The Sanskrit Epics

by Delphi Classics

  While the Indian drama shows some affinities with Greek comedy, it affords more striking points of resemblance to the productions of the Elizabethan playwrights, and in particular of Shakespeare. The aim of the Indian dramatists is not to portray types of character, but individual persons; nor do they observe the rule of unity of time or place. They are given to introducing romantic and fabulous elements; they mix prose with verse; they blend the comic with the serious, and introduce puns and comic distortions of words. The character of the vidūshaka, too, is a close parallel to the fool in Shakespeare. Common to both are also several contrivances intended to further the action of the drama, such as the writing of letters, the introduction of a play within a play, the restoration of the dead to life, and the use of intoxication on the stage as a humorous device. Such a series of coincidences, in a case where influence or borrowing is absolutely out of the question, is an instructive instance of how similar developments can arise independently.

  Every Sanskrit play begins with a prologue or introduction, which regularly opens with a prayer or benediction (nāndī) invoking the national deity in favour of the audience. Then generally follows a dialogue between the stage-manager and one or two actors, which refers to the play and its author, seeks to win public favour by paying a complimentary tribute to the critical acumen of the spectators, mentions past events and present circumstances elucidating the plot, and invariably ends by adroitly introducing one of the characters of the actual play. A Sanskrit drama is divided into scenes and acts. The former are marked by the entrance of one character and the exit of another. The stage is never left vacant till the end of the act, nor does any change of locality take place till then. Before a new act an interlude (called vishkambha or praveçaka), consisting of a monologue or dialogue, is often introduced. In this scene allusion is made to events supposed to have occurred in the interval, and the audience are prepared for what is about to take place. The whole piece closes with a prayer for national prosperity, which is addressed to the favourite deity and is spoken by one of the principal characters.

  The number of acts in a play varies from one to ten; but, while fluctuating somewhat, is determined by the character of the drama. Thus the species called nāṭikā has four acts and the farcical prahasana only one.

  The duration of the events is supposed to be identical with the time occupied in performing them on the stage, or, at most, a day; and a night is assumed to elapse between each act and that which follows. Occasionally, however, the interval is much longer. Thus in Kālidāsa’s Çakuntalā and Urvaçī several years pass between the first and the last act; while in Bhavabhūti’s Uttara-rāmacharita no less than twelve years elapse between the first and the second act.

  Nor is unity of place observed; for the scene may be transferred from one part of the earth to another, or even to the aërial regions. Change of locality sometimes occurs even within the same act; as when a journey is supposed to be performed through the air in a celestial car. It is somewhat curious that while there are many and minute stage directions about dress and decorations no less than about the actions of the players, nothing is said in this way as to change of scene. As regards the number of characters appearing in a play, no limit of any kind is imposed.

  There were no special theatres in the Indian Middle Ages, and plays seem to have been performed in the concert-room (saṃgīta-çālā) of royal palaces. A curtain divided in the middle was a necessary part of the stage arrangement; it did not, however, separate the audience from the stage, as in the Roman theatre, but formed the background of the stage. Behind the curtain was the tiring-room (nepathya), whence the actors came on the stage. When they were intended to enter hurriedly, they were directed to do so “with a toss of the curtain.” The stage scenery and decorations were of a very simple order, much being left to the imagination of the spectator, as in the Shakespearean drama. Weapons, seats, thrones, and chariots appeared on the stage; but it is highly improbable that the latter were drawn by the living animals supposed to be attached to them. Owing to the very frequent intercourse between the inhabitants of heaven and earth, there may have been some kind of aërial contrivance to represent celestial chariots; but owing to the repeated occurrence of the stage direction “gesticulating” (nāṭayitvā) in this connection, it is to be supposed that the impression of motion and speed was produced on the audience simply by the gestures of the actors.

  The best productions of the Indian drama are nearly a dozen in number, and date from a period embracing something like four hundred years, from about the beginning of the fifth to the end of the eighth century A.D. These plays are the compositions of the great dramatists Kālidāsa and Bhavabhūti, or have come down under the names of the royal patrons Çūdraka and Çrīharsha, to whom their real authors attributed them.

