The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c7.s7.2

c7.s7.2

That the drama was also in part in Prākṛit from the outset seems extremely probable. The mere recitation of the epic indeed did not demand any intervention of Prākṛit, but that such recitations by themselves would produce a true drama is most improbable, and we may legitimately hold that it was only the union of these recitations with action from the religious contest that produced the drama. In that contest we may assume that the lower classes were represented and spoke their own language; in the Vedic Mahāvrata we cannot suppose that the Ҫūdra who contested the right of the Vaiҫya to the symbol of the sun spoke in Sanskrit, nor that the Brahmin and the hetaera exchanged their ritual abuse in the classical tongue, or its Vedic antecedent. The religious festival in which Kṛṣṇa appeared as slaying Kaṃsa must similarly have demanded the use of the vernacular by the humbler members of those who took part in it. The fact that Prākṛit appears mainly in the dialogue, Sanskrit pre-eminently in verses, strengthens the view that the new drama derived its verse in the main from the epic recitation, its prose dialogue from the religious contest. The two elements never entirely merged; the Vidūṣaka who comes from one side of the religious ceremonial, that which in Greece lies at the basis of comedy as opposed to tragedy, is not a figure normal in the dramas of mainly epic inspiration; but this is not enough to prove that the drama ever in its early days was merely in Sanskrit. It may indeed have been the case; Bhāsa’s Dūtavākya has no Prākṛit, and so far the probability is rather for than against it, as an alternative form.