[Contents]2.The GrammariansIn Pāṇini15we find mention of Naṭasūtras, text-books for Naṭas, ascribed to Çilālin and Kṛçāçva; the fact is recorded because of the formation of the names assumed by their followers, Çailālins and Kṛçāçvins. The names are curious; it has been suggested by Professor Lévi to see in them ironical appellations; the Kṛçāçvins are those whose horses are meagre, with an ironic reference to the great Indo-Iranian hero Kṛçāçva, while the Çailālins have nothing but stones for their beds in pitiful contrast with the fame of the Vedic school of that name, whoseÇailāli Brāhmaṇais known to us. But we unfortunately are here as ever in no position to establish the meaning of Naṭa, which may mean no more than a pantomime. The conclusion is important, for Pāṇini’s date is most probably the fourth centuryB.C., and the fact that he has no term certainly denoting drama is of significance.In Patañjali,16the author of theMahābhāṣya, whose date is certainly to be placed with reasonable assurance about 140B.C., we find much more effective evidence bearing on the existence of drama. We learn from his criticism on a rule laid down by his predecessor Kātyāyana, as to the use of the imperfect tense of things which a person has himself seen, that it was normal[32]to use in his time phrases describing a past event as if it had occurred before the eyes of the speaker; we can understand this only of a character in a dramatic performance of some kind, and it is significant that the phrase cited in illustration of the usage is ‘Vāsudeva has slain Kaṅsa’. The reference is to the famous legend of Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva, and his wicked uncle Kaṅsa, who first sought to destroy him in his childhood, and afterward paid the penalty of his evil deeds by death at the hands of Kṛṣṇa. This notice receives further elucidation by a famous passage, first adduced by Weber, in which Patañjali explains the justification of the use of phrases such as ‘He causes the death of Kaṅsa’, and ‘He causes the binding of Bali’.17Both these deeds, the actual killing, the actual binding, are deeds of the remote past; how then can the present be in place? The answer, we learn, is that the events are described in the present because the sense is, not that they are being actually done, but that they are being described. Of the modes of description no less than three are then set out. In the first place we have the case of the Çaubhikas or Çobhanikas, who before the eyes of the spectators actually carry out—naturally in appearance only in the first case—the killing of Kaṅsa and the binding of Bali; they represent in fact by action, without words, so far as this passage formally tells us, the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa, the binding of the evil Bali. Secondly, we have the painters; they describe by their paintings, for on the canvases themselves we see the blows rained on Kaṅsa and the dragging of him about; a painter, that is to say, kills Kaṅsa and has Bali bound by painting a scene describing these incidents. Thirdly, we have those who use words, and not action of the Çaubhika type, the Granthikas; they also, while relating the fortunes of their subjects from their birth to their death, make them real to the minds of their audience, for they divide[33]themselves into two parties, one set adhering to Kṛṣṇa, and one to Kaṅsa, and they adopt different colours, the adherents of Kaṅsa black, and those of Kṛṣṇa red, though, by what is probably an erroneous correction, the colours are ascribed in the inverse order by many of the manuscripts.This is clear and intelligible, and it is unfortunate that it has recently been misunderstood by Professor Lüders,18with disastrous results for the comprehension of the notice. The Çaubhikas are made to be persons who explain to the audience shadow pictures, a view which has not even the merit of Indian tradition, and, as will be seen below, contradicts entirely the facts known as to the shadow play in India, where it is recorded only in late mediaeval times. The traditional rendering in India of the statement is recorded by Kaiyaṭa, more than a thousand years later; it is frankly obscure; Professor Lévi19renders it as meaning that the Çaubhikas are those who teach actors, representing Kaṅsa, and so on, the mode of recitation, a version which is doubtless very difficult. The sense accorded to it by Professor Lüders is that the Çaubhikas explain to the audience dumb actors, a form of drama which is recorded as performed by the Jhāṁkīs of Bombay and Mathurā in modern India, but of which in ancient times we have no certainty, since this is the only passage which even remotely can be supposed to allude to it. The obvious view, that of Weber,20that we have a reference to a pantomimic killing and binding, seems irresistible; the use of the causative is explained by this fact; if Bali and Kaṅsa were persons of to-day the simple verb would express their binding and slaying; because it is mere actors, the causative is used, and its use denotes that the act is not now real but an exposition of a past act. ‘He causes the binding of Bali’[34]means ‘he describes the binding of Bali’. The only legitimate doubt on the passage is that regarding the exact mode of performance of the Çaubhikas; the wordpratyakṣamin the text insists that it is done before the eyes of the audience, and we may justly assume that the Çaubhikas performed manual acts. Did they also use dialogue? There is nothing in the passage either to show that they did or that they did not; the contrast which follows later with Granthikas, whose medium was words, is sufficiently pointed if they used action as well as words. The most that can be said is that Çaubhika or Çobhanika does not obtain currency later as denoting an actor, which may tell against the view that Patañjali is here actually alluding to drama proper. Further we cannot go; to argue that, if he had known drama proper, he must have clearly mentioned it, is to ignore entirely the manner of Patañjali, whose silence as to what he must have known is as common as his incidental mention of current topics.The error of Professor Lüders in insisting on a literal interpretation of the passage as referring to different sorts of narrators by words comes out with special clearness as regards the second class of persons alluded to by Patañjali. That they are painters whose canvases are living speeches was clearly recognized by the commentators in India. Haradatta tells us in the simplest and plainest language that when men look at a picture on which is shown the death of Kaṅsa at the hands of Vāsudeva they interpret the picture as the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa by the blessed Vāsudeva, and