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The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c20.s1: 1. The Treatises on Dramatic Art

The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c20.s1

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English

1. The Treatises on Dramatic Art

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PĀṆINI, whose date falls doubtless before 300 B.C., alludes in his grammar to the *Naṭasūtras*, books of rules for Naṭas, compiled by Çilālin and Kṛçācva, and Professor Hillebrandt¹ has suggested that we should recognize in these works the earliest text-books of the Indian drama. But we have no other suggestion that Pāṇini knew of dramatic performances, and the only legitimate conclusion is that these rules were laid down for the guidance of dancers or, perhaps, pantomimes, and with this accords admirably the fact that the dramatic tradition knows nothing of these names, and instead makes the sage Bharata the eponymous hero of the drama. True it was Brahmā, highest of gods, himself who, at the instance of the gods, produced as a counterpart to the four Vedas, which contain the science of religion and magic, the more mundane Nāṭya-Veda, consecrated to the drama, but this Veda is not current among men. Bharata, on the other hand, whose task it was to direct the production by the Apsarases in heaven of plays for the delight of the gods and who thus had practical experience of the art, has set forth for men the principles of the drama in the *Nāṭyaçāstra* which, if not inspired, has at least a measure of sanctity, and thus supplies an authoritative basis for practice.

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¹ AID., pp. 3 ff.; above, p. 31.

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The legend is interesting because it precisely interprets the spirit of India towards authority; Bharata occupies in the theory of the drama a place analogous to that of Pāṇini in grammar, but unfortunately the *Nāṭyaçāstra* has fared badly in comparison with the *Aṣṭādhyāyī*, which has, through the care of its commentators, come down to us in a form but little changed from that it assumed in the hands of its author. The work, which we have under the title *Bhāratīya Nāṭyaśāstra*,¹ is extremely badly preserved in the manuscript tradition, a fact due in part to the comparatively late date of any commentary upon it. We have only a few references to an exposition of the *Nāṭyaśāstra* by Mātṛgupta, a somewhat mysterious figure with a more or less legendary connexion with Kālidāsa, with whom he has even been identified;² if we are to place any faith in his contemporaneity with Kālidāsa, he may date from the close of the fourth century A.D. It is significant that tradition makes him for a time king of Kashmir, for it is to that country we owe the commentaries of Caṅkuka, who wrote the epic *Bhuvanābhyudaya* under Ajitāpīḍa (A.D. 813-50), and of Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, who belongs to the period of Caṅkaravarman (A.D. 883-902). In the same line of tradition is the great work of Abhinavagupta, the *Abhinavabhāratī*, which has been lucky enough to come to light after long oblivion, and which represents the erudition of the close of the tenth century.

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¹ Ed. KM. 1894, i-xiv; by J. Grosset, Paris, 1898; xviii-xx, xxxiv in F. Hall's *Daśarūpa*; xv-xvii (xiv-xvi), in Regnaud, *Annales du Musée Guimet*, i and ii; xxviii in Grosset's Contribution à l'étude de la musique hindoue, Paris, 1888; vi and vii in Regnaud, *Rhétorique sanskrite*.

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² Bhau Daji, JBRAS. vi. 218 ff. Lévi (TI. ii. 4) suggests that the *Śāstra* is largely made out of a versified comment on original Sūtras. For various guesses as to Mātṛgupta, cf. JRAS. 1903, p. 570; see Peterson, *Subhāṣitāvali*, p. 89. It is probable that the *Śāstra* is related to an original Sūtra in the same way as the *Kāmandakīya Nītiśāstra* to the *Arthaśāstra*. Cf. S. K. De, SP. i. 27 ff.

