and "popular"—conceptions which are not strictly applicable to the slave-supported municipalities of Greece and Rome, and which even in modern Europe mark the last links in a long line of development from the serfdom and communes of the Middle Ages—to the many races, languages, and caste-distinctions of that vast country which we briefly name "India." Without some language standing apart from the many varieties of daily speech and some privileged caste to keep watch and ward over its treasures, it is difficult to conceive how India, especially in the face of Greek, Scythic, and Mohammedan conquests, could have produced or retained a literature at all. If, indeed, the monopoly of the Bráhmans had received no serious checks, if no development of new sects and no introduction of foreign thought by conquest had left them sole masters of the religious, political, and literary traditions of India, it is probable that Sanskrit literature might never have advanced much beyond ritual books like the Vedas, law treatises full of Bráhman interests, and chronicles combining myth and history in incalculable proportions. But for Brahman exclusiveness an aufklärung was reserved.
In 543 B.C., at the age of eighty, died a reformer worthy of being placed beside, if not above, the greatest our Western world has known. Gautama Buddha—"the Enlightened"—had renounced his royal rank as only son of a king, passed through years of hermitage and penance, and, from his thirty-sixth year, entered upon that public teaching which, unlike the exclusiveness of Bráhmans, sought disciples not merely among the sacred caste but in all ranks and conditions of men. In the spirit of that old Hebrew prophet who, rising above the formalism of Israel's priests, asked "to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices?" Buddha put in the place of the Bráhman sacrifices three great duties—control over self, kindness to other men, and reverence for the life of all sentient creatures. Just as the formalism of Hebrew priest-lawyers had reposed upon an ethical creed in which the individual's responsibility had been merged into collective, just as prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, nearly at Buddha's own date, were preaching personal responsibility against the worn-out clan morality of inherited guilt, so Buddha, preaching salvation equally to all men without the intercession of the Bráhman, insisted on individual responsibility, and taught that man's state, in this life, in all previous and in all future lives, must be the result of his own acts.
But if Buddha's teaching resembles the spiritual teaching of Isaiah, if it resembles the individual ethics of Ezekiel, it also contains something of the pessimism of Qôheleth. Human life, in Buddha's view, must always be painful, more or less; "the object of every good man is to get rid of the evils of existence by merging his individual soul into the universal soul." "Two souls," says Faust, "dwell within my breast; the one would fain separate itself from the other. The one clings to the world with organs like cramps of steel; the other lifts itself energetically from the mist to the realms of an exalted ancestry." Buddha, like Goethe, like Qôheleth, is living in an age when the contrast of the individual with the group, of the microcosm self with the macrocosm not-self, has forced itself on human thought. But his reconciliation of the conflicting principles is not found in that despairful materialism in which the Hebrew thinker watches with anguish all individual distinctions, nay, even the differences between men and brutes, disappear; it is found in a pantheistic moral ideal—that Nirvana, "Cessation," absorption of the individual into the universal soul, which is only to be reached by a personal life of moral excellence. M. Guizot has remarked that the general acceptance of feudalism in Europe is the best evidence of its necessity; perhaps a similar remark may be made on the rapid extension of Buddhism, which at least shows that Bráhmanism in its early exclusive form had worn out the prestige of its pretensions. Buddhism, about 257 B.C., became a State religion; and though, after 800 A.D., Bráhmanism again gradually became the ruling religion, five hundred millions of Buddhists in Asia venerate to-day the memory of Gautama, "the Enlightened."
§ 81. It was during the domination of Buddhism that Sanskrit literature displayed its nearest approach to a popular form in its drama. But before we touch upon this form of Sanskrit literature we must briefly review another—the epic. Perhaps the earliest traces of the Indian epic may be carried as far back as the Veda; certain it is, as Professor Monier Williams has said, that not only is the germ of many legends in Hindu epic poetry to be found in the Rig-Veda, but such poetry is there foreshadowed in hymns and songs laudatory of Indra and other gods supposed to protect the Aryan from the non-Aryan races. In fact, when we remember the dramatic shape of the hymn quoted above, it is allowable to say that lyric, epic, and dramatic elements are all to be found in the Rig-Veda. But, dismissing the question of the exact process by which Indian epic poetry grew up as one too intricate for the space at our disposal, we shall turn to the two most famous Indian epics, and the points of comparison or contrast to similar European poetry which they suggest.
Of these two epics, the Rámáyana contains the story of the Aryan advance into India, while the Mahábhárata may be regarded as metrical romance-chronicles of the Delhi kings. The oldest of these epics, the Rámáyana ("the adventures of Rama," from the Sanskrit Ráma and ayana), is said to have been composed by the poet Válmíki. "For centuries," says Professor Williams, "its existence was probably oral; and we know from the fourth chapter of the first book that it had its minstrels and reciters like the Greek ῥαψῳδοί." The antiquity of Sanskrit, like Hebrew, literature cannot be fixed with certainty, and depends on internal evidences contained in its various works; but internal evidences would seem to show that a great part of the Rámáyana as now known to us was current in India as early as the fifth century B.C. Ráma, though mentioned in the Veda, may be regarded as the first real hero, belonging to the Kshattriya or warrior caste, of the post-Vedic age; and, as evidences confirmatory of the date just named, Professor Williams mentions the simplicity of style in the Rámáyana, its want of allusions to Buddhism as an established fact, and the marks it contains of that independent spirit of the northern military tribes, and that tendency to sceptical inquiry even among Bráhmans which, working southwards, led to the great Buddhist reformation.
The story of the Rámáyana, though often interrupted by episodes having little bearing on the plot, is more continuous than that of the Mahábhárata, the latter being written in celebration of the lunar race of Delhi kings, as the Rámáyana is of the solar race of Ajodya or Oudh. Divisible into three principal parts corresponding with the chief epochs in the life of Ráma, the Rámáyana treats (1) of Ráma's youthful days, education at the court of his father, Dasaratha king of Oudh, marriage to Sítá, and inauguration as heir-apparent or Crown Prince; (2) the circumstances leading to his banishment, and the description of his exile in the forests of Central Asia; (3) his war with the demons of the South for the recovery of his wife Sita, carried off by their chief Rávana, his victory over Rávana, and his restoration to his father's throne. In the first two portions extravagant fiction is sparingly used; in the last the wildest exaggeration and hyperbole prevail.
The Mahábhárata is an immense collection of legends, so wanting in unity that the episodes occupy three-fourths of the entire poem, the size of which may be imagined from the fact that it contains 220,000 lines, or, reckoning the Iliad, the Æneid, the Divina Commedia, and Paradise Lost as together containing 50,000 lines, considerably more than four times the bulk of all the great European epics put together. In fact, the central story of the Mahabharata, which contains 50,000 lines, or about a fourth of the whole "poem," may be said to equal all these European epics in bulk. In truth, it is not one "poem" at all, but "a compilation of many poems; not a kávya by one author, but an itihása by many authors."