thus by the pictured Vāsudeva cause to be slain the pictured Kaṅsa, for this is the conception which they form as they gaze, and he adds, very naturally, that this explains the practice of saying of artists that they cause the slaying of Kaṅsa, the binding of Bali.21It would be difficult to see how the idea could have been more forcibly expressed, but Professor Lüders interprets it in the sense that artists occasionally explain their own pictures to others, an idea which is not merely wholly impossible, but renders Haradatta’s[35]language nonsense. On this basis he finds that the Çaubhikas added to their business of explaining shadow pictures that of showing and explaining other pictures, in this respect again without any support from tradition.Finally Professor Lüders denies any division of parties among the Granthikas, whose name he derives, like the scholiasts, from the use of manuscript books in recitation, rejecting the idea of cyclic rhapsodes suggested by Dr. Dahlmann.22The derivation is too speculative in sense to be relied upon, but there is no doubt that the Granthikas were reciters. Their exact means of expressing the sense is not quite clear owing to the unlucky divergence of reading in the text, and the fact that the precise meaning of the second word in the most probable reading (çabda-gaḍu-mātram)23is wholly unknown. It is, accordingly, wholly illegitimate to assert that they used words alone, and on the score of that to deny that they could be said to divide themselves into two parties, one of followers of Kaṅsa, one of adherents of Kṛṣṇa, bearing appropriate colours. This view reduces us to the impossible theory that the division of parties refers to the audience. Apart from all questions of regard for the Sanskrit language, which Patañjali should be assumed capable of writing, the ludicrous result is achieved that among a pious audience of Kṛṣṇa adorers we are to suppose that there were many who favoured Kaṅsa, the cruel uncle whose vices are redeemed by not a single virtue, and for whose fate Sanskrit literature, pious and devout, shows not a sign of regret. The change of colour, which is asserted to be the only possible sense of the termvarṇānyatvam, wholly without ground, is referred to the spectators, who turn red with anger if supporters of Kaṅsa, black with fear if they support Vāsudeva. Professor Hillebrandt, who has unfortunately accepted the new theory to the extent that he believes that there were persons who carried round pictures and explained them for a living, justly declines to believe in the possibility of a Hindu audience containing persons who wished the success of Kaṅsa, and he accepts the plain fact that the Granthikas took parts. The colours he[36]explains, however, as indicating the sentiments which the two parties feel, a view for which there is the authority of theNāṭyaçāstrawhich ascribes to each sentiment an appropriate colour, and, accepting the reading of Kielhorn, he is compelled to assume that the supporters of Kaṅsa on the stage showed as the dominant sentiment fury, while those of Kṛṣṇa are reduced to manifest fear as the sentiment of their side. But it is frankly incredible that the followers of Kṛṣṇa, the invincible, who calmly and coolly proceeds from victory to victory culminating in the overthrow of his wicked uncle, accomplished with ease and celerity, should show fear as the dominant sentiment, and it is clear that on this view we should accept the reading which inverts the descriptions,24thus allotting to the supporters of Kaṅsa the fear, to those of Kṛṣṇa the fury of slaughter and revenge. But in this trait it is more probable, as will be seen below, that we have a trace of the religious origin of the drama.25
[Contents]2.The GrammariansIn Pāṇini15we find mention of Naṭasūtras, text-books for Naṭas, ascribed to Çilālin and Kṛçāçva; the fact is recorded because of the formation of the names assumed by their followers, Çailālins and Kṛçāçvins. The names are curious; it has been suggested by Professor Lévi to see in them ironical appellations; the Kṛçāçvins are those whose horses are meagre, with an ironic reference to the great Indo-Iranian hero Kṛçāçva, while the Çailālins have nothing but stones for their beds in pitiful contrast with the fame of the Vedic school of that name, whoseÇailāli Brāhmaṇais known to us. But we unfortunately are here as ever in no position to establish the meaning of Naṭa, which may mean no more than a pantomime. The conclusion is important, for Pāṇini’s date is most probably the fourth centuryB.C., and the fact that he has no term certainly denoting drama is of significance.In Patañjali,16the author of theMahābhāṣya, whose date is certainly to be placed with reasonable assurance about 140B.C., we find much more effective evidence bearing on the existence of drama. We learn from his criticism on a rule laid down by his predecessor Kātyāyana, as to the use of the imperfect tense of things which a person has himself seen, that it was normal[32]to use in his time phrases describing a past event as if it had occurred before the eyes of the speaker; we can understand this only of a character in a dramatic performance of some kind, and it is significant that the phrase cited in illustration of the usage is ‘Vāsudeva has slain Kaṅsa’. The reference is to the famous legend of Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva, and his wicked uncle Kaṅsa, who first sought to destroy him in his childhood, and afterward paid the penalty of his evil deeds by death at the hands of Kṛṣṇa. This notice receives further elucidation by a famous passage, first adduced by Weber, in which Patañjali explains the justification of the use of phrases such as ‘He causes the death of Kaṅsa’, and ‘He causes the binding of Bali’.17Both these deeds, the actual killing, the actual binding, are deeds of the remote past; how then can the present be in place? The answer, we learn, is that the events are described in the present because the sense is, not that they are being actually done, but that they are being described. Of the modes of description no less than three are then set out. In the first place we have the case of the Çaubhikas or Çobhanikas, who before the eyes of the spectators actually carry out—naturally in appearance only in the first case—the killing of Kaṅsa and the binding of Bali; they represent in fact by action, without words, so far as this passage formally tells us, the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa, the binding of the evil Bali. Secondly, we have the painters; they describe by their paintings, for on the canvases themselves we see the blows rained on Kaṅsa and the dragging of him about; a painter, that is to say, kills Kaṅsa and has Bali bound by painting a