The Sanskrit drama : $b in its origin, development, theory and practiceKeith, Arthur Berriedale
History
The Sanskrit drama : $b in its origin, development, theory and practice
Keith, Arthur Berriedale
Sanskrit drama -- History and criticism
A specific connexion between the Çakas and the creation of
drama may be seen in the terminology of the Nāṭyaçāstra, and that of
their inscriptions. Rudradāman refers to his grandfather Caṣṭana as
Svāmin and Sugṛhītanāman, and Svāmin is freely used in the epigraphic
records of the kings of the line from Nahapāna (A.D. 78) onwards.
Further Rudrasena in A.D. 205, in referring to his royal ancestors,
Caṣṭana, Jayadāman, Rudradāman, and Rudrasena, gives them the epithet
of Bhadramukha, ‘of gracious countenance’. These terms, Lévi argues,
correspond with the use laid down in the Nāṭyaçāstra, which must have
borrowed from contemporary official usage. Further, Rudradāman uses the
term Rāṣṭriya as applying to Puṣyagupta, who under Candragupta, the
Maurya, some four and a half centuries earlier established the
reservoir which he had repaired, and this term occurs in the Çakuntalā
and the Mṛcchakaṭikā in the sense of brother-in-law of the king, the
sense given to it in the Amarakoça, the earliest Sanskrit lexicon of
established authority. To these considerations may be added that
Ujjayinī, the capital of the Western Kṣatrapas of Mālava, is a centre,
round which as a fan radiate the three great literary Prākrits of the
drama, Çaurasenī, Māgadhī, and Māhārāṣṭrī, thus accounting for their
use, which else would be difficult to explain.
Lévi’s suggestion, which was accompanied by an admission that the
Mṛcchakaṭikā or its source was older than he had formerly argued, and
that the possibility of Greek influence was thus increased, has been
accepted by Professor Konow [136] with the important modification that
in face of the fact that the oldest dramas known to us, the fragments
of Açvaghoṣa and those of Bhāsa, ignore Māhārāṣṭrī and that Çaurasenī
is the normal prose tongue, he accepts Mathurā as the home of the
drama, and ascribes it to about the middle of the first century A.D.
This view he supports by the fact that the rulers of Mathurā were also
Çaka Kṣatrapas, or Satraps, whose control extends back at least to the
beginning of the first century A.D.
It may be feared that neither theory will stand critical investigation,
however tempting it may be to obtain an exact date for the Sanskrit
drama. The discovery of Açvaghoṣa’s fragments shows that the drama has
already attained a very definite and complete form, and we really
cannot with any probability assume that the creation of drama preceded
this by no more than a century. Even a century, however, brings us
further back than the middle of the first century A.D., for Konow’s
date of Kaniṣka, about A.D. 150, [137] is probably considerably too
late, and should be placed fifty years earlier at least. We are thus
separated from Rudradāman by a period of 150 years, probably more, and
the theory that the Western Kṣatrapas introduced Sanskrit into the
drama falls hopelessly to the ground on chronological considerations
alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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