The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c7.s6.1

c7.s6.1

Professor Levi,¹ whose opposition to Windisch regarding the possibility of Greek influence on the Indian drama has been noted, is himself responsible for the suggestion that the rise of the Sanskrit drama, as opposed to the more popular religious drama in Prākṛit, is to be attributed to the Çakas, whose advent to India was one of the causes of the rapid decadence of the Greek principalities in the north west. The theory is based on a general view of the elevation of Sanskrit to the rank of the language of literature, as opposed to its restriction to use as the learned and sacred language of the Brahmins. The inscriptions, on the whole, show that Sanskrit as an epigraphic language was introduced by Rudradāman whose Girnār inscription of A.D. 150 is wholly in Sanskrit, though Sanskrit appears in part in Uṣavadāta’s inscription of A.D. 124. The Western Kṣatrapas, of Çaka origin, were, he holds, the first to bring Sanskrit down to earth, while not vulgarizing it, as contrasted with the Hindu and orthodox Çātakarṇis of the Deccan who retained Prākṛit in their inscriptions down to the third century A.D. The character of the Çakāra may be regarded in this light; in its hostility to the Çakas it reveals a period when either a prince was opposed to the Çaka rule, or the Çaka dominion had just fallen and was fresh in the minds of the people. The Mṛcchakaṭikā may retain a confused version of the events of the second century A.D. A specific connexion between the Çakas and the creation of drama may be seen in the terminology of the Nāṭyaçāstra, and that of their inscriptions. Rudradāman refers to his grandfather Caṣṭana as Svāmin and Sugṛhitanāman, and Svāmin is freely used in the epigraphic records of the kings of the line from Nahapāna (A.D. 78) onwards. Further Rudrasena in A.D. 205, in referring to his royal ancestors, Caṣṭana, Jayadāman, Rudradāman, and Rudrasena, gives them the epithet of Bhadramukha, ‘of gracious countenance’. These terms, Lévi argues, correspond with the use laid down in the Nāṭyaçāstra, which must have borrowed from contemporary official usage. Further, Rudradāman uses the term Rāṣṭriya as applying to Puṣyagupta, who under Candragupta, the Maurya, some four and a half centuries earlier established the reservoir which he had repaired, and this term occurs in the *Çakuntalā* and the *Mṛcchakaṭikā* in the sense of brother-in-law of the king, the sense given to it in the *Amara-kośa*, the earliest Sanskrit lexicon of established authority. To these considerations may be added that Ujjayinī, the capital of the Western Kṣatrapas of Mālava, is a centre, round which as a fan radiate the three great literary Prākṛits of the drama, Çaura-senī, Māgadhī, and Māhārāṣṭrī, thus accounting for their use, which else would be difficult to explain.