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The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c7.s4: 4. Theories of the Secular Origin of the Drama

The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c7.s4

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4. Theories of the Secular Origin of the Drama

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Professors Hillebrandt¹ and Konow² agree in the main in maintaining the view that it is an error to look to religious ceremonies as explaining the origin of the drama. True, these ceremonies have a share in the development of the drama, but they themselves are merely the introduction into the ritual of elements which have a popular origin. We are to believe that a popular mime existed, which, with the epic, lies at the bottom of the Sanskrit drama.

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¹ AID. pp. 22 ff.

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² ID. pp. 42 ff.

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It must be admitted at once that we have extremely little authentic information regarding the performers of these mimes, believed to have existed before the origin of drama. The statements made by Professor Konow, who finds in them experts in song, dance, music, but also in matters such as jugglery, pantomime, and the allied arts, all rest on evidence which is either contemporary with the Mahābhāṣya or later than it; the fact that Naṭas sang is recorded for us in the Mahābhāṣya, which of course may refer to genuine actors, and not to professors of the mime, and their connexion with sweet words is attested in the Jātaka prose only, which dates several centuries after the existence of the true drama. We need not, of course, doubt that music, song, and dance, popular in the Vedic age, preserved that character throughout the later period, and we have evidence from Açoḱa’s time onwards of the existence of Samājas which he condemned, doubtless because of the fights of animals which took place at them.¹ That Naṭas and Nartakas were present at such festivals we learn from the *Rāmāyaṇa*; but we cannot say whether pantomimes and dancers or actors and dancers are referred to. Our knowledge, in fact, of the primitive mime is hypothetical, and it rests in effect on certain considerations which Professor Hillebrandt adduces to show a popular as opposed to a religious origin for drama. His view is supported by the general argument that the drama as comedy is a natural expression of man's primitive life of pleasure and appreciation of humour and wit. It is, however, unnecessary to enter into any examination of this general principle, which he defends against the theory accepted by Dr. Gray that it is highly problematical whether any view of pleasure to the actors or audience is associated with primitive drama. These ultimate origins are a matter of indifference to the concrete question of the origin of so late a production as the classical drama of India. That the mimetic character is natural to man may be granted; the essential point in question is whether the Sanskrit drama in its characteristics shows signs of religious or secular origin.

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¹ Hardy, *Album Kern*, pp. 61 f.; Thomas, JRAS. 1914, pp. 392 f.

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Of the points adduced by Professor Hillebrandt most have clearly no relevance in the argument. The use of Sanskrit and dialects in the classical drama is claimed as a proof of popular origin; as has been explained above, the Prākṛit element is due to the fact that the drama contains an essential popular, but also religious, element, the Kṛṣṇa worship. The mixture of prose and song, and the union of both with music and the dance, are as natural on the theory of religious origin as on that of secular derivation. The simplicity of the Indian stage, which knows no arrangements for providing changes of scenery, is certainly no proof of secular origin; the Vedic religion is singularly sparing in any external apparatus, and there is the strongest similarity between its practice to mark out altars for its great sacrifices at pleasure, and to have no regular sacrificial buildings, and the tradition throughout the Sanskrit dramas which neither requires nor needs fixed theatres.

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The popular origin of the Vidūṣaka is obvious, but the point is whether this origin is religious or secular, and we have seen that the Vedic literature offers us in the Brahmin of the Mahāvrata the prototype, possibly with reminiscences of the Çūdra in the Soma sale, of this figure, a fact admitted by the supporters of the theory of secular origin. It is manifestly unnecessary and illegitimate, when the descent of this figure from the Vedic literature is clear, to insist that it was borrowed directly from popular usage, for which there is no proof, but only conjecture.

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² ERE. iv. 868.

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There remains the argument derived from the fact that the classical drama usually begins with a dialogue between the Sūtradhāra and the Naṭī, who is usually represented as his wife; in this we have, it is said, a reflex of the old popular mime. But an examination of the practice and theory, as found in Bhāsa and the Nāṭyaçāstra, shows that we have no simple or naïve arrangement, but a very elaborate literary device by which the actors bridge over the transition from the preliminaries of the drama to the drama itself. The preliminaries are essentially popular religion, and the detail was left largely in the hands of the Sūtradhāra and his assistants, aided by a chorus of dancers and by musicians; they are doubtless older than the drama, and it was an ingenious and happy device which was invented to carry on the preliminaries, so that the transition to the drama was effective and satisfactory. It is, however, a perversion of all probability to find in this item the trace of a primitive popular secular performance.

