A History of Sanskrit Literature c16.7

c16.7

The drama has had a rich and varied development in India, as is shown not only by the numerous plays that have been preserved, but by the native treatises on poetics which contain elaborate rules for the construction and style of plays. Thus the *Sāhitya-darpaṇa*, or “Mirror of Rhetoric,” divides Sanskrit dramas into two main classes, a higher (*rūpaka*) and a lower (*uparūpaka*), and distinguishes no fewer than ten species of the former and eighteen of the latter.