miles gloriosus is by no means small, but the argument from borrowing is refuted by the reflexion that such a figure can be explained perfectly easily from the actual life of India in the period of Bhāsa and the Mṛcchakaṭikā, when mercenary soldiers must have been painfully familiar to Indians. The number of actors is certainly not in accord with the Greek practice; not only has Bhāsa large numbers, but the Çakuntalā has thirty, the Mṛcchakaṭikā twenty-nine, the Vikramorvaçī eighteen, the Mudrārākṣasa twenty-four, and it is only in the later and less inventive Bhavabhūti that we find but thirteen in the Mālatīmādhava and eleven in the Uttararāmacarita. The prologue in both dramas serves the purpose of announcing the author’s name, the title of the play, and the desire of the dramatist for a sympathetic reception, but the Indian prologue is closely attached to the preliminaries, and has a definite and independent character of its own in the conversation between the Sūtradhāra and his wife, the chief actress, so that borrowing is out of the question. Nor does any importance attach to the fact that Çiva, who is in a special sense the patron of drama, is the nearest Indian representative of Dionysos, or that the time of the festival at which plays were often shown was spring, as in the case of the Great Dionysia at Athens when new plays were usually presented. There is similarity between the Protagonist and the Sūtradhāra, for both undertake the leading parts in the drama, but this and other minor points such as can be adduced are of no value as proofs of historical connexion. Windisch admitted that in regard to the theatrical buildings there was no possibility of comparison, as the Indian theatre was not permanent, but Bloch [132] has endeavoured to show that the Sītābengā cave theatre has marked affinities to the Greek. The attempt, however, is clearly a failure; the construction of the whole is merely that of a small amphitheatre cut out in the rock for a small audience without any special similarity to the Greek theatre of any period. More recently the tendency of those who seek to find Greek influence in the making of the Sanskrit drama has turned to the mime as the form of art which exercised influence on India, and the older arguments of Windisch have been given a new shape and in part strengthened in this regard. [133] The mime was performed without masks and buskins, as was the Indian drama. Moreover the mime, at any rate in Roman hands, had a curtain (siparium), which may be compared with the curtain of India. There was also no scene painting in the mime; different dialects were used, and the number of actors was considerable. Further, some of the standing types of the mime may be paralleled in the Indian drama; the zēlotypos has some similarity to the Çakāra, the mōkos to the Vidūṣaka.