The Sanskrit Epics, page 996
In the cold season a fire and the mild rays of the sun are pleasant. The night does not attract lovers now, for the moonbeams are cold and the light of the stars is pale.
The poet dwells longest on the delights of spring, the last of the six seasons. It is then that maidens, with karṇikāra flowers on their ears, with red açoka blossoms and sprays of jasmine in their locks, go to meet their lovers. Then the hum of intoxicated bees is heard, and the note of the Indian cuckoo; then the blossoms of the mango-tree are seen: these are the sharp arrows wherewith the god of the flowery bow enflames the hearts of maidens to love.
A lyric poem of a very artificial character, and consisting of only twenty-two stanzas, is the Ghaṭa-karpara, or “Potsherd,” called after the author’s name, which is worked into the last verse. The date of the poet is unknown. He is mentioned as one of the “nine gems” at the court of the mythical Vikramāditya in the verse already mentioned.
The Chaura-panchāçikā, or “Fifty Stanzas of the Thief,” is a lyrical poem which contains many beauties. Its author was the Kashmirian Bilhaṇa, who belongs to the later half of the eleventh century. According to the romantic tradition, this poet secretly enjoyed the love of a princess, and when found out was condemned to death. He thereupon composed fifty stanzas, each beginning with the words “Even now I remember,” in which he describes with glowing enthusiasm the joys of love he had experienced. Their effect on the king was so great that he forgave the poet and bestowed on him the hand of his daughter.
The main bulk of the lyrical creations of mediæval India are not connected poems of considerable length, but consist of that miniature painting which, as with a few strokes, depicts an amatory situation or sentiment in a single stanza of four lines. These lyrics are in many respects cognate to the sententious poetry which the Indians cultivated with such eminent success. Bearing evidence of great wealth of observation and depth of feeling, they are often drawn by a master-hand. Many of them are in matter and form gems of perfect beauty. Some of their charm is, however, lost in translation owing to the impossibility of reproducing the elaborate metres employed in the original. Several Sanskrit poets composed collections of these miniature lyrics.
The most eminent of these authors is Bhartṛihari, grammarian, philosopher, and poet in one. Only the literary training of India could make such a combination possible, and even there it has hardly a parallel. Bhartṛihari lived in the first half of the seventh century. The Chinese traveller I Tsing, who spent more than twenty years in India at the end of that century, records that, having turned Buddhist monk, the poet again became a layman, and fluctuated altogether seven times between the monastery and the world. Bhartṛihari blamed himself for, but could not overcome, his inconstancy. He wrote three centuries of detached stanzas. Of the first and last, which are sententious in character, there will be occasion to say something later. Only the second, entitled Çṛingāra-çataka, or “Century of Love,” deals with erotic sentiment. Here Bhartṛihari, in graceful and meditative verse, shows himself to be well acquainted both with the charms of women and with the arts by which they captivate the hearts of men. Who, he asks in one of these miniature poems, is not filled with yearning thoughts of love in spring, when the air swoons with the scent of the mango blossom and is filled with the hum of bees intoxicated with honey? In another he avers that none can resist the charms of lotus-eyed maidens, not even learned men, whose utterances about renouncing love are mere idle words. The poet himself laments that, when his beloved is away, the brightness goes out of his life —
Beside the lamp, the flaming hearth,
In light of sun or moon and stars,
Without my dear one’s lustrous eyes
This world is wholly dark to me.
At the same time he warns the unwary against reflecting over-much on female beauty —
Let not thy thoughts, O Wanderer,
Roam in that forest, woman’s form:
For there a robber ever lurks,
Ready to strike — the God of Love.
In another stanza the Indian Cupid appears as a fisherman, who, casting on the ocean of this world a hook called woman, quickly catches men as fishes eager for the bait of ruddy lips, and bakes them in the fire of love.
Strange are the contradictions in which the poet finds himself involved by loving a maiden —
Remembered she but causes pain;
At sight of her my madness grows;
When touched, she makes my senses reel:
How, pray, can such an one be loved?
