A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s2.20

c7.s2.20

Moreover, the conclusions thus attained are directly supported by the evidence of the drama, in which Brahmins and kings and other persons of high station and education use Sanskrit, while inferior characters employ some form of Prākrit. It has been attempted to argue against this view on the score that the drama was originally in Prākrit, and that Sanskrit was introduced only when it became essentially the general language of culture. But this contention ignores the fact that on one side at least the drama is closely connected with the epic in Sanskrit; Bhāsa, indeed, has one drama without Prākrit, and there is little of it in his other dramas based on the epic. Nor was the Sanskrit unintelligible in early times at least to the audience, which might be one including persons of quite humble rank; the *Nāṭyaçāstra* expressly lays it down that the Sanskrit is to be such as is easily intelligible to every one. The denial that realism was ever aimed at in the use of language by the characters in the drama is negatived by the facts; the Prākrits used by the dramatists show a steady advance from those of Açvaghoṣa through those of Bhāsa to the dialects of Kālidāsa, who introduced to the stage the Māhārāṣṭrī which, earlier unimportant, had won fame in India as the medium of erotic lyric.¹ The evidence of Açvaghoṣa is of special value, for it attests the fact that about A. D. 100 the stage tradition was so firmly in favour of the use of Sanskrit by the persons of the highest rank that he adopted it in his plays despite their Buddhist theme, and despite the fact that the Buddha himself, according to tradition, had forbidden the employment of Sanskrit as the medium for preserving his sayings.²