From these rustic festivals originated the Satyr, or Satirical Drama, as did its Italian prototype, the _Fabulae Atellanae_ or, _Laudi Osci_. These rural sacrifices became, in process of time, a solemn fast, and assumed all the pomp and splendour of a religious ceremony; poets were employed by the magistrate to compose hymns, or songs, for the occasion; such was the rudeness and simplicity of the age that their bards contended for a prize, which, as Horace intimates, was scarce worth contending for, being no more than a goat or skin of wine, which was given to the happy poet who acquitted himself best in the task assigned him. From such small beginnings Tragedy and Comedy took their rise; and like (as the best writers on these subjects tell us) every other production of human art, extremely contemptible; that wide and deep stream, which flows with such strength and rapidity through cultivated Greece, took its rise from a small and inconsiderable fountain, which hides itself in the recesses of antiquity, and is almost buried in oblivion; the name alone remains to give us some light into its original nature, and to inform us, that Tragedy and Comedy, like every other species of poetry, owe their birth to Religion. Appropriately does Horace observe:-- "Nor was the flute at first with silver bound, Nor rivalled emulous the trumpet's sound; Few were its notes, its forms were simply plain, Yet not unuseful was its feeble strain, To aid the chorus, and their songs to raise, Filling the little theatre with ease, To which a thin and pious audience came Of frugal manners, and unsullied fame." CHAPTER III. The origin of the Indian Drama--Aryan Mythology--Clown and Columbine--Origin of the Chinese Drama--Inception of the Japanese Drama--The Siamese Drama--Dramatic performances of the South Sea Islanders, Peruvians, Aztecs, Zulus, and Fijis--The Egyptian Drama. Of the Indian Drama we learn that the union of music, song, dance, and Pantomime took place centuries ago B.C., at the festivals of the native gods, to which was afterwards added dialogue, and long before the advent, out of which it grew, of the native drama itself. The progenitors of the Indo-European race, the Aryans--in Sanscrit meaning Agriculturists--who crossed the Indus from Amoo, where they dwelt near the Oxus, some two thousand years before Christ, were the original ancestors and people of India. The Aryan race (Hindus and Persians only speak of themselves as Aryans) laid the foundation of the Grecian and Roman Mythology, the dark and more sombre legends of the Scandinavian and the Teuton; and all derived from the various names grouped round the Sun god, which in the lighter themes the Aryans associated with the rising and the setting of the sun, in all its heavenly glory, and with the sombre legends the coming of the winter, and marking the difference between lightness and darkness.