  The greatest of all is Kālidāsa, already known to us as the author of several of the best Kāvyas. Three of his plays have been preserved, Çakuntalā, Vikramorvaçī, and Mālavikāgnimitra. The richness of creative fancy which he displays in these, and his skill in the expression of tender feeling, assign him a high place among the dramatists of the world. The harmony of the poetic sentiment is nowhere disturbed by anything violent or terrifying. Every passion is softened without being enfeebled. The ardour of love never goes beyond æsthetic bounds; it never maddens to wild jealousy or hate. The torments of sorrow are toned down to a profound and touching melancholy. It was here at last that the Indian genius found the law of moderation in poetry, which it hardly knew elsewhere, and thus produced works of enduring beauty. Hence it was that Çakuntalā exercised so great a fascination on the calm intellect of Goethe, who at the same time was so strongly repelled by the extravagances of Hindu mythological art.

  In comparison with the Greek and the modern drama, Nature occupies a much more important place in Sanskrit plays. The characters are surrounded by Nature, with which they are in constant communion. The mango and other trees, creepers, lotuses, and pale-red trumpet-flowers, gazelles, flamingoes, bright-hued parrots, and Indian cuckoos, in the midst of which they move, are often addressed by them and form an essential part of their lives. Hence the influence of Nature on the minds of lovers is much dwelt on. Prominent everywhere in classical Sanskrit poetry, these elements of Nature luxuriate most of all in the drama.

  The finest of Kālidāsa’s works are, it cannot be denied, defective as stage-plays. The very delicacy of the sentiment, combined with a certain want of action, renders them incapable of producing a powerful effect on an audience. The best representatives of the romantic drama of India are Çakuntalā and Vikramorvaçī. Dealing with the love adventures of two famous kings of ancient epic legend, they represent scenes far removed from reality, in which heaven and earth are not separated, and men, demigods, nymphs, and saints are intermingled. Mālavikāgnimitra, on the other hand, not concerned with the heroic or divine, is a palace-and-harem drama, a story of contemporary love and intrigue.

  The plot of Çakuntalā is derived from the first book of the Mahābhārata. The hero is Dushyanta, a celebrated king of ancient days, the heroine, Çakuntalā, the daughter of a celestial nymph, Menakā, and of the sage Viçvāmitra; while their son, Bharata, became the founder of a famous race. The piece consists of seven acts, and belongs to the class of drama by native writers on poetics styled nāṭaka, or “the play.” In this the plot must be taken from mythology or history, the characters must be heroic or divine; it should be written in elaborate style, and full of noble sentiments, with five acts at least, and not more than ten.

  After the prelude, in which an actress sings a charming lyric on the beauties of summer-time, King Dushyanta appears pursuing a gazelle in the sacred grove of the sage Kaṇva. Here he catches sight of Çakuntalā, who, accompanied by her two maiden friends, is engaged in watering her favourite trees. Struck by her beauty, he exclaims —

  Her lip is ruddy as an opening bud.

  Her graceful arms resemble tender shoots:

  Attractive as the bloom upon
the tree,

  The glow of youth is spread on all her limbs.

  Seizing an opportunity of addressing her, he soon feels that it is impossible for him to return to his capital —

  My limbs move forward, while my heart flies back,

  Like silken standard borne against the breeze.

  In the second act the comic element is introduced with the jester Māṭhavya, who is as much disgusted with his master’s love-lorn condition as with his fondness for the chase. In the third act, the love-sick Çakuntalā is discovered lying on a bed of flowers in an arbour. The king overhears her conversation with her two friends, shows himself, and offers to wed the heroine. An interlude explains how a choleric ascetic, named Durvāsa, enraged at not being greeted by Çakuntalā with due courtesy, owing to her pre-occupied state, had pronounced a curse which should cause her to be entirely forgotten by her lover, who could recognise her only by means of a ring.