So towards the end of the Century the poet’s heart begins to turn from the allurements of love. “Cease, maiden,” he exclaims, “to cast thy glances on me: thy trouble is in vain. I am an altered man; youth has gone by and my thoughts are bent on the forest; my infatuation is over, and the whole world I now account but as a wisp of straw.” Thus Bhartṛihari prepares the way for his third collection, the “Century of Renunciation.”
A short but charming treasury of detached erotic verses is the Çṛingāra-tilaka, which tradition attributes to Kālidāsa. In its twenty-three stanzas occur some highly imaginative analogies, worked out with much originality. In one of them, for instance, the poet asks how it comes that a maiden, whose features and limbs resemble various tender flowers, should have a heart of stone. In another he compares his mistress to a hunter —
This maiden like a huntsman is;
Her brow is like the bow he bends;
Her sidelong glances are his darts;
My heart’s the antelope she slays.
The most important lyrical work of this kind is the Amaruçataka, or “Hundred stanzas of Amaru.” The author is a master in the art of painting lovers in all their moods, bliss and dejection, anger and devotion. He is especially skilful in depicting the various stages of estrangement and reconciliation. It is remarkable how, with a subject so limited, in situations and emotions so similar, the poet succeeds in arresting the attention with surprising turns of thought, and with subtle touches which are ever new. The love which Amaru as well as other Indian lyrists portrays is not of the romantic and ideal, but rather of the sensuous type. Nevertheless his work often shows delicacy of feeling and refinement of thought. Such, for instance, is the case when he describes a wife watching in the gloaming for the return of her absent husband.
Many lyrical gems are to be found preserved in the Sanskrit treatises on poetics. One such is a stanza on the red açoka. In this the poet asks the tree to say whither his mistress has gone; it need not shake its head in the wind, as if to say it did not know; for how could it be flowering so brilliantly had it not been touched by the foot of his beloved?1
In all this lyrical poetry the plant and animal world plays an important part and is treated with much charm. Of flowers, the lotus is the most conspicuous. One of these stanzas, for example, describes the day-lotuses as closing their calyx-eyes in the evening, because unwilling to see the sun, their spouse and benefactor, sink down bereft of his rays. Another describes with pathetic beauty the dream of a bee: “The night will pass, the fair dawn will come, the sun will rise, the lotuses will laugh;” while a bee thus mused within the calyx, an elephant, alas! tore up the lotus plant.
Various birds to which poetical myths are attached are frequently introduced as furnishing analogies to human life and love. The chātaka, which would rather die of thirst than drink aught but the raindrops from the cloud, affords an illustration of pride. The chakora, supposed to imbibe the rays of the moon, affords a parallel to the lover who with his eyes drinks in the beams of his beloved’s face. The chakravāka, which, fabled to be condemned to nocturnal separation from his mate, calls to her with plaintive cry during the watches of the night, serves as an emblem of conjugal fidelity.
In all this lyric poetry the bright eyes and beauty of Indian girls find a setting in scenes brilliant with blossoming trees, fragrant with flowers, gay with the plumage and vocal with the song of birds, diversified with lotus ponds steeped in tropical sunshine and with large-eyed gazelles reclining in the shade. Some of its gems are well worthy of having inspired the genius of Heine to produce such lyrics as Die Lotosblume and Auf Flügeln des Gesanges.
A considerable amount of lyrical poetry of the same type has also been produced in Prākrit, especially in the extensive anthology entitled Saptaçataka, or “Seven Centuries,” of the poet Hāla, who probably lived before A.D. 1000. It contains many beauties, and is altogether a rich treasury of popular Indian lyrical poetry. It must suffice here to refer to but one of the stanzas contained in this collection. In this little poem the moon is described as a white swan sailing on the pure nocturnal lake of the heavens, studded with starry lotuses.
