I witnessed part of a dramatic performance at a Burmese Theatre in Calcutta (during the Exhibition year), when the story of the Hindū Epic, called Rāmāyaṇa, and especially that portion of it which relates to the carrying off of Sītā by demons (see ‘Brāhmanism and Hindūism,’ p. 42, and ‘Indian Wisdom,’ p. 337), was dramatically represented. The theatre was a rude wooden enclosure open to the sky, with the exception of a portion roofed over for a band of musicians, whose noisy performances appeared to constitute an important element in the proceedings. The chief musician sat on the ground in the middle of a circular frame-work—about two or three feet high—hung round with drums of different sizes, which he struck with his hands, and occasionally tuned by the application of moist clay in larger or smaller lumps. In the centre of the open area of flat dusty soil which served for the stage, a big branch of a tree was stuck upright, possibly to represent the forest in which Rāma lived with his wife. Then the hero and heroine of the drama—Rāma and Sītā—kept up a tedious colloquy, interspersed with jokes, for hours. The former—who, be it remembered, was supposed to be a god—smoked a cigar all the while, and occasionally ejected saliva with perfect indifference to all appearances and to all laws of congruity, while every now and again Sītā, in spite of a tight dress, varied the monotony of the dialogue by executing a slow dance, characterized by strange contortions, twistings, and wrigglings of the limbs. Hideous masks were at intervals assumed by the actors, and, of course, by the demons who intervened at odd moments with much ludicrous gesticulation. The action of the play went on continuously for about ten days, during which period people came and went as they liked, and the last comers entered into the progress of the plot with as much interest as if they had witnessed the whole. There is never much originality of invention in these religious plays. The Indian heroic poems and the five hundred and fifty birth-stories (see p. 63) of the Buddha furnish the basis of all. The religious dramas of Tibet are of a somewhat different character. The following description is founded on Dr. Schlagintweit’s account (p. 233), and on that of Mrs. Bridges in her interesting ‘Travels’ (John Murray, 1883, p. 130).