The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c18.21

c18.21

Indifference to individuality necessarily meant indifference to action, and therefore to plot, and this lies at the basis of the steady progress by which the dialogue was neglected in favour of the stanzas. The latter express the general; they draw highly condensed, but also often extremely poetical, pictures of the beauty of nature in one of its many aspects, or of the charms of the beloved; or they enunciate the Brahmanical solutions of the problems of life and conduct. In them the individual has no place; the beloved may be described, but she is merely typical. These stanzas appealed to the audience; we have no echo in India of the criticisms which were levelled in Greece against Euripides, for the introduction of sentiments unfitted to his characters and the scenes involved, and we have no hint that Indian theory ever recognized that the drama by the tenth century A.D. was in a state of decadence.