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The treatise, as we have it, is elaborate, covering the whole ground connected with the drama. It deals with the architecture of the theatre, the scenery, and the dress and equipment of the actors; the religious ceremonial to be observed at every representation; the music, the dance, the movements and gestures of the actors, and their mode of delivery; the division of rôles; the general characteristics of poetry; the different classes of drama, and the emotions and sentiments which form a vital element in the drama. There is confusion, complexity, and repetition in the work, but that much of it is old cannot be doubted. It appears clearly to be based on the examination of a dramatic literature which has been lost, eclipsed by the more perfect dramas of Kālidāsa and his successors. In the description of classes of drama we seem to have hasty generalizations on insufficient material; the Samavakāra, for instance, is described in terms which, with the precise definition of the time to be occupied by the acts, can be interpreted only as based on a single drama, and the Dima seems to have a similar origin. The elaborate description of the preliminary scene or Pūrvaraṅga, which is practically non-existent in the classical drama, suggests a period of a less cultivated taste. A more definite result may be derived from comparison of the Nāṭyaçāstra with the works of Açvaghoṣa and of Bhāsa. The Prākṛits recognized by the Nāṭyaçāstra are clearly later than those of Açvaghoṣa and more akin to those found in Bhāsa; again the Nāṭyaçāstra recognizes the use of Ardha-Māgadhī, found in these two dramatists, but not later, while, like them, he ignores the Māhārāṣṭrī of the later dramas. Moreover Bhāsa expressly alludes to a Nāṭyaçāstra,¹ and it is most probable that both he and Kālidāsa had knowledge of the prototype of the present text. That Bhāsa by no means slavishly adheres to the rules of the Nāṭyaçāstra, either as regards the formal mode of terminating his dramas or the exclusion of scenes of death from the stage,² merely shows that when he wrote the Çāstra had not attained any binding force. There is nothing to contradict the date thus vaguely indicated,³ for the treatment of poetics in general is simple and early, and it is impossible to draw any conclusion as to date from the remarks on music, apart altogether from the constant possibility that incidental additions and alterations have been made in the work.

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¹ Avimāraka, ii. A treatise on drama is also attributed to him; Arthadyotanikā, 2.

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² That in the Çāstra itself there is contradiction in this regard between x. 83 f. and xviii. 19 f. is shown by Lindenau, BS., p. 34.

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³ Cf. Jacobi, Bhavisattakaha, pp. 83 ff., who suggests the third century; the Prākṛit seems anterior to Māhārāṣṭrī in development; Jacobi suggests Ujjayinī as a possible location in view of the affinity to Māhārāṣṭrī and Çaurasenī. Cf. GIL. iii. 8.

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It was inevitable that the complicated and confused work of Bharata should be superseded for many purposes by something more accessible and easy to follow, and this need was supplied by the Dāçarūpa of Dhanaṃjaya, son of Viṣṇu, and protégé of the ill-fated king Muñja of Dhārā (974-95). The work takes its name from the ten primary forms of drama recognized in the Nāṭyaçāstra, which is followed closely by Dhanaṃjaya, his deviations being unimportant and trivial, such as a new division of types of heroine or of the erotic sentiment. On the other hand, Dhanaṃjaya omits by far the greater part of the topics of his model; his four books of wooden verses treat first of the subject-matter and plot; then of the hero, the heroine, and other characters, and the language of the drama; thirdly of the prologue and the different kinds of drama; and lastly of the emotions and sentiments, thus concentrating attention on the essential dramatic features. The text is naturally often unintelligible save in the light of the *Nāṭyaśāstra* itself and of the commentary, *Avaloka*, which is ascribed to Dhanika, son of Viṣṇu, and minister of Utpaladeva, a term which is an alias of Muñja. The identity of the two writers is suggested by the fact that later writers ascribe passages of the *Daçarūpa* itself to Dhanika, and that without the commentary the work is in a sense incomplete. But, on the other hand, in a few passages the commentator more or less distinctly differs from the text, and it seems sufficient to assume that they may have been brothers. The *Avaloka* must have been completed after Muñja’s death, since it cites Padmagupta’s *Navasāhasāṅkacarita*, which was written under Sindhurāja, and this throws some doubt on the identification of Dhanika with the Dhanika Paṇḍita to whose son, Vasantācārya, a land grant was made by Muñja in A.D. 974. Dhanika quotes stanzas of his own in Sanskrit and Prākṛit and also a treatise, *Kāvyanirṇaya*, elsewhere unknown.¹

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¹ Ed. F. Hall, Calcutta, 1865; trs. G. C. O. Haas, New York, 1912. Jacobi (GGA. 1913, p. 301) presses for the identity of the writers, but the difference of the name is fatal.