Both the Rámáyana and the Mahábhárata consist of many stories grouped round a central story; but the central story of the Mahábhárata is a slender thread upon which many unconnected legends are strung; while the many episodes of the Rámáyana "never break the solid chain of one principal subject which is ever kept in view." The subject of the central story in the Mahábhárata is a struggle between two families, alike descended from the royal Bharata, and brought up under the same roof. King Pándu, smitten by a curse, has resigned his kingdom to his brother Dhrita-ráshtra, retired to a hermitage and there died, leaving the five Pándavas, his sons, to the care of his brother now ruling in his stead. Dhrita-ráshtra has himself one hundred sons, named Kauravas, from an ancestor Kuru; but, acting as the faithful. guardian of his nephews, he chooses the eldest of the five Pándavas as heir to the family kingdom. His own sons resent the act; hence the quarrel of the hundred Kauravas with the five Pándavas which forms the central story of Mahábhárata.
The period to which this story refers is not later than 1200 B.C.; but the composition of the Mahábhárata bears internal marks of later date than that of the Rámáyana. Though the later epic includes in its post-Vedic mythology many myths which have their germs in the Veda, its religious system is "more popular and comprehensive than that of the Rámáyana;" and when it is remembered that Bráhmanism never gained in the more martial north that ascendancy which it acquired in the neighbourhood of Oudh, we are prepared to find that the Rámáyana, to which this neighbourhood gave birth, "generally represents one-sided and exclusive Bráhmanism,” while the Mahábhárata, celebrating the Delhi kings, is less inspired by the exclusiveness of the sacred caste, and (as Professor Williams observes) "represents the multilateral character of Hinduism." In the Mahábhárata the individualising spirit of Buddha is marked by the introduction of more human and popular personages and less mythical allegory than are to be found in the Rámáyana—a humanising process which may be compared with that which has been previously observed in the Athenian drama, and which will hereafter be noticed in the relation of miracle-plays to the modern European drama. So, also, the Mahábhárata contains "many more illustrations of domestic and social life and manners than the more ancient epic."
But while such differences as these present themselves in a comparison of the two great Indian epics, differences to be regarded as indicating literary sympathies gradually widening beyond the narrow circle of Bráhmanic interests and expanding towards a width sufficient for the creation of a drama under royal patronage, the European scholar will probably contrast with greater interest the Indian with our own European epics, especially the Iliad and Odyssey. A vast range of human interests, diversities of language and race, varieties and sharp contrasts of caste, consciousness of intricate distinctions in social life, will account for the disorderly universalism of the Indian epics compared with the far greater uniformity but also narrowly local interests of the Greek. If in the Iliad time, place, action, are restricted within comparatively narrow limits, if even the wider circle of the Odyssey is insignificant compared with the almost unbounded range of the Mahábhárata, the social and physical differences under which the Indian and Greek poets lived are amply sufficient to explain their diverse treatment of time, place, and action, a diversity which we shall find repeated in the Greek and Sanskrit dramas. Just as the similes of the Indian epics are taken from the movements of Asiatic animals—the tiger, the elephant—or from the peculiar aspects of Indian plants, the Sanskrit dictionary itself marking the profusion of Indian flowers by the number of its botanical terms, so graphic and picturesque descriptions of scenery, alike in the epics and dramas of India, reflect not only "the whole appearance of external nature in the East, the exuberance of vegetation, the wealth of trees and fruits and flowers, the glow of burning skies, the freshness of the rainy season, the fury of storms, the serenity of Indian moonlight, and the gigantic mould in which natural objects are generally cast," but also a state of social life in which the primary units are not the city and the citizen, but the agricultural village and its communal brethren redolent of Nature's life. We may say, then, that the great differences between the Indian and Greek epics are the fantastic intermixture (not merely, as in the Iliad, the juxtaposition) of gods, heroes, men, and the vast extension of space and time in the former, characteristics also accompanied by a profound sympathy with physical nature which, in spite of a few well-known passages, may be said to be singularly absent from the Greek epics.
Whether the cause is to be found in the unsuitableness of the Chinese language for a long poem, or in conditions of social life in China, or in both, nothing resembling an epic has been discovered in Chinese literature by European scholars. The Indian epics have thus no Chinese analogue to be here noticed, and we may pass on to another species of Indian literature. The individualising spirit of Buddha’s age and the humanising tone of the Mahábhárata, contrasted with the Bráhmanic narrowness of the older epic, have already called our attention to that expansion of social sympathies and deepening of individual conscience which in India, as in Greece, preceded and accompanied the rise of the drama; and, since the differences between the Greek and Indian epics just noticed are much the same as those between the Greek and Indian theatres, we may take the present opportunity to pass on to the Sanskrit drama,
§ 82. Shelley, in his Defence of Poetry, maintained that "the connection of poetry and social good is more observable in the drama than in any other form; and it is indisputable that the highest perfection of human society has ever corresponded with the highest dramatic excellence, and that the corruption or extinction of the drama in a nation where it has once flourished marks a corruption of manners and an extinction of the energies which sustain the soul of social life; for the end of social corruption is to destroy all sensibility to pleasure." How far these observations are true, and what is the kind of social life which produces the best drama, we need not here inquire. We shall at least admit with Shelley the peculiarly close relations of the drama with social life, and agree with Professor H. H. Wilson when he says, in his admirable Theatre of the Hindus, that "there is no species of composition which embraces so many purposes as the dramatic. The dialogue varies from simple to elaborate, from the conversation of ordinary life to the highest refinements of poetical taste. The illustrations are drawn from every known product of art as well as every observable phenomenon of Nature. The manners and feelings of the people are delineated, living and breathing before us, and history and religion furnish most important and interesting topics to the poet."
