The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c7.s3.30

c7.s3.30

The religious importance of the drama is seen distinctly in the attitude of the Buddhists towards it.¹ The extreme dubiety of the date of the Buddhist Suttas renders it impossible to come to any satisfactory decision regarding the existence of drama at any early date, while the terms employed, such as Visūkadassana, Nacca, and Pekkhā, and the reference to Samajjas leave us wholly without any ground for belief in an actual drama. We see, however, that the objection of the sacred Canon to monks engaging in the amusement of watching these shows, whatever their nature, was gradually overcome, and it is an important fact that the earliest dramas known to us by fragments are the Buddhist dramas of Açvaghoṣa. With the acceptance of the drama, the *Lalitavistara*² does not hesitate to speak of the Buddha as including knowledge of the drama as among his accomplishments; the Buddha is even called one who has entered to gaze on the drama of the Great Law. The legend is willing to admit that even in Buddha’s time there were dramas, for Bimbisāra had one performed in honour of a pair of Nāga kings,³ and the *Avadānaçataka*,⁴ a collection of pious tales, places the drama in remote antiquity. It was performed by the bidding of Krakucchanda, a far distant Buddha in the city Çobhāvatī by a troupe of actors; the director undertook the rôle of the Buddha himself, while the other members of the troupe took the rôle of monks; the same troupe in a later age, under Gautama the Buddha himself, performed at Rājagṛha, the actress Kuvalayā gaining enormous fame, and seducing the monks, until the Buddha terminated her career by turning her into a hideous old woman. She then repented and attained the rank of a saint. The same idea of a play bearing on the life of the Buddha himself is preserved in another tale in Tibet where an actor from the south sets up in rivalry with the monks in giving representations of the life of the Buddha. These Buddhist dramas have left their imprint on the form of the *Saddharmapuṇḍarīka*, the Lotus of the Good Law, itself, which has none of the epic character of the *Lalitavistara*, but is presented as a series of dialogues in which the Buddha himself, now supernatural, is the chief, but not the only interlocutor. The same love of the Buddhists for artistic effects is seen in the use of music, song, dance, and some scenic effects in the ceremonial attaching to the foundation of Thūpas in Ceylon by a prince of the royal house; the *Mahāvaṃsa* assumes that dramas were displayed on such occasions, though this may be an anachronism. The frescoes of Ajaṇṭā show the keen appreciation felt for music, song, and the dance, though they date from a time when there is certain evidence of the full existence of the drama. We find also in Tibet¹ the relics of ancient popular religious plays in the contests between the spirits of good and those of evil for mankind, which are part of the spring and autumn festivals. The actors wear strange garments and masks; monks represent the good spirits, laymen the evil spirits of men. The whole company first sings prayers and benedictions; then an evil spirit seeks to seduce into evil a man; he would yield but for the intervention of his friends; the evil spirits then arrive in force, a struggle ensues, in which the men would be defeated but for the intervention of the good spirits, and the whole ends with the chasing away with blows of the representatives of the spirits of evil.