scene describing these incidents. Thirdly, we have those who use words, and not action of the Çaubhika type, the Granthikas; they also, while relating the fortunes of their subjects from their birth to their death, make them real to the minds of their audience, for they divide[33]themselves into two parties, one set adhering to Kṛṣṇa, and one to Kaṅsa, and they adopt different colours, the adherents of Kaṅsa black, and those of Kṛṣṇa red, though, by what is probably an erroneous correction, the colours are ascribed in the inverse order by many of the manuscripts.This is clear and intelligible, and it is unfortunate that it has recently been misunderstood by Professor Lüders,18with disastrous results for the comprehension of the notice. The Çaubhikas are made to be persons who explain to the audience shadow pictures, a view which has not even the merit of Indian tradition, and, as will be seen below, contradicts entirely the facts known as to the shadow play in India, where it is recorded only in late mediaeval times. The traditional rendering in India of the statement is recorded by Kaiyaṭa, more than a thousand years later; it is frankly obscure; Professor Lévi19renders it as meaning that the Çaubhikas are those who teach actors, representing Kaṅsa, and so on, the mode of recitation, a version which is doubtless very difficult. The sense accorded to it by Professor Lüders is that the Çaubhikas explain to the audience dumb actors, a form of drama which is recorded as performed by the Jhāṁkīs of Bombay and Mathurā in modern India, but of which in ancient times we have no certainty, since this is the only passage which even remotely can be supposed to allude to it. The obvious view, that of Weber,20that we have a reference to a pantomimic killing and binding, seems irresistible; the use of the causative is explained by this fact; if Bali and Kaṅsa were persons of to-day the simple verb would express their binding and slaying; because it is mere actors, the causative is used, and its use denotes that the act is not now real but an exposition of a past act. ‘He causes the binding of Bali’[34]means ‘he describes the binding of Bali’. The only legitimate doubt on the passage is that regarding the exact mode of performance of the Çaubhikas; the wordpratyakṣamin the text insists that it is done before the eyes of the audience, and we may justly assume that the Çaubhikas performed manual acts. Did they also use dialogue? There is nothing in the passage either to show that they did or that they did not; the contrast which follows later with Granthikas, whose medium was words, is sufficiently pointed if they used action as well as words. The most that can be said is that Çaubhika or Çobhanika does not obtain currency later as denoting an actor, which may tell against the view that Patañjali is here actually alluding to drama proper. Further we cannot go; to argue that, if he had known drama proper, he must have clearly mentioned it, is to ignore entirely the manner of Patañjali, whose silence as to what he must have known is as common as his incidental mention of current topics.The error of Professor Lüders in insisting on a literal interpretation of the passage as referring to different sorts of narrators by words comes out with special clearness as regards the second class of persons alluded to by Patañjali. That they are painters whose canvases are living speeches was clearly recognized by the commentators in India. Haradatta tells us in the simplest and plainest language that when men look at a picture on which is shown the death of Kaṅsa at the hands of Vāsudeva they interpret the picture as the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa by the blessed Vāsudeva, and thus by the pictured Vāsudeva cause to be slain the pictured Kaṅsa, for this is the conception which they form as they gaze, and he adds, very naturally, that this explains the practice of saying of artists that they cause the slaying of Kaṅsa, the binding of Bali.21It would be difficult to see how the idea could have been more forcibly expressed, but Professor Lüders interprets it in the sense that artists occasionally explain their own pictures to others, an idea which is not merely wholly impossible, but renders Haradatta’s[35]language nonsense. On this basis he finds that the Çaubhikas added to their business of explaining shadow pictures that of showing and explaining other pictures, in this respect again without any support from tradition.Finally Professor Lüders denies any division of parties among the Granthikas, whose name he derives, like the scholiasts, from the use of manuscript books in recitation, rejecting the idea of cyclic rhapsodes suggested by Dr. Dahlmann.22The derivation is too speculative in sense to be relied upon, but there is no doubt that the Granthikas were reciters. Their exact means of expressing the sense is not quite clear owing to the unlucky divergence of reading in the text, and the fact that the precise meaning of the second word in the most probable reading (çabda-gaḍu-mātram)23is wholly unknown. It is, accordingly, wholly illegitimate to assert that they used words alone, and on the score of that to deny that they could be said to divide themselves into two parties, one of followers of Kaṅsa, one of adherents of Kṛṣṇa, bearing appropriate colours. This view reduces us to the impossible theory that the division of parties refers to the audience. Apart from all questions of regard for the Sanskrit language, which Patañjali should be assumed capable of writing, the ludicrous result is achieved that among a pious audience of Kṛṣṇa adorers we are to suppose that there were many who favoured Kaṅsa, the cruel uncle whose vices are redeemed by not a single virtue, and for whose fate Sanskrit literature, pious and devout, shows not a sign of regret. The change of colour, which is asserted to be the only possible sense of the termvarṇānyatvam, wholly without ground, is referred to the spectators, who turn red with anger if supporters of Kaṅsa, black with fear if they support Vāsudeva. Professor Hillebrandt, who has unfortunately accepted the new theory to the extent that he believes that there were persons who carried round pictures and explained them for a living, justly declines to believe in the possibility of a Hindu audience containing persons who wished the success of Kaṅsa, and he accepts the plain fact that the Granthikas took parts. The colours he[36]explains, however, as indicating the sentiments which the two parties feel, a view for which there is the authority of theNāṭyaçāstrawhich ascribes to each sentiment an appropriate colour, and, accepting the reading of Kielhorn, he is compelled to assume that the supporters of Kaṅsa on the stage showed as the dominant sentiment fury, while those of Kṛṣṇa are reduced to manifest fear as the sentiment of their side. But it is frankly incredible that the followers of Kṛṣṇa, the invincible, who calmly and coolly proceeds from victory to victory culminating in the overthrow of his wicked uncle, accomplished with ease and celerity, should show fear as the dominant sentiment, and it is clear that on this view we should accept the reading which inverts the descriptions,24thus allotting to the supporters of Kaṅsa the fear, to those of Kṛṣṇa the fury of slaughter and revenge. But in this trait it is more probable, as will be seen below, that we have a trace of the religious origin of the drama.25