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; and so, since none of the dramatic compositions at present known can claim a very high antiquity, "they must have been unintelligible to a considerable part of their audiences, and never could have been so directly addressed to the bulk of the population as to have exercised much influence on their passions or tastes." This, however, as Professor Wilson himself adds, is perfectly in harmony with Hindu social life, in which the highest branches of literature as well as the highest offices in the State were reserved for the Bráhmans and Kshattriyas; and, though the sacred character of the representation, as well as of the Sanskrit language itself, is regarded by Wilson as a poor substitute for really popular interest, we must not forget that such dramatic spectacles required considerable relaxation of Bráhmanic exclusiveness, that the diversities of spoken dialects would have given a local tone to any drama employing one of these dialects, and that the pedantry of Latin plays like those of Ariosto (with which the Indian have been compared) offends, not so much as an affectation of scholarship, but rather as the wilful preference of a dead language to a polished national speech. Had India possessed any national speech, we might be justified in comparing her drama with the Latin plays of modern Europe; but, in the absence of uniform speech, it is not easy to see how a drama could have been produced without the aid of some such instrument as Sanskrit. Dramas in the vernacular dialects and of an inferior character have, indeed, left traces of their existence "in the dramatised stories of the Bhanrs, or professional buffoons, in the Játras of the Bengalis, and the Rásas of the western provinces." Of these, the first are representations "of some ludicious adventure by two or three performers, carried on in extempore dialogue usually of a very coarse kind, and enlivened by practical jokes not always very decent. The Játra is generally the exhibition of some of the incidents in the youthful life of Krishna, maintained also in extempore dialogue, but interspersed with popular songs. The Rása partakes more of the ballet, but it is accompanied also with songs, while the adventures of Krishna or Rama are represented in appropriate costume by measured gesticulation." A theatre really worthy of the name needed the dignity of that language which contained the treasures of India's lyric and epic poetry and wore a look of permanence and universality to which none of the spoken dialects could pretend.
The Sanskrit dramas, like those of Athens, are primarily written for but one specific performance, which, since their length often extends to as many as ten acts, must have occupied, not the two hours' traffic of the Shaksperian stage, but probably from five to six hours. Resembling the Athenian in their sacred character and not written, like the plays of modern Europe, for permanent theatrical companies with their professional ends, these dramas seem to have been acted only on solemn occasions which may be compared with the spring and autumn festivals of Bacchus in the Athenian theatre. "According to Hindu authorities," says Wilson, "the occasions suitable for dramatic representations are the lunar holidays, a royal coronation, assemblages of people at fairs and religious festivals, marriages, the meeting of friends, taking first possession of a house or a town, and the birth of a son; the most ordinary occasion, however, was the season peculiarly sacred to some divinity." While this association of the Indian drama with sacred festivals may remind us of our European miracle-plays, or the Persian tazyas, or passion-plays, represented in the first ten days of the month Moharrem, as described by Count Gobineau, the infrequency of the Indian spectacle, together with the use of Sanskrit, will guard us against the error of Sir William Jones, who supposed that "the Indian theatre would fill as many volumes as that of any nation in ancient or modern Europe." While the list of dramatic pieces composed by Chinese dramatists of the Youen dynasty reaches a total of five hundred and sixty-four, it is doubtful whether all the Sanskrit plays to be found, together with those mentioned by writers on the drama, amount to more than sixty. Only three plays are attributed to each of the great Indian dramatists, Bhavabhúti and Kálidása—a number to be contrasted not merely with the two hundred and sixty comedies attributed to Antiphanes or the two thousand plays of Lope de Vega, but with the substantial dramatic contributions of Aristophanes, Plautus, or Shakspere. But, though the number of Indian plays is small, they supplied, in the decay of dramatic art, a rich field for that verbal criticism in which Oriental intellect delights. 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."
§ 89. Although the prominence of Nature in the Indian drama is by no means to be estimated solely from descriptive passages, the constant use of similes and figures taken from Nature's life really supplying more convincing evidences of this prominence than any number of such passages, it is easier to select some of the latter than to give the reader any idea of that perfect mosaic of Nature-language which these dramas contain. Perhaps, however, the following translation of Maitreya's observations in the fourth act of Mrichchhakatí, or the "Toy-cart," may convey some impression of this Nature-language, while two passages from the fifth act of the same play will illustrate the descriptions of Nature with which Indian plays abound. The translations, it must be added, are the work of that profound and elegant scholar, the late Professor Horace Hayman Wilson, to whom all Sanskrit students are so deeply indebted, and whose words have already been frequently quoted.
"A very pretty entrance," says Maitreya; "the threshold is neatly coloured, well swept and watered; the floor is beautified with strings of sweet flowers; the top of the gate is lofty, and gives one the pleasure of looking up to the clouds, while the jasmine festoon hangs tremblingly down, as if it were now tossing on the trunk of Indra's elephant. Over the doorway is a lofty arch of ivory; above it again wave flags dyed with safflower, their fringes curling in the wind like fingers that beckon me 'come hither.' … Bless me! why, here is a line of palaces, as white as the moon, as the conch, as the stall of the water-lily. Oh, ho! this is a very gay scene: here the drums, beaten by tapering fingers, emit like clouds a murmuring tone; there the cymbals, beating time, flash as they descend like the unlucky stars that fall from heaven. The flute here breathes the soft hum of the bee; some damsels are singing like so many bees intoxicated with flowery nectar; others are practising the graceful dance, and others are employed in reading plays and poems. … The arched gateway is of gold, and many-coloured gems on a ground of sapphire, and looks like the bow of Indra in an azure sky. … A very lovely scene! The numerous trees are bowed down by delicious fruit, and between them are silken swings constructed for the light form of youthful beauty; the yellow jasmine, the graceful málatí, the full-blossomed malliká, the blue clitoria, spontaneous shed their flowers and strew the ground with a carpet more lovely than any in the groves of Indra; the reservoir glows with the red lotus-blossoms, like the dawn with the fiery beams of the rising sun; and here the asoka tree, with its rich crimson blossoms, shines like a young warrior bathed in the sanguine shower of the furious fight."
The fifth act of the same play opens with the following speech of Chárudatta:—
"A heavy storm impends; the gathering gloom
Delights the peafowl and distracts the swan
Not yet prepared for periodic flight;
And these deep shades contract with sad despondence
The heart that pines in absence. Through the air,
A rival Kesava,[5] the purple cloud
Rolls stately on, girded by golden lightning
As by his yellow garb, and bearing high
The long white line of storks. …
From the dark womb in rapid fall descend
The silvery drops, and glittering in the gleams
Shot from the lightning, bright and fitful, sparkle
Like a rich fringe rent from the robe of heaven;
The firmament is filled with scattered clouds,
And, as they fly before the wind, their forms,
As in a picture, image various shapes,
The semblances of storks and soaring swans,
Of dolphins and the monsters of the deep,
Of dragons vast and pinnacles and towers."
"The spreading shade, methinks, is like the host
Of Dhritaráshtra shouting loud in thunder;
Yon strutting peacock welcomes its advance
Like proud Duryodhan vaunting of his might;
From its dread enmity the koïl flies
Like luckless Yudhishthira by the dice
Bereaved of power; and scatter wild the swans
Like the proscribed and houseless Pándavas."
