Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/419

1KDIAX.J DRAMA 399 tion (ndndi), followed by " some account " of the author, and by an introductory scene between the manager and one of the actors, which is more or less skilfully connected with the opening of the play itself. This is divided into acts (ankas) and scenes ; of the former a nalaka should have not fewer than 5, or more than 10 ; 7 appears a common number; " the great nalaka reaches l<i. Thus the length of the higher class of Indian plays is considerable about that of an JEschyleau trilogy; but not more thaua single play was ever performed on the same occasion. Comic plays are restricted to tw r o acts (here called sandhis). In theory the scheme of au Indian drama corresponds very closely to the general outline of dramatic construction given above ; ues and it is a characteristic merit that the business is rarely con- lations. eluded before the last act. The piece closes, as it began, with a benediction or prayer. Within this framework room is found for situations as ingeniously devised and highly wrought as those in any modern Western play. What could be mure pitiful than the scene in Sdkuntald, where the true wife appears before her husband, whose remembrance of her is fatally overclouded by a charm ; what more terrific than that in Mdlati and Mddhava, where the lover rescues his beloved from the horrors of the charuel -field 1 Re cognition especially between parents and children fre quently gives rise to scenes of a pathos which Euripides has not surpassed. 1 The ingenious device of a " play within the play " (so familiar to the English drama) is employed with the utmost success by Babhavuti. 2 On the other hand, miraculous metamorphosis 3 and, in a later play, 4 vulgar magic lend their aid to the progress of the action. With scenes of strong effectiveness contrast others of the most delicate poetic grace such as the indescribably lovely little episode of the two damsels of the god of love helping one another to pluck the red and green bud from the mango tree ; or of gentle domestic pathos such as that of the courtesan listening to the prattle of her lover s child, one of the prettiest scenes of a kind rarely kept free from affectation in the modern drama. For the denouement in the narrower sense of the term the Indian dramatists largely resort to the expedient of the deus ex machina, often in a sufficiently literal sense. 5 raeters. Every species of drama having its appropriate kind of hero or heroine, theory here again amuses itself with an infinitude of subdivisions. Among the heroines are to be noticed the courtesans, whose social position to some extent resembles that of the Greek hetcerce, and association with whom does not seem in practice, however it may be in theory, to be regarded as a disgrace even to Brahmans. 6 In general, the Indian drama indicates relations between the sexes subject to peculiar restraints of usage, but freer than those which Mahometan example seems to have introduced into higher Indian society. The male characters are frequently drawn with skill, and some times with genuine force. Prince Samsthanaka 7 is a type of selfishness born in the purple worthy to rank beside figures of the modern drama, of which this has at times naturally been a favourite class of character; elsewhere 8 the intrigues of ministers are not more fully exposed than their characters and principles of action are judiciously dis criminated. Among the lesser personages common in the Indian drama, two are worth noticing, as corresponding though by no means precisely to familiar types of other dramatic literatures. These are the vitd, the accomplished but dependent companion (both of men and women), and the vidushaka, the humble associate (not servant) of the 1 Sdkuntald; Uttara-Jidma-Charitra. 2 lb., act vii. Vikrama and Urvdsi, act iv. 4 JRatndvali. 6 Vikrama and Urvdsi: Arichandra; Ndgdnanda. 6 Mfichchhakati. ? /&. 8 Mudrd-Rakshasa. prince, and the buffoon of the action. 9 Strangely enough, he is always a Brahman, or the pupil of a Brahman. His humour is to be ever intent on the pleasures of a quiet life, and on that of eating in particular ; his jokes are always devoid of both harm and point. Thus, clothing itself in a diction always ornate and Diction, tropical, in which (as lliickert has happily expressed it) the prose is the warp aud the verse the weft ; in which (as Goethe says) words become allusions, allusions similes, and similes metaphors, the Indian drama essentially depended upon its literary qualities, and upon the familiar sanctity of its favourite themes, for such effect as it was able to produce. Of scenic apparatus it knew but little ; the simple devices Scenery by which exits and entrances were facilitated it is unneces- ail( i cas - sary to describe, and on the contrivances it resorted to for tume - such "properties" as were required (above all, the cars of the gods and of their emissaries) 10 it is useless to speculate. Propriety of costume, on the other hand, seems always to have been observed, agreeably both to the peculiarities of the Indian drama and to the habits of the Indian people. The ministers of an art practised under such conditions Actors, could not but be regarded with respect, and spared the con tempt or worse, which, except among one other great civilized people, the Greeks, has everywhere at one time or another been the actor s lot. Companies of actors seem to have been common in India at an early date, and the inductions show the players to have been regarded as respectable members of society. In later if not in earlier times individual actors enjoyed a widespread reputation, " all the world " is acquainted with the talents of Kalaha- Kandala. 11 The directors, as already stated, were usually Brahmans. Female parts were in general, though not invariably, represented by females. One would like to know whether such was the case in a piece 12 where after the fashion of more than one Western play a crafty minister passes off his daughter as a boy, on which assumption she is all but married to a person of her own sex. The Indian drama would, if only for purposes of com- Summar parison, be invaluable to the student of this branch of literature. But from the point of view of purely literary excellence it holds its own against all except the very fore most dramas of the world. It is, indeed, a mere phrase to call Kaliddsa the Indian Shakespeare a title which, more over, if intended as anything more than a synonym for poetic pre-eminence, might fairly be disputed in favour of Babhavuti ; while it would be absolutely misleading to place a dramatic literature, which, like the Indian, is the mere quintessence of the culture of a caste, by the side of one which represents the fullest development of the artistic consciousness of a people such as the Hellenes. The Indian drama cannot be described as national in the broadest and highest sense of the word ; it is, in short, the drama of a literary class, though as such it exhibits many of the noblest and most refined, as well as of the most characteristic, features of Hindu religion and civilization. The ethics of the Indian drama are of a lofty character, but they are those of a scholastic system of religious philosophy, self-conscious of its completeness. To the power of Fate is occasionally ascribed a "supremacy, to winch gods as well as mortals must bow ; 13 but if man s present lifs is merely a phase in the cycle of his destinies, the highest of moral efforts at the same time points to the summit of possibilities, and self-sacrifice is the supreme condition both of individual perfection and of the progress of the world. Such conceptions as these seem at once to 9 Sdkuntald; Ntigdnanda. 10 Sdkuntald, acts vi. and vii.; Mdlati and Mddhava, act v. 11 Induction to Anargha-lldghava .

12 Viddha-Salabhanjika. " Vikrama and Urva&l.