The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c7.s2.11

c7.s2.11

The error of Professor Lüders in insisting on a literal interpretation of the passage as referring to different sorts of narrators by words comes out with special clearness as regards the second class of persons alluded to by Patañjali. That they are painters whose canvases are living speeches was clearly recognized by the commentators in India. Haradatta tells us in the simplest and plainest language that when men look at a picture on which is shown the death of Kaṁsa at the hands of Vāsudeva they interpret the picture as the slaying of the wicked Kaṁsa by the blessed Vāsudeva, and thus by the pictured Vāsudeva cause to be slain the pictured Kaṁsa, for this is the conception which they form as they gaze, and he adds, very naturally, that this explains the practice of saying of artists that they cause the slaying of Kaṁsa, the binding of Bali.¹ It would be difficult to see how the idea could have been more forcibly expressed, but Professor Lüders interprets it in the sense that artists occasionally explain their own pictures to others, an idea which is not merely wholly impossible, but renders Haradatta’s language nonsense. On this basis he finds that the Ṣaubhikas added to their business of explaining shadow pictures that of showing and explaining other pictures, in this respect again without any support from tradition.