In the same act of the "Toy-cart" occurs a famous description of the rainy season in a dialogue between Vasantasena, the Víta, and an attendant. The Víta, it must be added, like the Vidúshaka, or Buffoon, is a stock-character of the Hindu theatre; this personage must be accomplished in poetry, music, singing, may be the companion of a man or a woman, is on familiar terms with his associate, and may be compared with the Parasite of the Greek and Latin plays. The passage is here quoted at length as one of the best specimens of Natural description in the Indian drama.
"Atten. Lady, upon the mountain's brow the clouds
Hang dark and drooping, as the aching heart
Of her who sorrows for her distant lord;
Their thunders rouse the peafowl, and the sky
Is agitated by their wings, as fanned
By thousand fans with costly gems enclosed.
The chattering frog quaffs the pellucid drops
That cleanse his miry jaws; the peahen shrieks
With transport, and the Nipa freshly blooms.
The moon is blotted by the driving scud,
As is the saintly character by those
Who wear its garb to veil their abject lives;
And, like the damsel whose fair fame is lost
In ever-changing loves, the lightning, true
To no one quarter, flits along the skies.
Vas. You speak it well, my friend; …
Let the clouds fall in torrents, thunder roar,
And heaven's red bolt dash fiercely to the ground,
The dauntless damsel faithful love inspires
Treads boldly on, nor dreads the maddening storm.
Víta. Like an invading prince, who holds his court
Within the city of his humbled foe,
Yon mighty cloud, advancing with the wind,
With store of arrowy shower, with thundering drums,
And blazing streamers, marches to assail
In his own heavens the monarch of the night.
Vas. Nay, nay, not so; I rather read it thus;—
The clouds that, like unwieldy elephants,
Roll their inflated masses grumbling on,
Or whiten with the migratory troop
Of hovering cranes, teach anguish to the heart.
The storks' shrill cry sounds like the plaintive tabor
To her who muses on her lord's return.
Víta. Behold, where yonder ponderous cloud assumes
The stature of the elephant, the storks
Entwine a fillet for his front, and waves
The lightning like a chouri o'er his head.
Vas. Observe, my friend, the day is swallowed up
By these deep shades, dark as the dripping leaf
Of the taurála tree, and, like an elephant
That cowering shuns the battle's arrowy sleet,
So shrinks the scattering ant-hill from the shower. …
In sooth, I think the firmament dissolves:
Melted by Indra's scorching bolt, it falls
In unexhausted torrents. Now the cloud
Ascends—now stoops—now roars aloud in thunder—
Now sheds its streams—now frowns with deeper gloom,
Full of fantastic change, like one new-raised
By fortune's fickle favours.
Víta. Now the sky
With lightning flames, now laughs with whitening storks,
Now glows with Indra's painted bow that hurls
Its hundred shafts—now rattles with his bolt—
Now loud it chafes with rushing winds, and now,
With clustering clouds that roll their spiry folds
Like sable snakes along, it thickens dark
As if 'twere clothed with vapours such as spread
When incense soars in circling wreaths to heaven."
To exhaust such descriptive passages, even in such Indian plays as have been translated into European languages, would be a long and rather monotonous task. At the end of Act V. in this same play two similar descriptive passages are put into the mouth of Chárudatta, In Vikrama and Urvasí (or "The Hero and the Nymph"), attributed to Kálidása, the first act opens on the Himálayan Mountains, and, a troop of Apsarasas, or nymphs of heaven, entering, the opportunity for such passages may be readily conceived. As a brief specimen from this play, we may select the closing words of the second act spoken by King Parúravas:—
"'Tis past mid-day. Exhausted by the heat,
The peacock plunges in the scanty pool
That feeds the tall tree's root; the drowsy bee
Sleeps in the hollow chambers of the lotus
Darkened with closing petals; on the brink
Of the now tepid lake the wild duck lurks
Among the sedgy shade; and even here
The parrot from his wiry bower complains,
And calls for water to allay his thirst."
In the third act of the same play a description of the rising moon is put into the mouth of Parúravas; and in the fourth act, the scene of which lies in the forest of Akalusha, the lyrical descriptions of Nature are too numerous to admit of easy illustration. From other plays examples of natural description might readily be collected, such as the lines of Vasantí, beginning, "The sun, with glow intense," etc., in the second act of the Ultara-Rama-Charitra, the scene of which is the forest of Janasthána, along the river Godáveri. But, instead of uselessly multiplying examples from. these and other Indian plays, we shall turn aside to observe a similar prominence of Nature in the Chinese and Japanese dramas.
§ 84. If the Hindu critic attributes the legendary origin of his drama to an inspired sage, Bharata, or even to the god Bráhma, the less ambitious Celestial is content to refer the origin of his theatre to the Emperor Hiouen-tsong, of the T'ang dynasty, founder of an Imperial Academy of Music and of the Chinese drama (cir. 736 A.D.). Among the Chinese neither music nor literature was destined to be monopolised by a caste of priests; and this difference in social development has left its marks in certain differences of the Chinese and Indian dramas. The prologue of the Indian play, Málatí and Mádhava, shows how the Indian dramatist, addressing himself to a cultured audience acquainted with Sanskrit, valued artistic qualities such as fertility of imagination, harmony of style, diversity of incident. But the purpose of the Chinese drama is not artistic but moral; it is "to present the noblest teachings of history to the ignorant who cannot read;" "to present upon the stage," as the Chinese penal code puts it, "real or fictitious pictures of just and good men, chaste women, affectionate and obedient children, which may lead the spectators to the practice of virtue." In the Pi-pa-ki (or "History of a Lute"), a Chinese drama in twenty-four scenes represented at Peking in 1404 A.D., there are indeed some signs of artistic criticism—variety of incidents and greater individuality of character, for example; but the Youen Collection of Chinese plays, an anthology which belongs to the thirteenth century, altogether subordinates art to didactic moralising. So important, indeed, is this didactic purpose that it has produced a feature of the Chinese drama not to be found in any other theatre of the Hast or West—the singing personage. "In all Chinese plays," says Sir John Davis,[6] "there is an irregular operatic species of song which the principal character occasionally chants forth in unison, with a loud or soft accompaniment of music as may best suit the sentiment or action of the moment." "It was not enough for the Chinese," says M. Bazin,[7] "to have laid down moral utility as the end of their dramatic representations; they must also discover the means of attaining that end. Hence the rôle of the singing personage, an admirably ingenious conception, a characteristic essentially distinguishing the Chinese from all known theatres. This singing personage, with figurative, showy, and lyrical diction, his voice aided by a musical accompaniment, is a link between the poet and the audience, like the chorus of the Greek theatre, only with this difference, that he remains no stranger to the action. On the contrary, the singing personage is the hero of the piece, who, when the catastrophe occurs, always remains on the stage to rouse the sorrow of the spectators and draw forth their tears. It will be observed that this personage, like the rest, may be taken from any class of social life; in the Sorrows of Han he is an emperor; in the Maid's Intrigues, a young servant. When the chief personage dies in the course of the play, his place is taken by another character of the drama, who sings in his turn. In fact, the singing personage is the leading character that instructs, cites the maxims of the wise, the precepts of philosophers, or appeals to famous examples from history or mythology."