[Contents]2.The GrammariansIn Pāṇini15we find mention of Naṭasūtras, text-books for Naṭas, ascribed to Çilālin and Kṛçāçva; the fact is recorded because of the formation of the names assumed by their followers, Çailālins and Kṛçāçvins. The names are curious; it has been suggested by Professor Lévi to see in them ironical appellations; the Kṛçāçvins are those whose horses are meagre, with an ironic reference to the great Indo-Iranian hero Kṛçāçva, while the Çailālins have nothing but stones for their beds in pitiful contrast with the fame of the Vedic school of that name, whoseÇailāli Brāhmaṇais known to us. But we unfortunately are here as ever in no position to establish the meaning of Naṭa, which may mean no more than a pantomime. The conclusion is important, for Pāṇini’s date is most probably the fourth centuryB.C., and the fact that he has no term certainly denoting drama is of significance.In Patañjali,16the author of theMahābhāṣya, whose date is certainly to be placed with reasonable assurance about 140B.C., we find much more effective evidence bearing on the existence of drama. We learn from his criticism on a rule laid down by his predecessor Kātyāyana, as to the use of the imperfect tense of things which a person has himself seen, that it was normal[32]to use in his time phrases describing a past event as if it had occurred before the eyes of the speaker; we can understand this only of a character in a dramatic performance of some kind, and it is significant that the phrase cited in illustration of the usage is ‘Vāsudeva has slain Kaṅsa’. The reference is to the famous legend of Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva, and his wicked uncle Kaṅsa, who first sought to destroy him in his childhood, and afterward paid the penalty of his evil deeds by death at the hands of Kṛṣṇa. This notice receives further elucidation by a famous passage, first adduced by Weber, in which Patañjali explains the justification of the use of phrases such as ‘He causes the death of Kaṅsa’, and ‘He causes the binding of Bali’.17Both these deeds, the actual killing, the actual binding, are deeds of the remote past; how then can the present be in place? The answer, we learn, is that the events are described in the present because the sense is, not that they are being actually done, but that they are being described. Of the modes of description no less than three are then set out. In the first place we have the case of the Çaubhikas or Çobhanikas, who before the eyes of the spectators actually carry out—naturally in appearance only in the first case—the killing of Kaṅsa and the binding of Bali; they represent in fact by action, without words, so far as this passage formally tells us, the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa, the binding of the evil Bali. Secondly, we have the painters; they describe by their paintings, for on the canvases themselves we see the blows rained on Kaṅsa and the dragging of him about; a painter, that is to say, kills Kaṅsa and has Bali bound by painting a scene describing these incidents. Thirdly, we have those who use words, and not action of the Çaubhika type, the Granthikas; they also, while relating the fortunes of their subjects from their birth to their death, make them real to the minds of their audience, for they divide[33]themselves into two parties, one set adhering to Kṛṣṇa, and one to Kaṅsa, and they adopt different colours, the adherents of Kaṅsa black, and those of Kṛṣṇa red, though, by what is probably an erroneous correction, the colours are ascribed in the inverse order by many of the manuscripts.This is clear and intelligible, and it is unfortunate that it has recently been misunderstood by Professor Lüders,18with disastrous results for the comprehension of the notice. The Çaubhikas are made to be persons who explain to the audience shadow pictures, a view which has not even the merit of Indian tradition, and, as will be seen below, contradicts entirely the facts known as to the shadow play in India, where it is recorded only in late mediaeval times. The traditional rendering in India of the statement is recorded by Kaiyaṭa, more than a thousand years later; it is frankly obscure; Professor Lévi19renders it as meaning that the Çaubhikas are those who teach actors, representing Kaṅsa, and so on, the mode of recitation, a version which is doubtless very difficult. The sense accorded to it by Professor Lüders is that the Çaubhikas explain to the audience dumb actors, a form of drama which is recorded as performed by the Jhāṁkīs of Bombay and Mathurā in modern India, but of which in ancient times we have no certainty, since this is the only passage which even remotely can be supposed to allude to it. The obvious view, that of Weber,20that we have a reference to a pantomimic killing and binding, seems irresistible; the use of the causative is explained by this fact; if Bali and Kaṅsa were persons of to-day the simple verb would express their binding and slaying; because it is mere actors, the causative is used, and its use denotes that the act is not now real but an exposition of a past act. ‘He causes the binding of Bali’[34]means ‘he describes the binding of Bali’. The only legitimate doubt on the passage is that regarding the exact mode of performance of the Çaubhikas; the wordpratyakṣamin the text insists that it is done before the eyes of the audience, and we may justly assume that the Çaubhikas performed manual acts. Did they also use dialogue? There is nothing in the passage either to show that they did or that they did not; the contrast which follows later with Granthikas, whose medium was words, is sufficiently pointed if they used action as well as words. The most that can be said is that Çaubhika or Çobhanika does not obtain currency later as denoting an actor, which may tell against the view that Patañjali is here actually alluding to drama proper. Further we cannot go; to argue that, if he had known drama proper, he must have clearly mentioned it, is to ignore entirely the manner of Patañjali, whose silence as to what he