The History of Indian Literature c9.61

c9.61

²¹⁰ Through the unexpected light shed by the Mahábháshya of Patañjali on the then flourishing condition of theatrical representation, this question has recently taken a form very favourable to the view of which Lassen is the principal exponent, and which regards the drama as having originated in religious spectacles resembling our mysteries. The particulars there given regarding the performance of a *Kaṅsavadha* and *Valibandha* by so-called *śaubhikas*—(comp. perhaps the *saubhikas* in Hárávalí, 151, though these are explained as *indrajálikas*, ‘jugglers,’ cf. *sobha*, *sobhanagaraka*, *I. St.*, iii. 153)—lead us directly to this conclusion; see *I. St.*, xiii. 354, 487 ff. “But between the dramatic representations known in the Bháshya, which bear more or less the character of religious festival-plays, and the earliest real dramas that have actually come down to us, we must of course suppose a very considerable interval of time, during which the drama gradually rose to the degree of perfection exhibited in these extant pieces; and here I am still disposed to assign a certain influence to the witnessing of Greek plays. The Indian drama, after having acquitted itself brilliantly in the most varied fields—notably too as a drama of civil life—finally reverted in its closing phases to essentially the same class of subjects with which it had started—to representations from the story of the gods.”—*Ibid.*, pp. 491, 492.