The passages in which descriptions of Nature, or figures taken from the sights and sounds of Nature's life, occur most frequently are sung by this curious personage; it is to be remembered, however, that, as in the Indian drama, the prominence of Nature is marked quite as much by the use of similes as by actual descriptions. Such a simile, for example, is contained in the very name of the play, Han-koong-tseu, literally, "Autumn in the Palace of Han"—a name translated the "Sorrows of Han," because in Chinese "Autumn" is emblematic of sorrow, just as "Spring" is of joy. Throughout this play, the subject of which is the tragic fate of a Chinese lady, who throws herself into the river Amoor rather than wed the Khan of the Tartars, there breathes an air of autumn delicately in keeping with the simile from Nature just observed in the name. The prominence of Nature in the Chinese drama may indeed be readily conceived from the fact that Chinese critics, dividing the subjects of dramatic composition into twelve classes, specify as the second and ninth of these classes, "Woods, springs, hills, and valleys," and "The wind, the flowers, the snow, the moon." A few illustrations may be selected from the plays of the Youen Collection translated by M. Bazin.[8]
In Tchao-meï-hiang ("A Maid's Intrigues") the following words, partly sung, partly spoken, are put into the mouth of one of the female characters. "With gentle sound our gemmed sashes wave in the wind; how softly trip our little feet like golden creepers o'er the grass! Above, the moon shines brightly as we tread the dark green moss. … Lady, see, how crimson are the flowers; they show like pieces of embroidered silk. Look on the green hues of the willows—afar one might have thought them clouds of mist all balanced in the air. … The flowers and willows seem to sigh at our approach; the breeze, the moon, are fuller still of sympathy; 'tis they that bring to life the varied colours that we love. A poet in such moments of delight might feel constrained to pour out in sweet verse the feelings of his soul. No han-lin by his talent could describe the charms of this fair scene, no painter with rich colours represent them. … The perfumed plants are veiled in floating mist; our lamp throws a still flame within its covering of blue gauze; yonder the willows like green silks are hanging, from whence drip pearls of dew, and fall, like rain of stars, into the limpid pool—gems, one might call them, softly dropped within a crystal basin. And, look, the rising moon shines at the willow’s edge, like that sky-coloured dragon who of old carried the mirror of Hoang-ti."
Other examples of the sentiment of Nature in the same play might be quoted; for example, in the third act Fan-sou sings, "The moon is silvery, the breeze fresh, and the flowers spread out thick clouds of perfume—the moon floats on the water's face; with gentle breeze the willows wave, and veiled in summer mists the palace lies." But we prefer to vary our examples. In the next play translated by M. Bazin, Ho-han-chan, or "The Tunic compared," Tchang-i, the Youen-waï (a title of merchants and proprietors), watching from within his house (known by the sign of the Golden Lion) a fall of snow, partly speaks, partly sings, as follows: "My son, 'tis true the flakes of icy snow are very beautiful. Clouds that look like reddish mists stretch out and mass together from all sides; big snow-flakes whirl and eddy in the air; the north wind blows with fury, and the view loses itself in a silvery horizon. … Now are we just at the season when the cold begins, and go you say the winter comes; but as for me I say it is the spring; if it were otherwise, how could these pear-blossoms be tumbling leaf by leaf? How could the willow-blossoms fly in whirls? The blossoms of the pear-tree crowd together and make a silvered ground; the blossoms of the willow lift themselves skywards like to a waving dress and fall again to earth."[9]
Beside this highly imaginative description of the falling snow, we may place the character of the deceitful courtesan drawn in Ho-lang-tan, or the "Singing Girl," a play detailing the ruin of a Chinese family by a courtesan, and excellently illustrating that inculcation of family virtues to which we shall presently advert as one of the striking characteristics of the Chinese drama. "You love," says the matron Lieou-chi to her husband, who has determined to make a second wife of Tchang-iu-ngo the courtesan, "you love those looks in which the streams of autumn seem to play;[10] you worship those eyebrows painted and delicately arched. But know you not that you ruin your character? Bethink you that this forehead, wearing the splendour of the Fou-yong flower, brings ruin upon households; that this mouth, with its carnation-hues of peach and cherry, devours the souls of men. Her perfumed breath exhales the odours of the clove tree; but much I fear that all her flowers shall scatter, and a whirl of wind bear them away."
Again, the opening verses of Teou-ngo-youen, recited by the lady Tsaï, remind us of those in which so many poets, from Homer to Menander, from Theocritus to Lamartine, have expressed the contrast of Nature's ever-lasting life with man's individual decay and death—a contrast in which the origin of the pastoral elegy of Bion and Moschus, imitated by English poets, from Milton in his Lycidas to Matthew Arnold in his Thyrsis, is to be truly found. The Chinese verses run thus: "We watch the flowers spring ever forth afresh—but man grows young again like them no more. What need to hasten after wealth and rank? Rest and rejoicing are the immortals' lot." The central scene of this play offers a peculiar evidence of the close relations conceived by Chinese mind to exist between human justice and the physical forces of Nature, Teou-ngo, condemned to death by a corrupt judge,[11] is about to be executed on the stage; she forewarns the court of the prodigies which are to prove her innocence, and which remind us of the fire that fell on the prophet's sacrifice, and the three years' drought that came on Israel. "My lord, we still are in that season of the year when painfully men bear excessive heat. 'Tis well! If I be innocent, then shall the heaven let fall, when I shall cease to live, thick flakes of chilling snow to cover o'er the body of Teou-ngo. … Know you why, of old, three years was blessed rain kept from the earth? Because the district of Tong-haï had incurred the just revenge of a woman filled with filial piety. Now it is the turn of your district of Chan-yang. All this comes from the magistrates abandoning justice and humanity. … Clouds that float in the air for me, darken the sky! Winds that murmur and moan for me, whirl down in tempest!" Snow in the heats of summer and a three years’ drought attest the innocence of the unjustly executed Teou-ngo; and if for the epic poet of England the seasons change at the sin of Adam, for the Chinese dramatist they change at the condemnation of the innocent.