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The evidence, therefore, for a secular origin disappears; it is curious, indeed, that Professor Hillebrandt¹ himself adduces proof that the western parallel of the Vidūṣaka is connected with religious ceremonies rather than a secular creation. But what is most remarkable of all is that Professor Konow adduces as evidence of the secular origin of the drama the Yātrās, which are essentially bound up with the religion of Kṛṣṇa, and the rough dramatic sketches performed at Almora at the Holi festival, also essentially religious.¹ It is indeed to ignore how essentially religion enters into the life of the Hindu to imagine that it is possible to trace the beginnings of drama to a detached love of amusement. It is apparently difficult for the modern mind to appreciate that religion may cover matters which to us appear scarcely connected with it or even repugnant; but this is a delusion largely due to the narrower and more exalted conception of religion of the northern and western lands of Europe.

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¹ AID. p. 25. Lindenau (BS. p. 45) sees in Vṛṣākapi of Ṛgveda, x. 86, the prototype of the Vidūṣaka, as a maker of mischief and as the god's companion, bu this is far-fetched. Hertel (Literarisches Zentralbl. 1917, pp. 1198 ff.) lays stress on the fact that at the royal courts the king had normally a jester to amuse him. This may easily have served to affect the figure of this character, if of religious origin. For older views, cf. J. Huizinga, De Vidūṣaka en het indisch tooneel (Groningen, 1897); F. Cimmini, Atti della reale Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere et Belle Arti (Naples, 1893), xv. 97 ff.; M. Schuyler, JAOS. xx. 338 ff.; P. E. Pavolini, Studi italiani di filologia indo-iranica, ii. 88 f.

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¹ TD. pp. 43 f. Cf. Nisiḳānta Chaṭṭopādhyāya, *The Yātrās* (1882).

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Less plausible still is the attempt of Pischel² to find evidence that the puppet-play is the source of the Sanskrit drama, and that moreover it has its home in India, whence it has spread over the world. The curious and odd art may indeed have an Indian origin, but it would be wholly unwise to suppose that the drama is due to it, nor is the theory apparently accepted on any side at the present time. The existence of such a play is attested by the *Mahābhārata*,³ though the antiquity of the device is not thus made clear; in the *Kathāsaritsāgara*, following perhaps the *Br̥hatkathā* of Guṇāḍhya, possibly of the third century A.D., we hear of a damsel, daughter of the wonderful craftsman Asura Maya, who amused her companion with puppets which could speak, dance, fly, fetch water, or pluck and bring a garland. In the *Bālarāmāyaṇa* of Rājaçekhara Rāvaṇa is represented as deceived by a puppet made to resemble Sītā, in whose mouth a parrot was placed to give his entreaties suitable replies. Śaṅkar Pāṇḍuraṅg Paṇḍit⁴ records of his time that in the Marāṭha and Kanarese country there are travelling marionette theatres, the only form of drama known in the villages; the puppets made of wood or paper are managed by the director, whose style is Sūtradhāra; they can stand or lie, dance or fight. From this puppet-play, it was suggested, the names of the Sūtradhāra, as the puller of the strings, and of the Sthāpaka, arranger, his assistant, passed over to the legitimate drama. The Viḍūṣaka, in Pischel’s view, owed also his origin to the puppet-play.

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² *Die Heimat des Puppenspiels* (1902). Obvious objections are given by Ridgeway, *Dramas, &c.*, pp. 164 ff.

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³ iii. 30. 23; v. 39. 1.

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⁴ *Vikramorvaçīya*, pp. 4 f.

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Professor Hillebrandt⁵ has argued against this theory on the ground that the puppet-play assumes the pre-existence of the drama, on which it must essentially be based, and he then uses the early date of the puppet-play as a proof of the still earlier existence of the drama. The latter argument, however, is unsatisfactory on various grounds. Apart from the fact that we cannot date the epic references or prove them earlier than the Mahābhāṣya, we have the doubt whether such a contention can possibly be justified. The use of puppets is primarily, of course, derived from the make-belief of children in playing with dolls; the terms for puppets which denote ‘little daughter’ (putrikā, puttalī, puttalikā, duhitṛkā), show this clearly enough, and the popularity of puppets is indicated by the erotic game known as the imitation of puppets, where the word for puppet (pāñcālī) suggests that the home of the puppet-play in India was the Pañcāla country. The growth of the drama doubtless brought with it the use of puppets to imitate it in brief, and from the drama came the Vidūṣaka, and not vice versa.