must have known is as common as his incidental mention of current topics.The error of Professor Lüders in insisting on a literal interpretation of the passage as referring to different sorts of narrators by words comes out with special clearness as regards the second class of persons alluded to by Patañjali. That they are painters whose canvases are living speeches was clearly recognized by the commentators in India. Haradatta tells us in the simplest and plainest language that when men look at a picture on which is shown the death of Kaṅsa at the hands of Vāsudeva they interpret the picture as the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa by the blessed Vāsudeva, and thus by the pictured Vāsudeva cause to be slain the pictured Kaṅsa, for this is the conception which they form as they gaze, and he adds, very naturally, that this explains the practice of saying of artists that they cause the slaying of Kaṅsa, the binding of Bali.21It would be difficult to see how the idea could have been more forcibly expressed, but Professor Lüders interprets it in the sense that artists occasionally explain their own pictures to others, an idea which is not merely wholly impossible, but renders Haradatta’s[35]language nonsense. On this basis he finds that the Çaubhikas added to their business of explaining shadow pictures that of showing and explaining other pictures, in this respect again without any support from tradition.Finally Professor Lüders denies any division of parties among the Granthikas, whose name he derives, like the scholiasts, from the use of manuscript books in recitation, rejecting the idea of cyclic rhapsodes suggested by Dr. Dahlmann.22The derivation is too speculative in sense to be relied upon, but there is no doubt that the Granthikas were reciters. Their exact means of expressing the sense is not quite clear owing to the unlucky divergence of reading in the text, and the fact that the precise meaning of the second word in the most probable reading (çabda-gaḍu-mātram)23is wholly unknown. It is, accordingly, wholly illegitimate to assert that they used words alone, and on the score of that to deny that they could be said to divide themselves into two parties, one of followers of Kaṅsa, one of adherents of Kṛṣṇa, bearing appropriate colours. This view reduces us to the impossible theory that the division of parties refers to the audience. Apart from all questions of regard for the Sanskrit language, which Patañjali should be assumed capable of writing, the ludicrous result is achieved that among a pious audience of Kṛṣṇa adorers we are to suppose that there were many who favoured Kaṅsa, the cruel uncle whose vices are redeemed by not a single virtue, and for whose fate Sanskrit literature, pious and devout, shows not a sign of regret. The change of colour, which is asserted to be the only possible sense of the termvarṇānyatvam, wholly without ground, is referred to the spectators, who turn red with anger if supporters of Kaṅsa, black with fear if they support Vāsudeva. Professor Hillebrandt, who has unfortunately accepted the new theory to the extent that he believes that there were persons who carried round pictures and explained them for a living, justly declines to believe in the possibility of a Hindu audience containing persons who wished the success of Kaṅsa, and he accepts the plain fact that the Granthikas took parts. The colours he[36]explains, however, as indicating the sentiments which the two parties feel, a view for which there is the authority of theNāṭyaçāstrawhich ascribes to each sentiment an appropriate colour, and, accepting the reading of Kielhorn, he is compelled to assume that the supporters of Kaṅsa on the stage showed as the dominant sentiment fury, while those of Kṛṣṇa are reduced to manifest fear as the sentiment of their side. But it is frankly incredible that the followers of Kṛṣṇa, the invincible, who calmly and coolly proceeds from victory to victory culminating in the overthrow of his wicked uncle, accomplished with ease and celerity, should show fear as the dominant sentiment, and it is clear that on this view we should accept the reading which inverts the descriptions,24thus allotting to the supporters of Kaṅsa the fear, to those of Kṛṣṇa the fury of slaughter and revenge. But in this trait it is more probable, as will be seen below, that we have a trace of the religious origin of the drama.25
[Contents]2.The GrammariansIn Pāṇini15we find mention of Naṭasūtras, text-books for Naṭas, ascribed to Çilālin and Kṛçāçva; the fact is recorded because of the formation of the names assumed by their followers, Çailālins and Kṛçāçvins. The names are curious; it has been suggested by Professor Lévi to see in them ironical appellations; the Kṛçāçvins are those whose horses are meagre, with an ironic reference to the great Indo-Iranian hero Kṛçāçva, while the Çailālins have nothing but stones for their beds in pitiful contrast with the fame of the Vedic school of that name, whoseÇailāli Brāhmaṇais known to us. But we unfortunately are here as ever in no position to establish the meaning of Naṭa, which may mean no more than a pantomime. The conclusion is important, for Pāṇini’s date is most probably the fourth centuryB.C., and the fact that he has no term certainly denoting drama is of significance.In Patañjali,16the author of theMahābhāṣya, whose date is certainly to be placed with reasonable assurance about 140B.C., we find much more effective evidence bearing on the existence of drama. We learn from his criticism on a rule laid down by his predecessor Kātyāyana, as to the use of the imperfect tense of things which a person has himself seen, that it was normal[32]to use in his time phrases describing a past event as if it had occurred before the eyes of the speaker; we can understand this only of a character in a dramatic performance of some kind, and it is significant that the phrase cited in illustration of the usage is ‘Vāsudeva has slain Kaṅsa’. The reference is to the famous legend of Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva, and his wicked uncle Kaṅsa, who first sought to destroy him in his childhood, and afterward paid the penalty of his evil deeds by death at the hands of Kṛṣṇa. This notice receives further elucidation by a famous passage, first adduced by Weber, in which Patañjali explains the justification of the use of phrases such as ‘He causes the death of Kaṅsa’, and ‘He causes the binding of Bali’.17Both these deeds, the actual killing, the actual binding, are deeds of the remote past; how then can the present be in place? The answer, we learn, is that the events are described in the present because the sense is, not that they are being actually done, but that they are being described. Of the