Many other examples of this prominence of Nature in the Chinese drama might be cited—for example, the description of the Yellow River in the first act of Si-siang-ki, translated by M. Stanislas Julien; but we shall prefer to observe the same feature in the lyrical drama of Japan. The characters and names of the Japanese plays translated by Mr. Chamberlain, in his Classical Poetry of the Japanese, show want of individual characterisation, and predominence of allegorical or abstract ideas and natural description. In the Robe of Feathers the dramatis personæ are a fairy, a fisherman, and the chorus; in Life is a Dream (an allegorical piece suggestive of Calderon's autos sacramentales) and the Deathstone individuality is likewise wanting. Here, however, we are only concerned with the prominence of Nature in these plays; it may be illustrated by an outline of the Robe of Feathers, as translated by Mr. Chamberlain. The play opens with a long recitative,in which the fisherman and chorus describe the beauties of Miho's pine-clad shore at dawn on a spring morning. The fisherman steps on shore and the action of the piece begins. "As I land on Miho's shore,” says the fisherman, "flowers come fluttering down, strains of music re-echo, and a more than earthly fragrance fills the air. Surely there is something in this." Suddenly he sees a fairy robe hanging from the branches of a pine tree, and determines to take it back with him to the old folks in his village. But now the fairy owner of the robe claims it—without her robe of feathers "never more can she go through the realms of air, never return to her celestial home." The fisherman refuses to restore the robe; and a situation arises reminding us somewhat of Philoctetes and Neoptolemus in the drama of Sophocles. The chorus pity her, and sing, in a spirit full of natural sentiment—
"Clouds, wandering clouds, she yearns and yearns in vain,
Soaring like you to tread the heaven again."
Presently the fisherman relents. On one condition he will restore the robe—that the fairy shall dance one of the fairy dances of which he has heard so much. The fairy consents to dance "the dance that makes the Palace of the Moon turn round," and, singing
"Now the dancing maiden sings,
Robed in clouds and fleecy wings,"
{{dhr]} commences one of those dances which occupy so prominent a place in the Japanese drama. Meanwhile the chorus sings of the cause that "gave the blue realms of air their name of firmament," the fairy now and then joining in their song. The fairy continues dancing to the end of the play, the chorus in imagination watching and describing her disappearance from their sight towards heaven in the following ode, which well deserves a place alongside the descriptive passages of the Indian and Chinese dramas.
"Dance on, sweet maiden, through the happy hours;
Dance on, sweet maiden, while the magic flowers
Crowning thy tresses flutter in the wind,
Raised by the waving pinions intertwined. …
But, ah, the hour, the hour of parting rings!
Caught by the breeze the fairy's magic wings
Heavenward do bear her from the pine-clad shore,
Past Ukishima's widely stretching moor,
Past Ashidaka's heights, and where are spread
Th' eternal snows on Fusiyama's head—
Higher and higher to the azure skies,
Till wandering vapours hide her from our eyes."
It is to be noted how strongly this prominence of Nature distinguishes the Oriental from the Western dramas. The scene of Æschylus' Prometheus Bound lies on the Caucasus, in the midst of that savagely sublime scenery which Lermontoff, the Russian Byron, was to depict in his Demon; but the Athenian dramatist makes no use of the opportunity for description, his own interest and that of his audience being centred on humanity, not physical Nature—a striking contrast to Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, in which we have humanity subordinated to Nature. Again, in the Persians how an Indian dramatist would have delighted in giving a full and graphic description of the Hellespont; in Sophocles' Philoctetes and Œdipus at Colonus, how widely would he have extended the brief notice of the hero's cavern and of the sacred grove! Nor is this domination of human interest by any means confined to the classical drama of the West. Beyond the description of the starry night in the Merchant of Venice, and a few glimpses of Nature such as that of the sea in Lear, we shall find few passages descriptive of Nature in Shakspere's plays, and not many more in the plays of his contemporary dramatists. Moreover, the mysteries and miracle-plays of England, France, and Germany are curiously deficient in description of Nature. The same characteristic is presented by German dramatists, who can by no means be accused of slavishly following Greek models. Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, for example, though elaborated from ideas first roused in the mind of the poet's friend Goethe by Swiss scenery, confines description to the scenic notices at the commencement of each scene—notices which an Indian dramatist would certainly have worked out as poetry in the body of the play, expending, too, his highest art on these very parts which the Western dramatist cannot allow into his drama at all. If we are asked the causes of this marked difference between the dramas of the East and those of the West, we shall be content to name the absence of individuality in the former contrasted with the latter—weak character-drawing being thus supplemented by natural description—and the prominence of town-life in the Western contrasted with that of the village and country in the Eastern civilisation; but to answer the question at all fully would carry us far beyond the limits of the present work.
§ 85. Closely connected with this prevalence of natural description is a vivid realisation of sights and sounds likewise common to the Indian and Chinese theatres. In the Indian play Mrichchhakatí, for example, the following graphic speech is put into the mouth of Karnapúraka. "Only hear. Your ladyship's fierce elephant 'Post-breaker' killed his keeper and broke his chain; he then scoured off along the high-road, making a terrible confusion. The people shouted and screamed, 'Carry off the children, get up the trees, climb the walls; the elephant is coming!' Away went girdles and anklets; and pearls and diamonds were scattered about in all directions. There he was, plunging about in Ujjayin, and tearing everything to pieces with his trunk, his feet, and his tusks, as if the city had been a large tank full of lotus-flowers." Again, every reader of Sakuntalá will remember the graphic description with which that play opens. After the Brahman has pronounced the usual benediction, and the actress, at the manager's request, has sung "the charming strain," the play opens with the forest scene. King Dushmanta, in a chariot, ispursuing an antelope with bow and quiver. "The fleet creature," says the king to his charioteer, "has given us a long chase. Oh! there he runs, with his neck bent gracefully, looking back now and then at the pursuing chariot. Now, through fear of a descending shaft, he contracts his forehand and extends his flexible haunches; and now, through fatigue, he pauses to nibble the grass in his path with half-opened mouth. See, how he springs and bounds with long steps, lightly skimming the ground and rising high in the air." At the king's order the reins are loosened and the chariot driven over the stage, first at full gallop and then gently, the charioteer and the king making speeches descriptive of their rapid imaginary course. "The horses," says the former, "were not even touched by the clouds of dust which they raised; they tossed their manes, erected their ears, and rather glided than galloped over the smooth plain." "Soon," responds Dushmanta, "they outran the swift antelope. Objects which, from their distance, appeared minute, presently became larger; what was really divided seemed united as we passed, and what was in truth bent seemed straight; so swift was the motion of the wheels that nothing for many moments was either distant or near." If space permitted, it might be shown that the Chinese dramatists possess a like talent for graphic description; but we shall prefer to illustrate that neglect of the unities which we have already observed as a common characteristic of Indian epic and dramatic poetry, and which in the Chinese drama is no less marked.