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Of the fourteenth century in all probability are three works of unequal importance and merit. The *Pratāparudrīya*² of Vidyānātha is a mediocre compilation from the *Daçarūpa* and the *Kāvyaprakāça* of Mammaṭa, covering the whole field of poetics; it illustrates the formal rules of the drama by the composition of a wretched drama in honour of Pratāparudra of Warangal, whose inscriptions show dates from A.D. 1298 to 1314. Of much greater interest is Vidyādhara’s *Ekāvalī*;³ like Vidyānātha, the author celebrates in his illustrations of his text his patron, in this case Narasiṃha II of Orissa, perhaps A.D. 1280–1314; as a poet his merits are negligible, but he shows a lively interest in his subject and intelligence in his views. Of greater popularity than either is Viçvanātha Kavirāja, the author of the *Sāhityadarpaṇa*,¹ a general treatise on poetics. His handling of the drama is based largely on the *Daçarūpa* and its commentary, but he introduces a good deal of matter from the *Nāṭyaçāstra* in his sixth chapter, including details of the characteristics and ornaments of the drama, which the *Daçarūpa* omits. In this Viçvanātha indicates his servile character, which, however, renders his work the more valuable as an exposition of the orthodox doctrine. Of his ancestry and his own works he makes free mention, but the most definite evidence of his date is the existence in the library at Jammu of a manuscript of his work whose date appears to be A.D. 1383. The lack of order and the errors in his work are made the basis of criticism by Rūpa Gosvāmin in the early part of the sixteenth century, but his own *Nāṭakacandrikā* shows little improvement on the work of his predecessor, whence it draws much of its material; its real purpose is to eulogize the saint Caitanya, whose disciple Rūpa was and in whose honour he composed dramas of no merit. Equally dependent on Viçvanātha and the *Daçarūpa* is Sundaramiçra, whose *Nāṭyapradīpa* was composed in A.D. 1613. Many other treatises on drama are known by name or exist in manuscript, but none apparently of any great importance or repute. Of the fourteenth century also is the *Rasārṇavasudhākara*² of Ciṅga Bhūpala, lord of Rājācala and the land between the Vindhya and Çriçaila about A.D. 1330, who cites Vidyādhara.

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² Ed. K. P. Trivedi, Bombay, 1909.

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³ Ed. K. P. Trivedi, Bombay, 1903 cf. R. G. Bhandarkar, *Report* (1897) pp. lxviii f.

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¹ Ed. BI. with trs., 1851-75; in part by P. V. Kane, Bombay, 1910.

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² Ed. TSS. no. L, 1916. It freely uses the *Daçarūpa*. Cf. Seshagiri, *Report for 1896-97*, pp. 7 ff. Many verses by the author are cited.

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The development of a theory of drama progressed in the closest relation to the general theory of poetics, for the Indian theory of poetry does not admit any distinction in essence between the aesthetic pleasure produced by the drama and any other form of poetry. Thus we find in Abhinavagupta in full application to the drama the theory of suggestion, Dhvani, as the essence of poetry, which appeared in strength about A.D. 800 and was rendered popular by Ānandavardhana (A.D. 850) and by Abhinavagupta himself in his comment on the *Dhvanyāloka* of the former. Attacked by Mahiman Bhaṭṭa, author of the *Vyaktiviveka* (A.D. 1050), the doctrine was again developed with special care by the Kashmiriān Mammaṭa¹ at the close of the eleventh century. In slightly varied forms it appears in Vidyānātha, Vidyādhara, and Viçvanātha.

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¹ For the authorship of the Kāvyaprakāça see Hari Chand, Kālidāsa, pp. 103 ff.

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Apart from this important development, which, however, has no special application to the drama, there is little progress in the course of the literature. The later authorities are bound by the authority of the Nāṭyaçāstra; they repeat unintelligently its descriptions of literary forms such as the Dima, the Samavakāra, the Ihāmṛga, the Vīthī, and the Aṅka, which had ceased to be in popular use, if indeed the definitions of the Nāṭyaçāstra were not merely hasty generalizations from a single play or so in every one of these cases. The most that they do is to omit or to vary details, but not in independence; normally the changes can be traced to variants in the text of the Çāstra or to maxims current under Bharata’s name, though not included in the Çāstra as we have it. Often the authors differ in the definition of terms in the Çāstra which, as often in Sanskrit technical phrases, present ambiguity and admit of various renderings. These divergences are especially frequent in the long lists of characteristics and ornaments or the different means of effecting dramatic results; the Indian love of meaningless subdivision here can indulge itself to its fullest and least profitable extent. A rich variety of such ambiguities is apparent in the verses in which the Agni Purāṇa² describes the drama, including dancing and the mimetic art, true to its aim to constitute itself a treasure-house of all learning, popular as well as divine. The chief value of the work is the occasional light which it throws on the variants in the text of the Çāstra, and its comparative antiquity, for it is cited in the Sāhityadarpaṇa and is probably some centuries older.

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² cc. 337-41. On Dhvani see Keith, Sansk. Lit. ch. x.

Cites (18)