  The king having meanwhile married Çakuntalā and returned home, the sage Kaṇva has resolved to send her to her husband. The way in which Çakuntalā takes leave of the sacred grove in which she has been brought up, of her flowers, her gazelles, and her friends, is charmingly described in the fourth act. This is the act which contains the most obvious beauties; for here the poet displays to the full the richness of his fancy, his abundant sympathy with Nature, and a profound knowledge of the human heart.

  A young Brahman pupil thus describes the dawning of the day on which Çakuntalā is to leave the forest hermitage —

  On yonder side the moon, the Lord of Plants,

  Sinks down behind the western mountain’s crest;

  On this, the sun preceded by the dawn

  Appears: the setting and the rise at once

  Of these two orbs the symbols are of man’s

  Own fluctuating fortunes in the world.

  Then he continues —

  The moon has gone; the lilies on the lake,

  Whose beauty lingers in the memory,

  No more delight my gaze: they droop and fade;

  Deep is their sorrow for their absent lord.

  The aged hermit of the grove thus expresses his feelings at the approaching loss of Çakuntalā —

  My heart is touched with sadness at the thought

  “Çakuntalā must go to-day”; my throat

  Is choked with flow of tears repressed; my sight

  Is dimmed with pensiveness; but if the grief

  Of an old forest hermit is so great,

  How keen must be the pang a father feels

  When freshly parted from a cherished child!

  Then calling on the trees to give her a kindly farewell, he exclaims —

  The trees, the kinsmen of her forest home,

  Now to Çakuntalā give leave to go:

  They with the Kokila’s melodious cry

  Their answer make.

  Thereupon the following good wishes are uttered by voices in the air —

  Thy journey be auspicious; may the breeze,

  Gentle and soothing, fan thy cheek; may lakes

  All bright with lily cups delight thine eye;

  The sunbeams’ heat be cooled by shady trees;

  The dust beneath thy feet the pollen be

  Of lotuses.

  The fifth act, in which Çakuntalā appears before her husband, is deeply moving. The king fails to recognise her, and, though treating her not unkindly, refuses to acknowledge her as his wife. As a last resource, Çakuntalā bethinks herself of the ring given her by her husband, but on discovering that it is lost, abandons hope. She is then borne off to heaven by celestial agency.

  In the following interlude we see a fisherman dragged along by constables for having in his possession the royal signet-ring, which he professes to have found inside a fish. The king, however, causes him to be set free, rewarding him handsomely for his find. Recollection of his former love now returns to Dushyanta. While he is indulging in sorrow at his repudiation of Çakuntalā, Mātali, Indra’s charioteer, appears on the scene to ask the king’s aid in vanquishing the demons.

  In the last act Dushyanta is seen driving in Indra’s car to Hemakūṭa, the mountain of the Gandharvas. Here he sees a young boy playing with a lion cub. Taking his hand, without knowing him to be his own son, he exclaims —

  If now the touch of but a stranger’s child

  Thus sends a thrill of joy through all my limbs,

  What transports must he waken in the soul

  Of that blest father from whose loins he sprang!

  Soon after he finds and recognises Çakuntalā, with whom he is at length happily reunited.

  Kālidāsa’s play has come down to us in two main recensions. The so-called Devanāgarī one, shorter and more concise, is probably the older and better. The more diffuse Bengal recension became known first through the translation of Sir William Jones.

  Vikramorvaçī, or “Urvaçī won by Valour,” is a play in five acts, belonging to the class called Troṭaka, which is described as representing events partly terrestrial and partly celestial, and as consisting of five, seven, eight, or nine acts. Its plot is briefly as follows. King Purūravas, hearing from nymphs that their companion, Urvaçī, has been carried off by demons, goes to the rescue and brings her back on his car. He is enraptured by the beauty of the nymph, no less than she is captivated by her deliverer. Urvaçī being summoned before the throne of Indra, the lovers are soon obliged to part.

  In the second act Urvaçī appears for a short time to the king as he disconsolately wanders in the garden. A letter, in which she had written a confession of her love, is discovered by the queen, who refuses to be pacified.