To illustrate the Indian disregard of the temporal unity—in the Toy-cart the time of action is four days; in the Ratnávalí, the same; in the Málati and Mádhava, a few days; and in the Uttara-Rama-Charitra, though the time of each act is that of its representation, an interval of twelve years occurs between the first act and the remainder of the play. The violations of the temporal unity in the Chinese drama are much greater, and that for a special reason. Here didactic purposes have made the dramatist peculiarly fond of historical personages and events; and it is almost needless to say that wherever any form of the historical drama, religious or secular, has prevailed, the temporal unity has been neglected. Thus, in Ho-han-chan, eighteen years elapse between the second and third acts, the unborn infant of the former haying become the young hunter, Tchin-pao, of the latter; in Ho-lang-tan, the third act opens with the words of Youan-yen, "Alas, the days and months glide away with the speed of the arrow," for thirteen years have elapsed since the purchase of the child formally detailed in the second act; and, in Teou-ngo-youen, the father of Teou-ngo says, "'Tis now full sixteen years since I left my daughter"—the event dramatised in the first act. Far from any apologies such as the chorus in Winter's Tale and in Henry V. offers, the Chinese dramatist does not even see the need of always recollecting the lapse of time. In Ho-han-chan, for example, when the old couple are again brought upon the stage (Act. III. sc. vi.), eighteen years have not accustomed them to beggars' habits. Tchang-i is still lamenting his losses as if they had happened but yesterday; both he and his wife are still mendicants fresh at the trade, feeling bitterly "the disgrace of asking alms in the street;" nay, even the snow-flakes are still falling and the winds still roaring as on the dismal day of the conflagration in which he lost his wealth.
Unity of place is equally disregarded by Indian and Chinese dramatists. The vast range of Indian and Chinese life, contrasted with the petty circle of the Greek city commonwealth, prevented fixity of place from being attended to. Thus, to take some Indian examples, in Vikramórvasí the scene of the first act is on the peaks of the Himalayan Mountains, that of the second and third the palace of Parúravas, that of the fourth the forest of Akalusha, while the fifth shifts again to the palace. So in the Uttara-Rama-Charitra the scene of the first act is in the palace of Ráma at Ayodhya, that of the second act in the forest of Janasthána along the Godáverí, while in the rest of the piece the scene lies in the vicinity of Valmíki's hermitage at Bithúr, on the Ganges. To select some Chinese examples, the scenes of the Sorrows of Han shift from the palace of the emperor to the Tartar encampment and the banks of the Amoor; those of Ho-han-chan from the Sign of the Golden Lion to the Yellow River, thence to the house of the brigand Tchin-hou, next to the monastery of Fô, to the pagoda of the Golden Sand, to the valley of Ouo-kong, finally again to the pagoda; and those of Pi-pa-ki constantly change from the capital to the native village of the family whose fortunes form the subject of the piece.
§ 86. But if there are striking resemblances in the Indian and Chinese theatres, such as natural description and the neglect of the unities, there are differences no less striking. We have already referred to the singing personage of the Chinese drama and the didactic purposes to which this character, and indeed the entire play, is applied; and we have contrasted this didactic moralising with the artistic aims of the Indian theatre. This didactic purpose of the Chinese drama tends to prevent profound analysis of individual character and to concentrate attention on the incidents of the story. But there is another and far deeper reason for want of individuality in Chinese plays—the family system upon which the social life of China rests. It might even seem at first glance that the Chinese, like the early Roman, family should have been fatal to the rise of any drama of character. But the old Roman familia, with its patria potestas, children under power, perpetual tutelage of women, presented for a long time more serious obstacles to the development of personal freedom and individuality of character than the Chinese system, modified as it was by the principle of election to public offices as well as by State examination. But, though the Chinese family did not prevent the rise of a drama, it has certainly left its marks deep on almost all Chinese plays. Such marks are to be seen in the constant injunction of family virtues and the limitation of character-drawing to the virtues or vices of family life. To select a few examples, the plot of Tchao-meï-hiang turns upon the proper celebration of marriage rites; that of Ho-han-chan upon the fortunes of a family wrecked by an ungrateful impostor; that of Ho-lang-tan upon the ruin of a family by the intrigues of a courtesan; that of Pi-pa-ki upon the filial devotion of a daughter-in-law in days of famine. Indeed, so perpetually are we reminded of the formal and spiritual presence of the family in Chinese plays, that the dramatis personæ are always careful to announce the name of the family to which they belong. One effect of the Chinese family upon the drama deserves particular attention. The ancestral worship of the family, in which the representation of deceased ancestors by living persons was itself an infant drama, seems to have materialised and familiarised the associations of the spiritual world to a degree we can but faintly realise. The Koueï-men ("Ghosts' Gate") of the Chinese stage—the door through which the ghosts make their entrances and exits—marks the frequent presence of spiritual (but by no means immaterial) personages in the theatre; even amusing parodies on ancestral worship might be quoted—for example, from Act IV. sc. vi. of Ho-han-chan. Indeed, the Chinese dramatist displays an easy familiarity with the world of spirits worthy of the roughest maker of medieval mysteries. The Revenge of Teou-ngo, for example, is a drama in which ghost-life—if we may use such a phrase—is denuded of all that solemn horror which shrouds the Æschylean Darius or the Shaksperian Banquo; even the tragic poets in the Frogs maintain the ghostly proprieties better than Teou-ngo. This is not because the Chinese play intermingles comedy and tragedy, as is usual with the Chinese dramatists; it is because we see the ghost in plain daylight, pleading in a court of justice, arguing its case with consummate coolness, and confronting, nay, actually beating its false accusers. We may look upon the mutilated form of Vergil's Deïphobus—
Ora manusque ambas, populataque tempora raptis
or the scornful face of Farinata degli Uberti—
"Come avesse lo 'nferno in gran dispitto"—
without starting at the materialism of the thought; but this is because we are for the time in Hades, a long way from the upper world. But to imagine the effect of Teou-ngo on our Western stage we must picture Polydorus' ghost accusing Polymêstor in the presence, not only of Hecuba, but a full Athenian court, or "the majesty of buried Denmark" walking arm in arm with Hamlet and even beating the astonished Claudius.