The transitional stage between pure lyric and pure drama is represented by the Gītagovinda, or “Cowherd in Song,” a lyrical drama, which, though dating from the twelfth century, is the earliest literary specimen of a primitive type of play that still survives in Bengal, and must have preceded the regular dramas. The poem contains no dialogue in the proper sense, for its three characters only engage in a kind of lyrical monologue, of which one of the other two is supposed to be an auditor, sometimes even no one at all. The subject of the poem is the love of Kṛishṇa for the beautiful cowherdess Rādhā, the estrangement of the lovers, and their final reconciliation. It is taken from that episode of Kṛishṇa’s life in which he himself was a herdsman (go-vinda), living on the banks of the Yamunā, and enjoying to the full the love of the cowherdesses. The only three characters of the poem are Kṛishṇa, Rādhā, and a confidante of the latter.
Its author, Jayadeva, was probably a native of Bengal, having been a contemporary of a Bengal king named Lakshmaṇasena. It is probable that he took as his model popular plays representing incidents from the life of Kṛishṇa, as the modern yātrās in Bengal still do. The latter festival plays even now consist chiefly of lyrical stanzas, partly recited and partly sung, the dialogue being but scanty, and to a considerable extent left to improvisation. On such a basis Jayadeva created his highly artificial poem. The great perfection of form he has here attained, by combining grace of diction with ease in handling the most difficult metres, has not failed to win the admiration of all who are capable of reading the original Sanskrit. Making abundant use of alliteration and the most complex rhymes occurring, as in the Nalodaya, not only at the end, but in the middle of metrical lines,2 the poet has adapted the most varied and melodious measures to the expression of exuberant erotic emotions, with a skill which could not be surpassed. It seems impossible to reproduce Jayadeva’s verse adequately in an English garb. The German poet Rückert, has, however, come as near to the highly artificial beauty of the original, both in form and matter, as is feasible in any translation.
It is somewhat strange that a poem which describes the transports of sensual love with all the exuberance of an Oriental fancy should, in the present instance, and not for the first time, have received an allegorical explanation in a mystical religious sense. According to Indian interpreters, the separation of Kṛishṇa and Rādhā, their seeking for each other, and their final reconciliation represent the relation of the supreme deity to the human soul. This may possibly have been the intention of Jayadeva, though only as a leading idea, not to be followed out in detail.
1 Referring to the poetical belief that the açoka only blossoms when struck by the foot of a beautiful girl.
2 E.g. amala-kamala-dala-lochana bhava-mochana.
Chapter XIII
The Drama
(Circa 400–1000 A.D.)
To the European mind the history of the Indian drama cannot but be a source of abundant interest; for here we have an important branch of literature which has had a full and varied national development, quite independent of Western influence, and which throws much light on Hindu social customs during the five or six centuries preceding the Muhammadan conquest.
The earliest forms of dramatic literature in India are represented by those hymns of the Rigveda which contain dialogues, such as those of Saramā and the Paṇis, Yama and Yamī, Purūravas and Urvaçī, the latter, indeed, being the foundation of a regular play composed much more than a thousand years later by the greatest dramatist of India. The origin of the acted drama is, however, wrapt in obscurity. Nevertheless, the evidence of tradition and of language suffice to direct us with considerable probability to its source.
The words for actor (naṭa) and play (nāṭaka) are derived from the verb naṭ, the Prākrit or vernacular form of the Sanskrit nṛit, “to dance.” The name is familiar to English ears in the form of nautch, the Indian dancing of the present day. The latter, indeed, probably represents the beginnings of the Indian drama. It must at first have consisted only of rude pantomime, in which the dancing movements of the body were accompanied by mute mimicking gestures of hand and face. Songs, doubtless, also early formed an ingredient in such performances. Thus Bharata, the name of the mythical inventor of the drama, which in Sanskrit also means “actor,” in several of the vernaculars signifies “singer,” as in the Gujaratī Bharot. The addition of dialogue was the last step in the development, which was thus much the same in India and in Greece. This primitive stage is represented by the Bengal yātrās and the Gītagovinda. These form the transition to the fully-developed Sanskrit play in which lyrics and dialogue are blended.