modes of description no less than three are then set out. In the first place we have the case of the Çaubhikas or Çobhanikas, who before the eyes of the spectators actually carry out—naturally in appearance only in the first case—the killing of Kaṅsa and the binding of Bali; they represent in fact by action, without words, so far as this passage formally tells us, the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa, the binding of the evil Bali. Secondly, we have the painters; they describe by their paintings, for on the canvases themselves we see the blows rained on Kaṅsa and the dragging of him about; a painter, that is to say, kills Kaṅsa and has Bali bound by painting a scene describing these incidents. Thirdly, we have those who use words, and not action of the Çaubhika type, the Granthikas; they also, while relating the fortunes of their subjects from their birth to their death, make them real to the minds of their audience, for they divide[33]themselves into two parties, one set adhering to Kṛṣṇa, and one to Kaṅsa, and they adopt different colours, the adherents of Kaṅsa black, and those of Kṛṣṇa red, though, by what is probably an erroneous correction, the colours are ascribed in the inverse order by many of the manuscripts.This is clear and intelligible, and it is unfortunate that it has recently been misunderstood by Professor Lüders,18with disastrous results for the comprehension of the notice. The Çaubhikas are made to be persons who explain to the audience shadow pictures, a view which has not even the merit of Indian tradition, and, as will be seen below, contradicts entirely the facts known as to the shadow play in India, where it is recorded only in late mediaeval times. The traditional rendering in India of the statement is recorded by Kaiyaṭa, more than a thousand years later; it is frankly obscure; Professor Lévi19renders it as meaning that the Çaubhikas are those who teach actors, representing Kaṅsa, and so on, the mode of recitation, a version which is doubtless very difficult. The sense accorded to it by Professor Lüders is that the Çaubhikas explain to the audience dumb actors, a form of drama which is recorded as performed by the Jhāṁkīs of Bombay and Mathurā in modern India, but of which in ancient times we have no certainty, since this is the only passage which even remotely can be supposed to allude to it. The obvious view, that of Weber,20that we have a reference to a pantomimic killing and binding, seems irresistible; the use of the causative is explained by this fact; if Bali and Kaṅsa were persons of to-day the simple verb would express their binding and slaying; because it is mere actors, the causative is used, and its use denotes that the act is not now real but an exposition of a past act. ‘He causes the binding of Bali’[34]means ‘he describes the binding of Bali’. The only legitimate doubt on the passage is that regarding the exact mode of performance of the Çaubhikas; the wordpratyakṣamin the text insists that it is done before the eyes of the audience, and we may justly assume that the Çaubhikas performed manual acts. Did they also use dialogue? There is nothing in the passage either to show that they did or that they did not; the contrast which follows later with Granthikas, whose medium was words, is sufficiently pointed if they used action as well as words. The most that can be said is that Çaubhika or Çobhanika does not obtain currency later as denoting an actor, which may tell against the view that Patañjali is here actually alluding to drama proper. Further we cannot go; to argue that, if he had known drama proper, he must have clearly mentioned it, is to ignore entirely the manner of Patañjali, whose silence as to what he must have known is as common as his incidental mention of current topics.The error of Professor Lüders in insisting on a literal interpretation of the passage as referring to different sorts of narrators by words comes out with special clearness as regards the second class of persons alluded to by Patañjali. That they are painters whose canvases are living speeches was clearly recognized by the commentators in India. Haradatta tells us in the simplest and plainest language that when men look at a picture on which is shown the death of Kaṅsa at the hands of Vāsudeva they interpret the picture as the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa by the blessed Vāsudeva, and thus by the pictured Vāsudeva cause to be slain the pictured Kaṅsa, for this is the conception which they form as they gaze, and he adds, very naturally, that this explains the practice of saying of artists that they cause the slaying of Kaṅsa, the binding of Bali.21It would be difficult to see how the idea could have been more forcibly expressed, but Professor Lüders interprets it in the sense that artists occasionally explain their own pictures to others, an idea which is not merely wholly impossible, but renders Haradatta’s[35]language nonsense. On this basis he finds that the Çaubhikas added to their business of explaining shadow pictures that of showing and explaining other pictures, in this respect again without any support from tradition.Finally Professor Lüders denies any division of parties among the Granthikas, whose name he derives, like the scholiasts, from the use of manuscript books in recitation, rejecting the idea of cyclic rhapsodes suggested by Dr. Dahlmann.22The derivation is too speculative in sense to be relied upon, but there is no doubt that the Granthikas were reciters. Their exact means of expressing the sense is not quite clear owing to the unlucky divergence of reading in the text, and the fact that the precise meaning of the second word in the most probable reading (çabda-gaḍu-mātram)23is wholly unknown. It is, accordingly, wholly illegitimate to assert that they used words alone, and on the score of that to deny that they could be said to divide themselves into two parties, one of followers of Kaṅsa, one of adherents of Kṛṣṇa, bearing appropriate colours. This view reduces us to the impossible theory that the division of parties refers to the audience. Apart from all questions of regard for the Sanskrit language, which Patañjali should be assumed capable of writing, the ludicrous result is achieved that among a pious audience of Kṛṣṇa adorers we are to suppose that there were many who favoured Kaṅsa, the cruel uncle whose vices are redeemed by not a single virtue, and for whose fate Sanskrit literature, pious and devout, shows not a sign of regret. The change of colour, which is asserted to be the only possible sense of the termvarṇānyatvam, wholly without ground, is referred to the spectators, who turn red with anger if supporters of Kaṅsa, black with fear if they support Vāsudeva. Professor