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
The first of these is specially interesting as it represents a type of
which we have otherwise no earlier specimen than the Prabodhacandrodaya
of Kṛṣṇamiçra. We find the allegorical figures of Buddhi, wisdom,
Kīrti, fame, and Dhṛti, firmness, appearing and conversing. This is
followed by the advent of the Buddha himself, adorned with the halo
which he borrowed from Greek art. We do not know whether he appeared
later in actual conversation with the allegorical figures, but for this
mixture of the real and the ideal we have to go beyond Kṛṣṇamiçra, who
represents all his characters as abstract, Viṣṇu for instance by Faith
in Viṣṇu, to Kavikarṇapūra’s glorification of Caitanya in the sixteenth
century, in which allegorical figures are mingled with Caitanya and his
followers, though they do not actually converse together. [157] It must
remain uncertain whether there was a train of tradition leading from
Açvaghoṣa to Kṛṣṇamiçra, or whether the latter created the type of
drama afresh; the former theory is the more likely. The characters all
speak Sanskrit, but the fragments are too short to give us any real
information on the general trend of the play.
The other drama gives us more interesting matter. It is one in which
figures a hetaera named Magadhavatī, a Vidūṣaka named Komudhagandha, a
hero styled only Nāyaka, but probably named Somadatta, a Duṣṭa, rogue,
without further name, a certain Dhānaṁjaya, who may possibly be a
prince if the term ‘king’s son’ (bhaṭṭidālaka), which is recognized in
the Nāṭyaçāstra as the style of the younger princes of the blood,
applies to him, a maid-servant, and Çāriputra and Maudgalyāyana. The
drama was doubtless intended for purposes of religious edification, but
what we have is too fragmentary to do more than show that the author
was possessed of humour and that the Vidūṣaka was already a hungry
soul. The drama alludes to an old garden as the place where part of the
action passed, as in the Mṛcchakaṭikā, and also as in that drama the
house of the hetaera served as the scene of another part of the action.
The characters are often introduced as entering in vehicles
(pravahaṇa), a further point of similarity to that drama, while an
allusion to a Samāja or festival on a hill-top accords with the
frequent reference to such amusements in Buddhist literature. An
obscure character is a person, obviously of lower rank, who is styled
Gobaṁ°.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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