The earliest references to the acted drama are to be found in the Mahābhāshya, which mentions representations of the Kaṃsavadha, the “Slaying of Kaṃsa,” and the Balibandha, or “Binding of Bali,” episodes in the history of Kṛishṇa. Indian tradition describes Bharata as having caused to be acted before the gods a play representing the svayaṃvara of Lakshmī, wife of Vishṇu. Tradition further makes Kṛishṇa and his cowherdesses the starting-point of the saṃgīta, a representation consisting of a mixture of song, music, and dancing. The Gītagovinda is concerned with Kṛishṇa, and the modern yātrās generally represent scenes from the life of that deity. From all this it seems likely that the Indian drama was developed in connection with the cult of Vishṇu-Kṛishṇa, and that the earliest acted representations were therefore, like the mysteries of the Christian Middle Ages, a kind of religious plays, in which scenes from the legend of the god were enacted mainly with the aid of song and dance, supplemented with prose dialogue improvised by the performers.
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.
The characteristic features of the Indian drama which strike the Western student are the entire absence of tragedy, the interchange of lyrical stanzas with prose dialogue, and the use of Sanskrit for some characters and of Prākrit for others.
The Sanskrit drama is a mixed composition, in which joy is mingled with sorrow, in which the jester usually plays a prominent part, while the hero and heroine are often in the depths of despair. But it never has a sad ending. The emotions of terror, grief, or pity, with which the audience are inspired, are therefore always tranquillised by the happy termination of the story. Nor may any deeply tragic incident take place in the course of the play; for death is never allowed to be represented on the stage. Indeed nothing considered indecorous, whether of a serious or comic character, is allowed to be enacted in the sight or hearing of the spectators, such as the utterance of a curse, degradation, banishment, national calamity, biting, scratching, kissing, eating, or sleeping.
Sanskrit plays are full of lyrical passages describing scenes or persons presented to view, or containing reflections suggested by the incidents that occur. They usually consist of four-line stanzas. Çakuntalā contains nearly two hundred such, representing something like one half of the whole play. These lyrical passages are composed in a great many different metres. Thus the first thirty-four stanzas of Çakuntalā exhibit no fewer than eleven varieties of verse. It is not possible, as in the case of the simple Vedic metres, to imitate in English the almost infinite resources of the complicated and entirely quantitative classical Sanskrit measures. The spirit of the lyrical passages is, therefore, probably best reproduced by using blank verse as the familiar metre of our drama. The prose of the dialogue in the plays is often very commonplace, serving only as an introduction to the lofty sentiment of the poetry that follows.
In accordance with their social position, the various characters in a Sanskrit play speak different dialects. Sanskrit is employed only by heroes, kings, Brahmans, and men of high rank; Prākrit by all women and by men of the lower orders. Distinctions are further made in the use of Prākrit itself. Thus women of high position employ Mahārāshṭrī in lyrical passages, but otherwise they, as well as children and the better class of servants, speak Çaurasenī. Māgadhī is used, for instance, by attendants in the royal palace, Avantī by rogues or gamblers, Abhīrī by cowherds, Paiçāchī by charcoal-burners, and Apabhraṃça by the lowest and most despised people as well as barbarians.
The Sanskrit dramatists show considerable skill in weaving the incidents of the plot and in the portrayal of individual character, but do not show much fertility of invention, commonly borrowing the story of their plays from history or epic legend. Love is the subject of most Indian dramas. The hero, usually a king, already the husband of one or more wives, is smitten at first sight with the charms of some fair maiden. The heroine, equally susceptible, at once reciprocates his affection, but concealing her passion, keeps her lover in agonies of suspense. Harassed by doubts, obstacles, and delays, both are reduced to a melancholy and emaciated condition. The somewhat doleful effect produced by their plight is relieved by the animated doings of the heroine’s confidantes, but especially by the proceedings of the court-jester (vidūshaka), the constant companion of the hero. He excites ridicule by his bodily defects no less than his clumsy interference with the course of the hero’s affairs. His attempts at wit are, however, not of a high order. It is somewhat strange that a character occupying the position of a universal, butt should always be a Brahman.