Hillebrandt, who has unfortunately accepted the new theory to the extent that he believes that there were persons who carried round pictures and explained them for a living, justly declines to believe in the possibility of a Hindu audience containing persons who wished the success of Kaṅsa, and he accepts the plain fact that the Granthikas took parts. The colours he[36]explains, however, as indicating the sentiments which the two parties feel, a view for which there is the authority of theNāṭyaçāstrawhich ascribes to each sentiment an appropriate colour, and, accepting the reading of Kielhorn, he is compelled to assume that the supporters of Kaṅsa on the stage showed as the dominant sentiment fury, while those of Kṛṣṇa are reduced to manifest fear as the sentiment of their side. But it is frankly incredible that the followers of Kṛṣṇa, the invincible, who calmly and coolly proceeds from victory to victory culminating in the overthrow of his wicked uncle, accomplished with ease and celerity, should show fear as the dominant sentiment, and it is clear that on this view we should accept the reading which inverts the descriptions,24thus allotting to the supporters of Kaṅsa the fear, to those of Kṛṣṇa the fury of slaughter and revenge. But in this trait it is more probable, as will be seen below, that we have a trace of the religious origin of the drama.25
[Contents]2.The GrammariansIn Pāṇini15we find mention of Naṭasūtras, text-books for Naṭas, ascribed to Çilālin and Kṛçāçva; the fact is recorded because of the formation of the names assumed by their followers, Çailālins and Kṛçāçvins. The names are curious; it has been suggested by Professor Lévi to see in them ironical appellations; the Kṛçāçvins are those whose horses are meagre, with an ironic reference to the great Indo-Iranian hero Kṛçāçva, while the Çailālins have nothing but stones for their beds in pitiful contrast with the fame of the Vedic school of that name, whoseÇailāli Brāhmaṇais known to us. But we unfortunately are here as ever in no position to establish the meaning of Naṭa, which may mean no more than a pantomime. The conclusion is important, for Pāṇini’s date is most probably the fourth centuryB.C., and the fact that he has no term certainly denoting drama is of significance.In Patañjali,16the author of theMahābhāṣya, whose date is certainly to be placed with reasonable assurance about 140B.C., we find much more effective evidence bearing on the existence of drama. We learn from his criticism on a rule laid down by his predecessor Kātyāyana, as to the use of the imperfect tense of things which a person has himself seen, that it was normal[32]to use in his time phrases describing a past event as if it had occurred before the eyes of the speaker; we can understand this only of a character in a dramatic performance of some kind, and it is significant that the phrase cited in illustration of the usage is ‘Vāsudeva has slain Kaṅsa’. The reference is to the famous legend of Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva, and his wicked uncle Kaṅsa, who first sought to destroy him in his childhood, and afterward paid the penalty of his evil deeds by death at the hands of Kṛṣṇa. This notice receives further elucidation by a famous passage, first adduced by Weber, in which Patañjali explains the justification of the use of phrases such as ‘He causes the death of Kaṅsa’, and ‘He causes the binding of Bali’.17Both these deeds, the actual killing, the actual binding, are deeds of the remote past; how then can the present be in place? The answer, we learn, is that the events are described in the present because the sense is, not that they are being actually done, but that they are being described. Of the modes of description no less than three are then set out. In the first place we have the case of the Çaubhikas or Çobhanikas, who before the eyes of the spectators actually carry out—naturally in appearance only in the first case—the killing of Kaṅsa and the binding of Bali; they represent in fact by action, without words, so far as this passage formally tells us, the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa, the binding of the evil Bali. Secondly, we have the painters; they describe by their paintings, for on the canvases themselves we see the blows rained on Kaṅsa and the dragging of him about; a painter, that is to say, kills Kaṅsa and has Bali bound by painting a scene describing these incidents. Thirdly, we have those who use words, and not action of the Çaubhika type, the Granthikas; they also, while relating the fortunes of their subjects from their birth to their death, make them real to the minds of their audience, for they divide[33]themselves into two parties, one set adhering to Kṛṣṇa, and one to Kaṅsa, and they adopt different colours, the adherents of Kaṅsa black, and those of Kṛṣṇa red, though, by what is probably an erroneous correction, the colours are ascribed in the inverse order by many of the manuscripts.This is clear and intelligible, and it is unfortunate that it has recently been misunderstood by Professor Lüders,18with disastrous results for the comprehension of the notice. The Çaubhikas are made to be persons who explain to the audience shadow pictures, a view which has not even the merit of Indian tradition, and, as will be seen below, contradicts entirely the facts known as to the shadow play in India, where it is recorded only in late mediaeval times. The traditional rendering in India of the statement is recorded by Kaiyaṭa, more than a thousand years later; it is frankly obscure; Professor Lévi19renders it as meaning that the Çaubhikas are those who teach actors, representing Kaṅsa, and so on, the mode of recitation, a version which is doubtless very difficult. The sense accorded to it by Professor Lüders is that the Çaubhikas explain to the audience dumb actors, a form of drama which is recorded as performed by the Jhāṁkīs of Bombay and Mathurā in modern India, but of which in ancient times we have no certainty, since this is the only passage which even remotely can be supposed to allude to it. The obvious view, that of Weber,20that we have a reference to a pantomimic killing and binding, seems irresistible; the use of the causative is explained by this fact; if Bali and Kaṅsa were persons of to-day the simple verb would express their binding and slaying; because it is mere actors, the causative is used, and its use denotes that the act is not now real but an exposition of a past act. ‘He causes the binding of Bali’[34]means ‘he describes the binding of Bali’. The only legitimate doubt on the passage is that regarding the exact mode of performance of the Çaubhikas; the wordpratyakṣamin the text insists that it is done before the eyes of the audience, and