From the Caves and Jungles of HindostanBlavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Religion
From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna), 1831-1891; India -- Description and travel; India -- Religion
Still, if you consider seriously, what are we to say when Science, in
the person of Darwin, concedes this hypothesis to the wisdom of ancient
Aryas. We must perforce submit. And, really, it is better to have for a
forefather Hanu-man, the poet, the hero, the god, than any other monkey,
even though it be a tailless one. Sita-Rama belongs to the category
of mythological dramas, something like the tragedies of Aeschylus.
Listening to this production of the remotest antiquity, the spectators
are carried back to the times when the gods, descending upon earth, took
an active part in the everyday life of mortals. Nothing reminds one of
a modern drama, though the exterior arrangement is the same. "From the
sublime to the ridiculous there is but a step," and vice versa. The
goat, chosen for a sacrifice to Bacchus, presented the world tragedy
(greek script here). The death bleatings and buttings of the quadrupedal
offering of antiquity have been polished by the hands of time and of
civilization, and, as a result of this process, we get the dying
whisper of Rachel in the part of Adrienne Lecouvreur, and the fearfully
realistic "kicking" of the modern Croisette in the poisoning scene of
The Sphinx. But, whereas the descendants of Themistocles gladly receive,
whether captive or free, all the changes and improvements considered
as such by modern taste, thinking them to be a corrected and enlarged
edition of the genius of Aeschylus; Hindus, happily for archaeologists
and lovers of antiquity, have never moved a step since the times of our
much honoured forefather Hanuman.
We awaited the performance of Sita-Rama with the liveliest curiosity.
Except ourselves and the building of the theatre, everything was
strictly indigenous and nothing reminded us of the West. There was not
the trace of an orchestra. Music was only to be heard from the stage,
or from behind it. At last the curtain rose. The silence, which had been
very remarkable before the performance, considering the huge crowd
of spectators of both sexes, now became absolute. Rama is one of the
incarnations of Vishnu and, as most of the audience were worshippers of
Vishnu, for them the spectacle was not a mere theatrical performance,
but a religious mystery, representing the life and achievements of their
favourite and most venerated gods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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