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The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c6.s1: 1. The Indian Tradition of the Origin of the Drama

The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c6.s1

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English

1. The Indian Tradition of the Origin of the Drama

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INDIAN tradition, preserved in the *Nāṭyaçāstra*,¹ the oldest of the texts of the theory of the drama, claims for the drama divine origin, and a close connexion with the sacred Vedas themselves. The golden age had no need for such amusements: ignorant of all pain, the sorrow, which is as essential to the art as joy itself, was inconceivable. The creation of the new form of literature was reserved to the silver age, when the gods approached the all-father and bade him produce something to give pleasure to the ears and eyes alike, a fifth Veda which, unlike the other four, would not be the jealous preserve of the three twice-born castes, but might be shared by the Çūdras also. Brahmā gave ear to the pleading, and designed to fashion a Veda in which tradition (*itihāsa*) should be combined with instruction in all the ends of men. To accomplish his task he took from the *Ṛgveda* the element of recitation, from the *Sāmaveda* song, from the *Yajurveda* the mimetic art, and from the *Atharvaveda* sentiment. Then he bade Viçvakarman, the divine architect, build a playhouse in which the sage Bharata was instructed to carry into practice the art thus created. The gods accepted with joy the new creation; Çiva contributed to it the Tāṇḍava dance, expressing violent emotion, Pārvatī, his spouse, the tender and voluptuous Lāsya, while Viṣṇu was responsible for the invention of the four dramatic styles, essential to the effect of any play. To Bharata fell the duty of transferring to earth this celestial Veda in the inferior and truncated form of the *Nāṭyaçāstra*.

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¹ i. 2 ff.

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The legend is interesting for its determination to secure the participation of every member of the Hindu Trinity in the creation of the new art, and for its effort to claim that the fifth Veda of tradition was the Veda of the dramatic art. The older tradition, recorded and exploited by the epic,¹ recognizes as the fifth Veda the mass of traditions, and the Nāṭyaśāstra tacitly concedes this by representing the Nāṭyaveda as including these traditions. The legend, therefore, is not of great antiquity, nor need we place it long before the compilation of the Nāṭyaśāstra itself. The date of that text is uncertain, but we cannot with any assurance place it before the third century A.D. With the Indian tendency to find divine origins, it may well be that the tradition existed much earlier, but in the absence of any corroboration that must remain a mere hypothesis, for which no conclusive ground can be adduced. What is important is that none of the theorists on the drama appeal to any Vedic texts as representing dramas, whence it is natural to draw the conclusion that there was no Indian tradition extant in their time which pointed to the preservation among the sacred texts of dramas. Indeed, if it were worth while, the conclusion might legitimately be drawn that the absence of any drama in the Vedic literature was recognized, since it was necessary for the gods to ask Brahmā to create a completely new type of literature, suitable for an age posterior to that in which the Vedas already existed.

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¹ Hopkins, *Great Epic of India*, pp. 7, 10, 53.

Cites (5)