The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c7.s1.1

c7.s1.1

(THE great epic of India, the *Mahābhārata*, in the whole extent of its older portions, does not recognize in any explicit manner the existence of the drama.¹ The term Naṭa indeed occurs, and, if it meant actor, the existence of the drama would be proved, but it may equally well merely denote pantomimist. This conclusion, moreover, is strongly supported by the strange fact that, if the epic knew the drama, it should never mention any of its characteristics or such a standing character as the Viḍūṣaka. There is, what is still more significant, even in the later parts of the epic, such as the Çānti and Anuçāsana Parvans, no clear allusion to the art, for the passage in the Çānti² in which Professor Hillebrandt has found an allusion to dramatic artists can perfectly well apply to pantomimes, and in the latter text³ the passage in which the commentator Nīlakaṇṭha finds comedians and dancers (*naṭa-nartakāḥ*) yields perfectly good senses as pantomimists and dancers, both occupations there repudiated by Brahmins. (To find the drama we are compelled to have recourse to the *Harivaṃça*,⁴ which is a deliberate continuation of the *Mahābhārata*, and there we have explicit evidence, for we learn of players who made a drama out of the *Rāmāyaṇa* legend. (But) this is of no importance for the purpose of determining the date of the drama; (the *Harivaṃça* is of uncertain date, but in all probability, as we have it, it cannot be placed earlier than the second or third century A.D., long after the time when there is no doubt of the existence of a Sanskrit drama.