  In the third act we learn that Urvaçī had been acting before Indra in a play representing the betrothal of Lakshmī, and had, when asked on whom her heart was set, named Purūravas instead of Purushottama (i.e. Vishṇu). She is consequently cursed by her teacher, Bharata, but is forgiven by Indra, who allows her to be united with Purūravas till the latter sees his offspring.

  The fourth act is peculiar in being almost entirely lyrical. The lovers are wandering near Kailāsa, the divine mountain, when Urvaçī, in a fit of jealousy, enters the grove of Kumāra, god of war, which is forbidden to all females. In consequence of Bharata’s curse, she is instantly transformed into a creeper. The king, beside himself with grief at her loss, seeks her everywhere. He apostrophises various insects, birds, beasts, and even a mountain peak, to tell him where she is. At last he thinks he sees her in the mountain stream: —

  The rippling wave is like her frown; the row

  Of tossing birds her girdle; streaks of foam

  Her flutt’ring garment as she speeds along;

  The current, her devious and stumbling gait:

  ’Tis she turned in her wrath into a stream.

  Finally, under the influence of a magic stone, which has come into his possession, he clasps a creeper, which is transformed into Urvaçī in his arms.

  Between the fourth and fifth acts several years elapse. Then Purūravas, by accident, discovers his son Āyus, whom Urvaçī had secretly borne, and had caused to be brought up in a hermitage. Urvaçī must therefore return to heaven. Indra, however, in return for Purūravas’ services against the demons, makes a new concession, and allows the nymph to remain with the king for good.

  There are two recensions of this play also, one of them belonging to Southern India.

  The doubts long entertained, on the ground of its inferiority and different character, as to whether Mālavikāgnimitra, or “Mālavikā and Agnimitra,” is really the work of Kālidāsa, who is mentioned in the prologue as the author, are hardly justified. The piece has been shown by Weber to agree pretty closely in thought and diction with the two other plays of the poet; and though certainly not equal to the latter in poetic merit, it possesses many beauties. The subject is not heroic or divine, the plot being derived from the ordinary palace life of Indian princes, and thus supplying a peculiarly good picture of the social conditions of the
times. The hero is a historical king of the dynasty of the Çungas, who reigned at Vidiçā (Bhilsa) in the second century B.C. The play describes the loves of this king Agnimitra and of Mālavikā, one of the attendants of the queen, who jealously keeps her out of the king’s sight on account of her great beauty. The various endeavours of the king to see and converse with Mālavikā give rise to numerous little intrigues. In the course of these Agnimitra nowhere appears as a despot, but acts with much delicate consideration for the feelings of his spouses. It finally turns out that Mālavikā is by birth a princess, who had only come to be an attendant at Agnimitra’s court through having fallen into the hands of robbers. There being now no objection to her union with the king, all ends happily.

  While Kālidāsa stands highest in poetical refinement, in tenderness, and depth of feeling, the author of the Mṛicchakaṭikā, or “Clay Cart,” is pre-eminent among Indian playwrights for the distinctively dramatic qualities of vigour, life, and action, no less than sharpness of characterisation, being thus allied in genius to Shakespeare. This play is also marked by originality and good sense. Attributed to a king named Çūdraka, who is panegyrised in the prologue, it is probably the work of a poet patronised by him, perhaps Daṇḍin, as Professor Pischel thinks. In any case, it not improbably belongs to the sixth century. It is divided into ten acts, and belongs to the dramatic class called prakaraṇa. The name has little to do with the play, being derived from an unimportant episode of the sixth act. The scene is laid in Ujjayinī and its neighbourhood. The number of characters appearing on the stage is very considerable. The chief among them are Chārudatta, a Brahman merchant who has lost all his property by excessive liberality, and Vasantasenā, a rich courtesan who loves the poor but noble Chārudatta, and ultimately becomes his wife. The third act contains a humorous account of a burglary, in which stealing is treated as a fine art. In the fourth act there is a detailed description of the splendours of Vasantasenā’s palace. Though containing much exaggeration, it furnishes an interesting picture of the kind of luxury that prevailed in those days. Altogether this play abounds in comic situations, besides containing many serious scenes, some of which even border on the tragic.