of dramatic composition originally laid down in the great compendium of Hindu dramatic science, the Bhāratīyanāṭyaśāstra. That monumental work, although regarded as authoritative and even invested by tradition with the character of semidivine revelation, was altogether too cumbersome for ordinary use and had the additional disadvantages of diffuse style and a somewhat unsystematic arrangement. From the point of view of the dramatist, particularly, it was unsatisfactory, since the purely dramaturgic portions were submerged, so to speak, in a mass of histrionic and general prescriptions. The author of the Daśarūpa accordingly aims, as he himself says, to restate the principles of dramaturgy in more concise and systematic form.[1] He not only professes great reverence for the rules of Bharata,[2] but actually adheres for the most part to the terminology and definitions attributed to the venerated sage. Dhanaṃjaya has a somewhat different classification of heroines (DR. 2. 24), and in his treatment of the Erotic Sentiment (DR. 4. 58, etc.) he introduces a new distinction (which, it may be noted in passing, apparently found no favor, for it is ignored by all the later authorities). At 3. 48, after quoting (though without indication of source) part of the definition of the nāṭikā given in Bh., he ventures to modify it in the direction of greater latitude. The other variations between the two works are not of any special significance and are few in number.[3]
The excellence of Dhanaṃjaya’s presentation and its convenient form gave the Daśarūpa a prominence that it has retained to the present day. As a compact exposition of the dicta of the Bhāratīyanāṭyaśāstra, it largely superseded that work, manuscripts of which are consequently extremely rare, and it so completely supplanted such dramaturgic treatises as existed previous
- ↑ Cf. DR. 1. 4 d: kiṃ cit praguṇaracanayā lakṣaṇaṃ saṃkṣipāmi.
- ↑ Cf. DR. 1. 4 c: pratipadam aparaṃ lakṣma kaḥ kartum īṣṭe.
- ↑ The chief points to be noted, with the sections of DR. concerned, are: variations in terminology: 1. 31, 79, 80, 96, 107, 120; 2. 80, 86; divergencies in definition: 1. 41, 48, 50, 102; difference in term and definition: 1. 85, 92; omission of a term in DR.: 1. 80. See my notes on these sections.