The poet dwells longest on the delights of spring, the last of the six seasons. It is then that maidens, with karṇikāra flowers on their ears, with red açoka blossoms and sprays of jasmine in their locks, go to meet their lovers. Then the hum of intoxicated bees is heard, and the note of the Indian cuckoo; then the blossoms of the mango-tree are seen: these are the sharp arrows wherewith the god of the flowery bow enflames the hearts of maidens to love.
A lyric poem of a very artificial character, and consisting of only twenty-two stanzas, is the Ghaṭa-karpara, or “Potsherd,” called after the author’s name, which is worked into the last verse. The date of the poet is unknown. He is mentioned as one of the “nine gems” at the court of the mythical Vikramāditya in the verse already mentioned.
The Chaura-panchāçikā, or “Fifty Stanzas of the Thief,” is a lyrical poem which contains many beauties. Its author was the Kashmirian Bilhaṇa, who belongs to the later half of the eleventh century. According to the romantic tradition, this poet secretly enjoyed the love of a princess, and when found out was condemned to death. He thereupon composed fifty stanzas, each beginning with the words “Even now I remember,” in which he describes with glowing enthusiasm the joys of love he had experienced. Their effect on the king was so great that he forgave the poet and bestowed on him the hand of his daughter.
The main bulk of the lyrical creations of mediæval India are not connected poems of considerable length, but consist of that miniature painting which, as with a few strokes, depicts an amatory situation or sentiment in a single stanza of four lines. These lyrics are in many respects cognate to the sententious poetry which the Indians cultivated with such eminent success. Bearing evidence of great wealth of observation and depth of feeling, they are often drawn by a master-hand. Many of them are in matter and form gems of perfect beauty. Some of their charm is, however, lost in translation owing to the impossibility of reproducing the elaborate metres employed in the original. Several Sanskrit poets composed collections of these miniature lyrics.
The most eminent of these authors is Bhartṛihari, grammarian, philosopher, and poet in one. Only the literary training of India could make such a combination possible, and even there it has hardly a parallel. Bhartṛihari lived in the first half of the seventh century. The Chinese traveller I Tsing, who spent more than twenty years in India at the end of that century, records that, having turned Buddhist monk, the poet again became a layman, and fluctuated altogether seven times between the monastery and the world. Bhartṛihari blamed himself for, but could not overcome, his inconstancy. He wrote three centuries of detached stanzas. Of the first and last, which are sententious in character, there will be occasion to say something later. Only the second, entitled Çṛingāra-çataka, or “Century of Love,” deals with erotic sentiment. Here Bhartṛihari, in graceful and meditative verse, shows himself to be well acquainted both with the charms of women and with the arts by which they captivate the hearts of men. Who, he asks in one of these miniature poems, is not filled with yearning thoughts of love in spring, when the air swoons with the scent of the mango blossom and is filled with the hum of bees intoxicated with honey? In another he avers that none can resist the charms of lotus-eyed maidens, not even learned men, whose utterances about renouncing love are mere idle words. The poet himself laments that, when his beloved is away, the brightness goes out of his life —
Beside the lamp, the flaming hearth,
In light of sun or moon and stars,
Without my dear one’s lustrous eyes
This world is wholly dark to me.
At the same time he warns the unwary against reflecting over-much on female beauty —
Let not thy thoughts, O Wanderer,
Roam in that forest, woman’s form:
For there a robber ever lurks,
Ready to strike — the God of Love.
In another stanza the Indian Cupid appears as a fisherman, who, casting on the ocean of this world a hook called woman, quickly catches men as fishes eager for the bait of ruddy lips, and bakes them in the fire of love.
Strange are the contradictions in which the poet finds himself involved by loving a maiden —
Remembered she but causes pain;
At sight of her my madness grows;
When touched, she makes my senses reel:
How, pray, can such an one be loved?