But, if the marks of family life and family worship meet us everywhere in Chinese plays, the social system of caste—a system directly opposed to anything like Chinese election and examination—has left its marks scarcely less distinctly on the Indian drama. Thus, the prologue of the Indian plays (partly imitated in the Vorspiel of Goethe's Faust) is really a piece of religious ceremonial conducted by the Bráhmans, and is without parallel in the thoroughly secular drama of China. The hereditary system of caste has not only led Indian critics to assign minutely the proper characteristics of personages taken from different social grades, but has even left its mark on the language used by the dramatis personæ. Heroes and principal personages speak Sanskrit, while the women and inferior characters use the modifications of that language comprehended under the term Prákrit. "According to the technical authorities," says Professor Wilson, "the heroine and principal female characters speak Saurasení; attendants on royal personages, Mágadhí; servants, Rajputs, and traders, Arddha or mixed Mágadhý. The Vidúshaka, or Buffoon, speaks the Práchí or Eastern dialect; rogues use Avantiká or the language of Ougein;" and altogether, as Professor Wilson himself adds, if these and other directions were implicitly followed, "a Hindu play would be a polyglot that few could hope to understand; in practice, however, we have rarely more than three varieties, or Sanskrit and a Prákrit more or less refined." An interesting example of this appropriation of language to social status may be observed in the second act of the Mudrá Rakshasa. Here Viradhagupta, an agent of Rakshasa, enters disguised as a snake-catcher, and, in keeping with the social status of the character he has for the moment assumed, addresses the passers-by in Prákrit, but when they have gone recovers, as if at one stroke, both his status and his language, and soliloquises in Sanskrit. But the social system of China permits no such attempts to fix the characteristics of dramatis personæ after hereditary models, or to vary their language in accordance with caste. Chinese critics have indeed classified the subjects and characters of their dramas, but the classification does not represent social distinctions. The diction of Chinese plays contains wide differences—the kou-wen or antique style, siao-choué or familiar style, in which dialogue is commonly written, the hiang-tan or patois of the provinces, used in modern pieces and especially in low comedy; but such variations of diction take their origin from the nature of the subject, and are no more connected with a system of caste than the erroneous English of good Mistress Quickly of Eastcheap.
But it is time to close not only our brief comparison of the Chinese and Indian dramas, but the very imperfect review of Chinese and Indian literatures which space has permitted. Constantly reminded of the littleness of individual life by the vast masses of men and women among whom they lived, the makers of Indian and Chinese literatures turned to the life of Nature and to questions of human origin and destiny before which individualism can never maintain itself. To detail the manner in which the castes and village communities of India, the family system and sentiments of China, aided by physical conditions, prevented the growth of that individualised life which has become in Europe the main source of literary as well as scientific ideas, would be a task far beyond the limits of a work like the present. We have merely selected a few specimens from an immense field of inquiry, and rather stated than solved some of the problems they suggest. With one other remark we shall close this inadequate notice of a literary field so boundless in its wealth of interest.
Compare the Indian or Chinese poetry of Nature, dramatic or otherwise, with that of modern Europe, and you discover a striking difference. The cuckoo brings to Wordsworth "a tale of visionary hours"—the recollection of his personal past never to return again—the memory of that "golden time" when the cuckoo's voice was "a mystery," and earth appeared "an unsubstantial fairy place." In the Oriental poetry this passionate sense of personal being is merged in one of social life. Only as a representative of his species does the Indian poet describe the seasons, only as such does the Chinese poet or philosopher describe or speculate. The Oriental knows not that concentrated personal being which looks on Nature as peculiarly connected with itself alone, and is for ever pacing round the haunts of its childhood, "seeking in vain to find the old familiar faces." Individual life, among the castes and village communities of India, or under the family system and paternal government of China, has attained no such social or artistic significance as in the West; and so in the Eastern dramas the face of Nature, too great and eternal to be brought into direct contrast with the ephemeral units of our Western stages, looks out fitly on the castes and families of the East.
Footnotes edit
- ↑ "Veda" is from the same root as "videre," Fείδω, "wit," "wisdom;" for the Bráhmans taught the divine inspiration of the Veda as the "wisdom of God."
- ↑ The Ouranos of Greece.
- ↑ Similar personifications might be easily quoted from our European mystery-plays.
- ↑ From Dr. Legge's Chinese Classics, vol. iv. pt. 2.
- ↑ Crinilus, a name of Krishna, perhaps alluding to his graceful tresses, as Professor Wilson notes. Although descriptive passages such as the above and following are strictly without parallel in the Shaksperian drama, the student of Shakspere will be reminded of the lines in Antony and Cleopatra (Act. IV. sc. xii.):—
"Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish:
A vapour, sometime, like a bear, or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon 't, that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs;
They are black vesper's pageants." - ↑ Introduction to the Sorrows of Han.
- ↑ Théâtre Chinois, Introduction, p. xxx.
- ↑ The Chinese drama is at present known to European readers chiefly through the translations of Sir J. F. Davis, M. Stanislas Julien, and M. Bazin, made from the Youen-jin-pé-tchong, or "Hundred Plays composed under the Youen," princes of Genghis-Khan's famous family. Earliest among European translations from this dramatic anthology came the Orphan of the Tchao Family, made in 1731 by Father Prémare, a Jesuit missionary, and published in 1735. Voltaire, twenty years later, adapted the subject of this Chinese play to the French stage; but three quarters of a century were to elapse before European scholars manifested any zealous interest in the theatre of China. At length the Heir in Old Age and the Sorrows of Han were translated by Sir J. F. Davis; and, in 1832, the History of the Chalk Circle, and (in 1834) a new and full translation of the Orphan of the Tchao Family, were added by M. Julien. But not till 1838 was any considerable knowledge of this Eastern drama placed within reach of European readers. In that year M. Bazin published his Chinese Theatre, which not only contained four plays never before translated, but was accompanied by an excellent preface, describing the general character of the Chinese stage under the Youen dynasty. In 1841 M. Bazin put students of Chinese literature under new obligations by publishing his translation of the Pi-pa-ki. The study of the Chinese drama in Europe does not, however, seem to have made any farther progress.
- ↑ The second act of the same play contains some lines which remind us of Pope's famous simile, so much admired by Johnson, ending—
"Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise."
Tchang-i, in pursuit of his son, sings, "My outlook darkens more and more. The river here is deep, the mountain-heights vanish among the clouds; e'en so, among my grievous sorrows, I am checked by watery wastes and by that limited horizon which robs me of all view."
- ↑ The lustre of beautiful eyes is compared by Chinese novelists to "the pure waters of a fountain in autumn, over which there floats a willow-leaf."
- ↑ The Chinese drama was evidently used occasionally as a vehicle of satire. In the Chalk Circle an unjust judge is also satirized; and in the Pi-pa-ki there is an entire scene parolying the Chinese Official Examinations.