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⁵ AID. p. 8; ZDMG. lxxii. 231.

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Though Pischel’s theory¹ of the puppet-play as the origin of drama has failed to find supporters, the shadow play, on whose importance in India he was the first to lay stress, has emerged in lieu in the hands of Professor Lüders² as an essential element in the development of the Sanskrit drama, a position accepted by Professor Konow. The place found for the drama is in connexion with the displays of the Çaubhikas of the Mahābhāṣya. Owing to the misinterpretation of that passage it is held that the Çaubhikas were persons who explained matters to the audience to supplement either dumb actors³ or shadow figures. It is admitted by Professor Lüders that there is no proof which of these two eventualities is correct, but he endeavours both to prove the existence of the shadow-play in early India and to show that the Çaubhikas had the function of showing them. Based on this misinterpretation of the Mahābhāṣya and on the hypotheses—wholly in the air—which it necessitates, is his view that the influence of the epic on the drama was conveyed through the use of shadow-figures to illustrate the epic recitation; this, united with the art of the old Naṭas, gave birth to drama, though he is not certain whether such a real drama existed or not at the time of Patañjali, and Konow sets its appearance much later.

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¹ SBAW. 1906, pp. 481 ff.

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² SBAW. 1916, pp. 698 ff. Contra, Hillebrandt, ZDMG. lxxii. 230 f. Winternitz (ZDMG. lxxiv. 120) reduces the Çaubhikas to people who tell tales of what is depicted on pictures, a clearly impossible version, but valid against Lüders.

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³ Based on Kaiyaṭa’s version of Çaubhika: *Kamsādyanukāriṇām naṭānām vyākhyānopādhyāyāḥ*. This is clearly incompatible with Lüders’s view, as he admits (pp. 720 f.). Kaiyaṭa is far too late or useful evidence.

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The early evidence adduced for the existence of the shadow-drama is wholly unreliable. Professor Konow suggests that the term Rūpa used in the fourth Rock Edict of Açoka, where he speaks of exhibiting spectacles of the dwellings of the gods, of elephants and bonfires, refers to a shadow device, in apparent ignorance of the true sense abundantly illustrated by the attested facts as to the mode of such representations in Buddhist literature;¹ he accepts the wholly absurd view that Rūpaka as a name of the drama is derived from such shadow projections, while in fact it obviously denotes the visible presentation, the normal and early sense of Rūpa. Equally unfortunate is the effort to discover that the Sītābengā cave² shows signs of grooves in front, which might have served in connexion with the curtain necessary for a shadow play, and much more so is the effort to explain Nepathya, the name of the tiring-room behind the curtain in the Sanskrit drama, from a misunderstood Prākṛit nevaccha, which in its turn might represent a Sanskrit naipāṭhya—never found—denoting the place for the reader; apparently the shadows are in this view explained by some person behind the curtain. The philological combination is quite impossible.

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¹ See Vincent Smith, Asoka, (ed. 3), pp. 166 f.

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² Bloch, Arch. Survey of India Report, 1903-4, pp. 123 ff.

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Pischel's evidence for the early existence of the shadow-drama is all of it without value. The term rupparūpakam occurs in v. 394 of the comparatively old Therīgāthā of the Buddhist Canon, but it may indicate a puppet-play, and this is rendered very probable by the mention of a puppet only just before in the text; if not, it doubtless means, as taken by the commentator, a piece of jugglery, an art always loved in India; unfortunately the age of the text is uncertain, so that even for the puppet-play it gives no precise date. It is certain that rūpadakkha, a term used in the Milindapañha³—a work of dubious date—has no such reference, nor lūpadakha in a cave at Jogīmārā. To find rūpopajīvana in the Mahābhārata used in the sense of shadowplay is impossible; the explanation is given by Nīlakaṇṭha,¹ and proves the existence in his time, the seventeenth century A.D., of the custom, but the term is used in close proximity with appearing on the stage (*raṅgāvataraṇa*), and there is conclusive evidence that the word refers to the deplorable immorality of the players, who actually have as a synonym in the lexicons the style of ‘living by (the dishonour of) their wives (*jāyājīva*)’. The same fact explains the term *rūpopajīvin* used by Varāhamihira in the sixth century A.D. in proximity to painters, writers, and singers: the actor is essentially mercenary.² It is impossible to accept the suggestion that the Aindrajālikas, who appear working magic results in the *Ratnāvalī*, the *Prabodhacandrodaya*, and the *Pūrvapīṭhikā* of the *Daśakumāracarita*, were really shadow-dramatists; Indian magicians are well known even at present, and the illusions which to some extent they produce have nothing whatever to do with shadow-plays. The scenes which the magician describes to the king in the *Ratnāvalī* were doubtless left to the imagination of the audience, just as was the apparent fire which burned the inner apartments and enveloped the princess. To believe in realism in these cases runs contrary to the stage directions of the play itself. From the name Ṣaubhika, with its Prākrit equivalent Sobhiya, nothing whatever can be made out; the word has no relation to shadows and is never explained by any authority in that sense.

