The scenes which the magician describes to the king in the Ratnāvalī were doubtless left to the imagination of the audience, just as was the apparent fire which burned the inner apartments and enveloped the princess. To believe in realism in these cases runs contrary to the stage directions of the play itself. From the name Çaubhika, with its Prākrit equivalent Sobhiya, nothing whatever can be made out; the word has no relation to shadows and is never explained by any authority in that sense. We are left, therefore, with the evidence to be derived from the term Chāyānāṭaka, which is interpreted by Pischel as a ‘shadow-drama’, and is applied to several dramas, among which the oldest which can be dated with sufficient certainty is the Dūtān̄gada of Subhaṭa in the thirteenth century A.D. The exact meaning of the term is uncertain, as it might denote a ‘drama in the state of a shadow’, and this would accord perfectly with the Dūtān̄gada itself. That such a drama was a shadow-drama is best supported by the Dharmābhyudaya of Meghaprabhācārya, [108] which is styled a Chāyānāṭyaprabandha, and in which a definite stage direction is found directing that, when the king expresses his intention to become an ascetic, a puppet is to be placed inside the curtain in the attire of an ascetic. But the date of this play is uncertain, and it is extremely difficult to argue with any certainty from it to the Dūtān̄gada; why, it is inevitable to ask, should the latter play contain no stage direction of this kind? We know that the shadow-drama arose in some part of India, for Nīlakaṇṭha recognizes it, but we have no evidence that it existed at the time of the Dūtān̄gada.