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The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c9.s2: 2. The Allegorical and the Hetaera Dramas

The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c9.s2

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2. The Allegorical and the Hetaera Dramas

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The same manuscript which contains portions of the *Çariputraprakaraṇa* has also fragments of two other dramas. There is no evidence of their authorship, other than the fact that they appear in the same manuscript as the work of Açvaghoṣa, and that they display the same general appearance as the work of that writer. That they are Açvaghoṣa’s is much more probable than that they are the work of some unknown contemporary.²

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² Açvaghoṣa’s dramatic powers are also exhibited in the Māra legend of the

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The first of these is specially interesting as it represents a type of which we have otherwise no earlier specimen than the *Prabodhacandrodaya* of Kṛṣṇamiçra. We find the allegorical figures of Buddhi, wisdom, Kīrti, fame, and Dhṛti, firmness, appearing and conversing. This is followed by the advent of the Buddha himself, adorned with the halo which he borrowed from Greek art. We do not know whether he appeared later in actual conversation with the allegorical figures, but for this mixture of the real and the ideal we have to go beyond Kṛṣṇamiçra, who represents all his characters as abstract, Viṣṇu for instance by Faith in Viṣṇu, to Kavikarṇapūra’s glorification of Caitanya in the sixteenth century, in which allegorical figures are mingled with Caitanya and his followers, though they do not actually converse together.¹ It must remain uncertain whether there was a train of tradition leading from Açvaghoṣa to Kṛṣṇamiçra, or whether the latter created the type of drama afresh; the former theory is the more likely. The characters all speak Sanskrit, but the fragments are too short to give us any real information on the general trend of the play.

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¹ In the Jain *Moharājaparājaya* (below, ch. xi, § 3) the real and the ideal characters converse.

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The other drama gives us more interesting matter. It is one in which figures a hetaera named Magadhavatī, a Vidūṣaka named Komudhagandha, a hero styled only Nāyaka, but probably named Somadatta, a Duṣṭa, rogue, without further name, a certain Dhānaṃjaya, who may possibly be a prince if the term ‘king’s son’ (*bhaṭṭidālaka*), which is recognized in the *Nāṭyaçāstra* as the style of the younger princes of the blood, applies to him, a maid-servant, and Çāriputra and Maudgalyāyana. The drama was doubtless intended for purposes of religious edification, but what we have is too fragmentary to do more than show that the author was possessed of humour and that the Vidūṣaka was already a hungry soul. The drama alludes to an old garden as the place where part of the action passed, as in the *Mṛcchakaṭikā*, and also as in that drama the house of the hetaera served as the scene of another part of the action. The characters are often introduced as entering in vehicles (*pravahaṇa*), a further point of

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*Sūtrālaṃkāra*, which is preserved in the *Divyāvadāna* (pp. 356 ff.; Windisch, *Māra und Buddha*, pp. 161 ff.); cf. Huber, BEFEO. iv. 414 f.

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similarity to that drama, while an allusion to a Samāja or festival on a hill-top accords with the frequent reference to such amusements in Buddhist literature. An obscure character is a person, obviously of lower rank, who is styled Gobam°.

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The drama shows close agreement with the classical model; the name of the Vidūṣaka is evidence of this, for not only is it connected with a real Brahmin family, but it obeys the rule that the name of that character should indicate a flower, the spring, &c., for it means literally ‘the offspring of the lotus-smelling’. The name of the hetaera does not observe the rule exemplified in the Cārudatta that the hetaera’s name should end in senā, siddhā, or dattā, but, apart from the fact that the authority for the rule is very late, the name was very probably given to the poet by the literary tradition. The fact that the Duṣṭa and the Nāyaka appear by these titles only has a parallel in the Cārudatta and the Buddhist drama of Harṣa, the Nāgānanda, but it is difficult to say whether or not this is a sign of antiquity.

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The material available in the case of any of the three dramas is too scanty to give us any assurance as to what the practice was regarding the introduction, especially the use of the Nāndī, or verse of benediction. What is certain is that the Pāripārçvika, or assistant of the Sūtradhāra in the later literature, is found apparently as taking part in the opening of the drama, perhaps the Çāriputraprakaraṇa.

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