Of the points adduced by Professor Hillebrandt most have clearly no relevance in the argument. The use of Sanskrit and dialects in the classical drama is claimed as a proof of popular origin; as has been explained above, the Prākrit element is due to the fact that the drama contains an essential popular, but also religious, element, the Kṛṣṇa worship. The mixture of prose and song, and the union of both with music and the dance, are as natural on the theory of religious origin as on that of secular derivation. The simplicity of the Indian stage, which knows no arrangements for providing changes of scenery, is certainly no proof of secular origin; the Vedic religion is singularly sparing in any external apparatus, and there is the strongest similarity between its practice to mark out altars for its great sacrifices at pleasure, and to have no regular sacrificial buildings, and the tradition throughout the Sanskrit dramas which neither requires nor needs fixed theatres. The popular origin of the Vidūṣaka is obvious, but the point is whether this origin is religious or secular, and we have seen that the Vedic literature offers us in the Brahmin of the Mahāvrata the prototype, possibly with reminiscences of the Çūdra in the Soma sale, of this figure, a fact admitted by the supporters of the theory of secular origin. It is manifestly unnecessary and illegitimate, when the descent of this figure from the Vedic literature is clear, to insist that it was borrowed directly from popular usage, for which there is no proof, but only conjecture. There remains the argument derived from the fact that the classical drama usually begins with a dialogue between the Sūtradhāra and the Naṭī, who is usually represented as his wife; in this we have, it is said, a reflex of the old popular mime. But an examination of the practice and theory, as found in Bhāsa and the Nāṭyaçāstra, shows that we have no simple or naïve arrangement, but a very elaborate literary device by which the actors bridge over the transition from the preliminaries of the drama to the drama itself. The preliminaries are essentially popular religion, and the detail was left largely in the hands of the Sūtradhāra and his assistants, aided by a chorus of dancers and by musicians; they are doubtless older than the drama, and it was an ingenious and happy device which was invented to carry on the preliminaries, so that the transition to the drama was effective and satisfactory. It is, however, a perversion of all probability to find in this item the trace of a primitive popular secular performance.