So towards the end of the Century the poet’s heart begins to turn from the allurements of love. “Cease, maiden,” he exclaims, “to cast thy glances on me: thy trouble is in vain. I am an altered man; youth has gone by and my thoughts are bent on the forest; my infatuation is over, and the whole world I now account but as a wisp of straw.” Thus Bhartṛihari prepares the way for his third collection, the “Century of Renunciation.”
A short but charming treasury of detached erotic verses is the Çṛingāra-tilaka, which tradition attributes to Kālidāsa. In its twenty-three stanzas occur some highly imaginative analogies, worked out with much originality. In one of them, for instance, the poet asks how it comes that a maiden, whose features and limbs resemble various tender flowers, should have a heart of stone. In another he compares his mistress to a hunter —
This maiden like a huntsman is;
Her brow is like the bow he bends;
Her sidelong glances are his darts;
My heart’s the antelope she slays.
The most important lyrical work of this kind is the Amaruçataka, or “Hundred stanzas of Amaru.” The author is a master in the art of painting lovers in all their moods, bliss and dejection, anger and devotion. He is especially skilful in depicting the various stages of estrangement and reconciliation. It is remarkable how, with a subject so limited, in situations and emotions so similar, the poet succeeds in arresting the attention with surprising turns of thought, and with subtle touches which are ever new. The love which Amaru as well as other Indian lyrists portrays is not of the romantic and ideal, but rather of the sensuous type. Nevertheless his work often shows delicacy of feeling and refinement of thought. Such, for instance, is the case when he describes a wife watching in the gloaming for the return of her absent husband.
Many lyrical gems are to be found preserved in the Sanskrit treatises on poetics. One such is a stanza on the red açoka. In this the poet asks the tree to say whither his mistress has gone; it need not shake its head in the wind, as if to say it did not know; for how could it be flowering so brilliantly had it not been touched by the foot of his beloved?1
In all this lyrical poetry the plant and animal world plays an important part and is treated with much charm. Of flowers, the lotus is the most conspicuous. One of these stanzas, for example, describes the day-lotuses as closing their calyx-eyes in the evening, because unwilling to see the sun, their spouse and benefactor, sink down bereft of his rays. Another describes with pathetic beauty the dream of a bee: “The night will pass, the fair dawn will come, the sun will rise, the lotuses will laugh;” while a bee thus mused within the calyx, an elephant, alas! tore up the lotus plant.
Various birds to which poetical myths are attached are frequently introduced as furnishing analogies to human life and love. The chātaka, which would rather die of thirst than drink aught but the raindrops from the cloud, affords an illustration of pride. The chakora, supposed to imbibe the rays of the moon, affords a parallel to the lover who with his eyes drinks in the beams of his beloved’s face. The chakravāka, which, fabled to be condemned to nocturnal separation from his mate, calls to her with plaintive cry during the watches of the night, serves as an emblem of conjugal fidelity.
In all this lyric poetry the bright eyes and beauty of Indian girls find a setting in scenes brilliant with blossoming trees, fragrant with flowers, gay with the plumage and vocal with the song of birds, diversified with lotus ponds steeped in tropical sunshine and with large-eyed gazelles reclining in the shade. Some of its gems are well worthy of having inspired the genius of Heine to produce such lyrics as Die Lotosblume and Auf Flügeln des Gesanges.
A considerable amount of lyrical poetry of the same type has also been produced in Prākrit, especially in the extensive anthology entitled Saptaçataka, or “Seven Centuries,” of the poet Hāla, who probably lived before A.D. 1000. It contains many beauties, and is altogether a rich treasury of popular Indian lyrical poetry. It must suffice here to refer to but one of the stanzas contained in this collection. In this little poem the moon is described as a white swan sailing on the pure nocturnal lake of the heavens, studded with starry lotuses.
