The History of Indian Literature c9.74

Language: English

c9.74.1

The dramas of Kálidása—that one of the ‘nine gems’ with whom we are here more immediately concerned—furnish in their contents nothing that directly enables us to determine their date. Still, the mention of the Greek female slaves in attendance upon the king points at least to a time not especially early; while the form in which the popular dialects appear, and which, as compared with that of the inscriptions of Piyadasi, is extraordinarily degraded, not unfrequently coinciding with the present form of these vernaculars, brings us down to a period at any rate several centuries after Christ. But whether the tradition is right in placing Kálidása at the court of Bhoja in the middle of the eleventh century appears to me very questionable; for this reason in particular, that it assigns to the same court other poets also, whose works, compared with those of Kálidása, are so bad, that they absolutely must belong to a later stage than his—for example, Dámodara Miśra, author of the Hanuman-náṭaka. Moreover, Kálidása has allotted to him such a large number of works, in part too of wholly diverse character, that we cannot but admit the existence of several authors of this name; and, in point of fact, it is a name that has continued in constant use down to the present time.

c9.74.2

Nay, one even of the three dramas that are ascribed to Kálidása would seem, from its style, to belong to a different author from the other two.²¹¹ And this view is further favoured by the circumstance, that in the introduction to this play Dhávaka, Saumilla, and Kaviputra are named as the poet's predecessors; Dhávaka being the name of a poet who flourished contemporaneously with king Śrí-Harsha of Kashmír, that is, according to Wilson, towards the beginning of the twelfth century A.D.²¹² There may, it is true, have been more Dhávakas than one; another MS., moreover, reads Bhásaka;²¹³ and besides, these introductions are possibly, in part, later additions. In the case of the Mṛichhakaṭí at least, this would appear to be certain, as the poet's own death is there intimated.∗ This last-mentioned drama, the Mṛichhakaṭí—whose author, Śúdraka, is, according to Wilson, placed by tradition prior to Vikramáditya²¹⁴ (*i.e.*, the same Vikrama at whose court the 'nine gems' flourished?)—cannot in any case have been written before the second century A.D. For it makes use of the word *náṇaka* as the name of a coin;† and this term, according to Wilson (*Ariana Antiqua*, p. 364), is borrowed from the coins of Kanerki, a king who, by the evidence of these coins, is proved to have reigned until about the year 40 A.D. (Lassen, *I. AK.*, ii. 413).

c9.74.3

But a date long subsequent to this will have to be assigned to the Mṛichhakaṭí, since the vernacular dialects it introduces appear in a most barbarous condition. Besides, we meet with the very same flourishing state of Buddhism which is here revealed in one of the dramas of Bhavabhúti, a poet whose date is fixed with tolerable certainty for the eighth century A.D. The Rámáyaṇa and the war-part of the Mahá-Bhárata must, to judge from the use made of their heroes in the Mṛichhakaṭí, already have been favourite reading at the time when it was composed; while, on the other hand, from the absence of allusion to the chief figures of the present Puráṇas, we may perhaps infer with Wilson that these works were not yet in existence. This latter inference, however, is in so far doubtful as the legends dealt with in these younger Puráṇas were probably, to a large extent, already contained in the older works of the same name.∗ The two remaining dramas of Bhavabhúti, and the whole herd of the later dramatic literature, relate to the heroic tradition of the Rámáyaṇa and Mahá-Bhárata, or else to the history of Kṛishṇa; and the later the pieces are, the more do they resemble the so-called 'mysteries' of the Middle Ages. The comedies, which, together with a few other pieces, move in the sphere of civil life, form of course an exception to this. A peculiar class of dramas are the philosophical ones, in which abstractions and systems appear as the *dramatis personæ*.

c9.74.4

One very special peculiarity of the Hindú drama is that women, and persons of inferior rank, station, or caste, are introduced as speaking, not in Sanskrit, but in the popular dialects. This feature is of great importance ²¹⁵ for the criticism of the individual pieces; the conclusions resulting from it have already been adverted to in the course of the discussion.