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³ P. 344.

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¹ xii. 295. 5.

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² *Bṛhatsaṃhitā*, v. 74; see Hillebrandt, ZDMG. lxxii. 227.

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We are left, therefore, with the evidence to be derived from the term Chāyānāṭaka, which is interpreted by Pischel as a ‘shadow-drama’, and is applied to several dramas, among which the oldest which can be dated with sufficient certainty is the *Dūtāṅgada* of Subhaṭa in the thirteenth century A.D. The exact meaning of the term is uncertain, as it might denote a ‘drama in the state of a shadow’, and this would accord perfectly with the *Dūtāṅgada* itself. That such a drama was a shadow-drama is best supported by the *Dharmābhyudaya* of Meghaprabhācārya,³ which is styled a Chāyānāṭyaprabandha, and in which a definite stage direction is found directing that, when the king expresses his intention to become an ascetic, a puppet is to be placed inside the curtain in the attire of an ascetic. But the date of this play is uncertain, and it is extremely difficult to argue with any certainty from it to the *Dūtāṅgada*; why, it is inevitable to ask, should the latter play contain no stage direction of this kind? We know that the shadow-drama arose in some part of India, for Nīlakaṇṭha recognizes it, but we have no evidence that it existed at the time of the *Dūtāṅgada*.

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³ ZDMG. lxxv. 62 f.

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Whatever judgement be passed on this view,¹ and the matter must be left undecided in the absence of any effective evidence, it is wholly impossible to accept the argument of Professor Lüders which would take the *Dūtāṅgada* as the type of Chāyānāṭaka, and thence deduce that the *Mahānāṭaka* and the *Haridūta* are shadow-dramas. The one Chāyānāṭya which we know to have been a shadow-drama in fact is an ordinary play without kinship to the *Dūtāṅgada*, and the same remark applies to the other dramas known to us which are styled Chāyānāṭakas. There are, however, points of similarity between the *Dūtāṅgada* and the *Mahānāṭaka*; the prevalence of verse, often epic in character, over prose, the absence of Prākrit, the large number of characters, and the omission of the Vidūṣaka, which explain themselves easily in the latter case by the assumption that we have literary drama before us, a play never intended to be acted. The conviction is strengthened by the shameless plagiarisms of the plays from earlier Rāma dramas. In any case, however, we are dealing with the late developments of the Sanskrit drama, and it is clear that nothing can be gained from any assumption of a part played by the shadow-play in the evolution of the Sanskrit drama. Even on Professor Lüders's own interpretation of the *Mahābhāṣya*, all that is requisite is dumb players, and this form of drama is attested for India in modern times.

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¹ See ch. xi, § 8 below.

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That the Sūtradhāra and Sthāpaka derive their names from manipulating the puppets for either the puppet- or the shadow-drama is a suggestion which, though recently repeated by Dr. Hultzsch, cannot be regarded as plausible.² The term Sthāpaka is colourless, and may merely denote 'performer'; if it comes from the puppet-play, it is difficult to see why such a person was needed beside the Sūtradhāra, who moved the strings. Moreover, the theory recognizes the Sūtradhāra clearly as the man who lays out the temporary playhouse needed for the exhibition, and this sense passes easily over into that of director; this derivation is preferable on the whole to the other, accepted by Professor Hillebrandt,¹ which would make him the man who knows the rules of his art.

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² See ch. xiv, § 2 below.

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¹ AID. p. 8, n. 2. On Javan drama, cf. Ridgeway, Dramas, &c., pp. 216 ff.

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The shadow-play, we have seen, cannot have influenced the progress of the early drama, and we may, therefore, leave aside the question whether it does not essentially presuppose the drama, as Professor Hillebrandt contends; the parallel from Java adduced to refute this opinion is clearly wholly inadequate, unless and until it can be proved that the shadow play sprang up in Java without any previous knowledge of real drama.

Cites (19)