The transitional stage between pure lyric and pure drama is represented by the Gītagovinda, or “Cowherd in Song,” a lyrical drama, which, though dating from the twelfth century, is the earliest literary specimen of a primitive type of play that still survives in Bengal, and must have preceded the regular dramas. The poem contains no dialogue in the proper sense, for its three characters only engage in a kind of lyrical monologue, of which one of the other two is supposed to be an auditor, sometimes even no one at all. The subject of the poem is the love of Kṛishṇa for the beautiful cowherdess Rādhā, the estrangement of the lovers, and their final reconciliation. It is taken from that episode of Kṛishṇa’s life in which he himself was a herdsman (go-vinda), living on the banks of the Yamunā, and enjoying to the full the love of the cowherdesses. The only three characters of the poem are Kṛishṇa, Rādhā, and a confidante of the latter.
Its author, Jayadeva, was probably a native of Bengal, having been a contemporary of a Bengal king named Lakshmaṇasena. It is probable that he took as his model popular plays representing incidents from the life of Kṛishṇa, as the modern yātrās in Bengal still do. The latter festival plays even now consist chiefly of lyrical stanzas, partly recited and partly sung, the dialogue being but scanty, and to a considerable extent left to improvisation. On such a basis Jayadeva created his highly artificial poem. The great perfection of form he has here attained, by combining grace of diction with ease in handling the most difficult metres, has not failed to win the admiration of all who are capable of reading the original Sanskrit. Making abundant use of alliteration and the most complex rhymes occurring, as in the Nalodaya, not only at the end, but in the middle of metrical lines,2 the poet has adapted the most varied and melodious measures to the expression of exuberant erotic emotions, with a skill which could not be surpassed. It seems impossible to reproduce Jayadeva’s verse adequately in an English garb. The German poet Rückert, has, however, come as near to the highly artificial beauty of the original, both in form and matter, as is feasible in any translation.
It is somewhat strange that a poem which describes the transports of sensual love with all the exuberance of an Oriental fancy should, in the present instance, and not for the first time, have received an allegorical explanation in a mystical religious sense. According to Indian interpreters, the separation of Kṛishṇa and Rādhā, their seeking for each other, and their final reconciliation represent the relation of the supreme deity to the human soul. This may possibly have been the intention of Jayadeva, though only as a leading idea, not to be followed out in detail.
1 Referring to the poetical belief that the açoka only blossoms when struck by the foot of a beautiful girl.
2 E.g. amala-kamala-dala-lochana bhava-mochana.
Chapter XIII
The Drama
(Circa 400–1000 A.D.)
To the European mind the history of the Indian drama cannot but be a source of abundant interest; for here we have an important branch of literature which has had a full and varied national development, quite independent of Western influence, and which throws much light on Hindu social customs during the five or six centuries preceding the Muhammadan conquest.
The earliest forms of dramatic literature in India are represented by those hymns of the Rigveda which contain dialogues, such as those of Saramā and the Paṇis, Yama and Yamī, Purūravas and Urvaçī, the latter, indeed, being the foundation of a regular play composed much more than a thousand years later by the greatest dramatist of India. The origin of the acted drama is, however, wrapt in obscurity. Nevertheless, the evidence of tradition and of language suffice to direct us with considerable probability to its source.
The words for actor (naṭa) and play (nāṭaka) are derived from the verb naṭ, the Prākrit or vernacular form of the Sanskrit nṛit, “to dance.” The name is familiar to English ears in the form of nautch, the Indian dancing of the present day. The latter, indeed, probably represents the beginnings of the Indian drama. It must at first have consisted only of rude pantomime, in which the dancing movements of the body were accompanied by mute mimicking gestures of hand and face. Songs, doubtless, also early formed an ingredient in such performances. Thus Bharata, the name of the mythical inventor of the drama, which in Sanskrit also means “actor,” in several of the vernaculars signifies “singer,” as in the Gujaratī Bharot. The addition of dialogue was the last step in the development, which was thus much the same in India and in Greece. This primitive stage is represented by the Bengal yātrās and the Gītagovinda. These form the transition to the fully-developed Sanskrit play in which lyrics and dialogue are blended.
