In this sense we may speak of the drama as having its origin in the Vedic period, but it may be doubted whether anything is gained by such a proposition. Unless the hymns of the Ṛgveda present us with real drama, which is most implausible, we have not the slightest evidence that the essential synthesis of elements and development of plot, which constitute a true drama, were made in the Vedic age. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that it was through the use of epic recitations that the latent possibilities of drama were evoked, and the literary form created. One very important point in this regard has certainly often been neglected. The Sanskrit drama does not consist, as the theory suggests, of song and prose as its vital elements; the vast majority of the stanzas, which are one of its chief features, were recited, not sung, and it was doubtless from the epic that the practice of recitation was in the main derived. Professor Oldenberg [35] admits in fact the great importance of the epic on the development of drama, but it may be more accurate to say that without epic recitation there would and could have been no drama at all. Assuredly we have no clear proof of such a thing as drama existing until later than we have assurance of the recitation of epic passages by Granthikas, as will be seen below. II POST-VEDIC LITERATURE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA 1. THE EPICS The great epic of India, the Mahābhārata, in the whole extent of its older portions, does not recognize in any explicit manner the existence of the drama. [36] The term Naṭa indeed occurs, and, if it meant actor, the existence of the drama would be proved, but it may equally well merely denote pantomimist. This conclusion, moreover, is strongly supported by the strange fact that, if the epic knew the drama, it should never mention any of its characteristics or such a standing character as the Vidūṣaka. There is, what is still more significant, even in the later parts of the epic, such as the Çānti and Anuçāsana Parvans, no clear allusion to the art, for the passage in the Çānti [37] in which Professor Hillebrandt has found an allusion to dramatic artists can perfectly well apply to pantomimes, and in the latter text [38] the passage in which the commentator Nīlakaṇṭha finds comedians and dancers (naṭa-nartakāḥ) yields perfectly good senses as pantomimists and dancers, both occupations there repudiated by Brahmins. To find the drama we are compelled to have recourse to the Harivaṅça, [39] which is a deliberate continuation of the Mahābhārata, and there we have explicit evidence, for we learn of players who made a drama out of the Rāmāyaṇa legend. But this is of no importance for the purpose of determining the date of the drama; the Harivaṅça is of uncertain date, but in all probability, as we have it, it cannot be placed earlier than the second or third century A.D., long after the time when there is no doubt of the existence of a Sanskrit drama.