That form, from the express mention of the subjects of the dramatic exhibitions, we may deduce to have been of the nature of a religious drama. It is difficult not to see in the Kaṅsavadha, the death of Kaṅsa at the hands of Kṛṣṇa, the refined version of an older vegetation ritual in which the representative of the outworn spirit of vegetation is destroyed. Colour is given to this theory by the remarkable fact that in one reading the partisans of the young Kṛṣṇa are red in hue, those of Kaṅsa are black. Now as Kṛṣṇa’s name indicates black, it would be almost inevitable that the original attribution of red to his followers should be corrected by well-meaning scribes to black, and this explains effectively the transposition found in the bulk of the manuscripts. In the red hue of Kṛṣṇa’s supporters as against the black of those of Kaṅsa we probably have a distinct reminiscence of another side of the slaying of the vegetation spirit. [63] The contest is often presented as one between summer and winter, and we have seen in the Mahāvrata what is probably a primitive form of this contest; the white Vaiçya fights with the black Çūdra for the sun, and attains possession of its symbolical form. The red of Kṛṣṇa’s following then proclaims him as the genius of summer who overcomes the darkness of the winter. With this view accords most interestingly the theory of the origin of the Greek drama from a mimic conflict of summer and winter, as developed by Dr. Farnell. [64] In the legend of the conflict between the Boiotian Xanthos and the Neleid Melanthos we hear that at the moment of conflict Melanthos descried a form beside his foe, whom he taunted with bringing a friend to aid him. Xanthos turned round, and Melanthos slew him. The form was that of Dionysos Melanaigis, and for his intervention the Athenians rewarded him by admission to the Apatouria, the festival of deceit. Thus the black Melanthos with the aid of Dionysos of the black goatskin slays the fair; the dark winter destroys the light of summer. Even in modern times in Northern Thrace [65] is celebrated a popular festival in which a man clad in a goatskin is hailed as king, scatters seed over the crowd—obviously to secure fertility—and ultimately is cast into the river, the usual fate for the outworn spirit of vegetation. In a similar mummery performed near the ancient Thracian capital there is a band of mummers, clad in goatskins, of whom one is killed and lamented by his wife. It is natural to deduce hence that tragedy had its origin in a primitive passion-play performed by men in goatskins, in which an incarnation of a divine spirit was slain and lamented, whence the dirge-like nature of the Greek drama.