The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c6.s3.8

c6.s3.8

Professor Hillebrandt,³ on the other hand, is satisfied that we have actual ritual drama before us, and Professor Konow⁴ insists that these are indeed ritual dramas, but that they are borrowed by the ritual from the popular mime of the time, which accordingly must have known dialogue, abusive conversation and blows, but of which the chief parts were dance, song, and music which are reckoned in the *Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa*⁵ as the arts, but of which the *Pāraskara Gṛhya Sūtra*⁶ disapproves for the use of men of the three higher castes. The evidence for this assumption is entirely lacking, and it is extremely significant that the Vedic texts ignore the Naṭa,⁷ whose activity belongs according to all the evidence to a later period. It is, of course, always possible to deprecate any argument from silence, though the value of this contention is diminished by the very remarkable enumerations of the different forms of occupation given in the Puruṣamedha sections of the *Yajurveda*, where in the imaginary sacrifice of men the imagination of the Brahmins appears to have laboured to enumerate every form of human activity. But in the absence of any proof that secular pantomime is older than religious throughout the world, and in the absence of anything to indicate that it was so in the case of India, it seems quite impossible to accept Professor Konow’s suggested origin of drama.