The earliest references to the acted drama are to be found in the Mahābhāshya, which mentions representations of the Kaṃsavadha, the “Slaying of Kaṃsa,” and the Balibandha, or “Binding of Bali,” episodes in the history of Kṛishṇa. Indian tradition describes Bharata as having caused to be acted before the gods a play representing the svayaṃvara of Lakshmī, wife of Vishṇu. Tradition further makes Kṛishṇa and his cowherdesses the starting-point of the saṃgīta, a representation consisting of a mixture of song, music, and dancing. The Gītagovinda is concerned with Kṛishṇa, and the modern yātrās generally represent scenes from the life of that deity. From all this it seems likely that the Indian drama was developed in connection with the cult of Vishṇu-Kṛishṇa, and that the earliest acted representations were therefore, like the mysteries of the Christian Middle Ages, a kind of religious plays, in which scenes from the legend of the god were enacted mainly with the aid of song and dance, supplemented with prose dialogue improvised by the performers.
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.
The characteristic features of the Indian drama which strike the Western student are the entire absence of tragedy, the interchange of lyrical stanzas with prose dialogue, and the use of Sanskrit for some characters and of Prākrit for others.
The Sanskrit drama is a mixed composition, in which joy is mingled with sorrow, in which the jester usually plays a prominent part, while the hero and heroine are often in the depths of despair. But it never has a sad ending. The emotions of terror, grief, or pity, with which the audience are inspired, are therefore always tranquillised by the happy termination of the story. Nor may any deeply tragic incident take place in the course of the play; for death is never allowed to be represented on the stage. Indeed nothing considered indecorous, whether of a serious or comic character, is allowed to be enacted in the sight or hearing of the spectators, such as the utterance of a curse, degradation, banishment, national calamity, biting, scratching, kissing, eating, or sleeping.
Sanskrit plays are full of lyrical passages describing scenes or persons presented to view, or containing reflections suggested by the incidents that occur. They usually consist of four-line stanzas. Çakuntalā contains nearly two hundred such, representing something like one half of the whole play. These lyrical passages are composed in a great many different metres. Thus the first thirty-four stanzas of Çakuntalā exhibit no fewer than eleven varieties of verse. It is not possible, as in the case of the simple Vedic metres, to imitate in English the almost infinite resources of the complicated and entirely quantitative classical Sanskrit measures. The spirit of the lyrical passages is, therefore, probably best reproduced by using blank verse as the familiar metre of our drama. The prose of the dialogue in the plays is often very commonplace, serving only as an introduction to the lofty sentiment of the poetry that follows.
In accordance with their social position, the various characters in a Sanskrit play speak different dialects. Sanskrit is employed only by heroes, kings, Brahmans, and men of high rank; Prākrit by all women and by men of the lower orders. Distinctions are further made in the use of Prākrit itself. Thus women of high position employ Mahārāshṭrī in lyrical passages, but otherwise they, as well as children and the better class of servants, speak Çaurasenī. Māgadhī is used, for instance, by attendants in the royal palace, Avantī by rogues or gamblers, Abhīrī by cowherds, Paiçāchī by charcoal-burners, and Apabhraṃça by the lowest and most despised people as well as barbarians.
The Sanskrit dramatists show considerable skill in weaving the incidents of the plot and in the portrayal of individual character, but do not show much fertility of invention, commonly borrowing the story of their plays from history or epic legend. Love is the subject of most Indian dramas. The hero, usually a king, already the husband of one or more wives, is smitten at first sight with the charms of some fair maiden. The heroine, equally susceptible, at once reciprocates his affection, but concealing her passion, keeps her lover in agonies of suspense. Harassed by doubts, obstacles, and delays, both are reduced to a melancholy and emaciated condition. The somewhat doleful effect produced by their plight is relieved by the animated doings of the heroine’s confidantes, but especially by the proceedings of the court-jester (vidūshaka), the constant companion of the hero. He excites ridicule by his bodily defects no less than his clumsy interference with the course of the hero’s affairs. His attempts at wit are, however, not of a high order. It is somewhat strange that a character occupying the position of a universal, butt should always be a Brahman.