we may justly assume that the Çaubhikas performed manual acts. Did they also use dialogue? There is nothing in the passage either to show that they did or that they did not; the contrast which follows later with Granthikas, whose medium was words, is sufficiently pointed if they used action as well as words. The most that can be said is that Çaubhika or Çobhanika does not obtain currency later as denoting an actor, which may tell against the view that Patañjali is here actually alluding to drama proper. Further we cannot go; to argue that, if he had known drama proper, he must have clearly mentioned it, is to ignore entirely the manner of Patañjali, whose silence as to what he must have known is as common as his incidental mention of current topics.The error of Professor Lüders in insisting on a literal interpretation of the passage as referring to different sorts of narrators by words comes out with special clearness as regards the second class of persons alluded to by Patañjali. That they are painters whose canvases are living speeches was clearly recognized by the commentators in India. Haradatta tells us in the simplest and plainest language that when men look at a picture on which is shown the death of Kaṅsa at the hands of Vāsudeva they interpret the picture as the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa by the blessed Vāsudeva, and thus by the pictured Vāsudeva cause to be slain the pictured Kaṅsa, for this is the conception which they form as they gaze, and he adds, very naturally, that this explains the practice of saying of artists that they cause the slaying of Kaṅsa, the binding of Bali.21It would be difficult to see how the idea could have been more forcibly expressed, but Professor Lüders interprets it in the sense that artists occasionally explain their own pictures to others, an idea which is not merely wholly impossible, but renders Haradatta’s[35]language nonsense. On this basis he finds that the Çaubhikas added to their business of explaining shadow pictures that of showing and explaining other pictures, in this respect again without any support from tradition.Finally Professor Lüders denies any division of parties among the Granthikas, whose name he derives, like the scholiasts, from the use of manuscript books in recitation, rejecting the idea of cyclic rhapsodes suggested by Dr. Dahlmann.22The derivation is too speculative in sense to be relied upon, but there is no doubt that the Granthikas were reciters. Their exact means of expressing the sense is not quite clear owing to the unlucky divergence of reading in the text, and the fact that the precise meaning of the second word in the most probable reading (çabda-gaḍu-mātram)23is wholly unknown. It is, accordingly, wholly illegitimate to assert that they used words alone, and on the score of that to deny that they could be said to divide themselves into two parties, one of followers of Kaṅsa, one of adherents of Kṛṣṇa, bearing appropriate colours. This view reduces us to the impossible theory that the division of parties refers to the audience. Apart from all questions of regard for the Sanskrit language, which Patañjali should be assumed capable of writing, the ludicrous result is achieved that among a pious audience of Kṛṣṇa adorers we are to suppose that there were many who favoured Kaṅsa, the cruel uncle whose vices are redeemed by not a single virtue, and for whose fate Sanskrit literature, pious and devout, shows not a sign of regret. The change of colour, which is asserted to be the only possible sense of the termvarṇānyatvam, wholly without ground, is referred to the spectators, who turn red with anger if supporters of Kaṅsa, black with fear if they support Vāsudeva. Professor Hillebrandt, who has unfortunately accepted the new theory to the extent that he believes that there were persons who carried round pictures and explained them for a living, justly declines to believe in the possibility of a Hindu audience containing persons who wished the success of Kaṅsa, and he accepts the plain fact that the Granthikas took parts. The colours he[36]explains, however, as indicating the sentiments which the two parties feel, a view for which there is the authority of theNāṭyaçāstrawhich ascribes to each sentiment an appropriate colour, and, accepting the reading of Kielhorn, he is compelled to assume that the supporters of Kaṅsa on the stage showed as the dominant sentiment fury, while those of Kṛṣṇa are reduced to manifest fear as the sentiment of their side. But it is frankly incredible that the followers of Kṛṣṇa, the invincible, who calmly and coolly proceeds from victory to victory culminating in the overthrow of his wicked uncle, accomplished with ease and celerity, should show fear as the dominant sentiment, and it is clear that on this view we should accept the reading which inverts the descriptions,24thus allotting to the supporters of Kaṅsa the fear, to those of Kṛṣṇa the fury of slaughter and revenge. But in this trait it is more probable, as will be seen below, that we have a trace of the religious origin of the drama.25
2.The Grammarians
In Pāṇini15we find mention of Naṭasūtras, text-books for Naṭas, ascribed to Çilālin and Kṛçāçva; the fact is recorded because of the formation of the names assumed by their followers, Çailālins and Kṛçāçvins. The names are curious; it has been suggested by Professor Lévi to see in them ironical appellations; the Kṛçāçvins are those whose horses are meagre, with an ironic reference to the great Indo-Iranian hero Kṛçāçva, while the Çailālins have nothing but stones for their beds in pitiful contrast with the fame of the Vedic school of that name, whoseÇailāli Brāhmaṇais known to us. But we unfortunately are here as ever in no position to establish the meaning of Naṭa, which may mean no more than a pantomime. The conclusion is important, for Pāṇini’s date is most probably the fourth centuryB.C., and the fact that he has no term certainly denoting drama is of significance.In Patañjali,16the author of theMahābhāṣya, whose date is certainly to be placed with reasonable assurance about 140B.C., we find much more effective evidence bearing on the existence of drama. We learn from his criticism on a rule laid down by his predecessor Kātyāyana, as to the use of the imperfect tense of things which a person has himself seen, that it was normal[32]to use in his time phrases describing a past event as if it had occurred before the eyes of the speaker; we can understand this only of a character in a dramatic performance of some kind, and it is significant that the phrase cited in illustration of the usage is ‘Vāsudeva has slain Kaṅsa’. The reference is to the famous legend of Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva, and his wicked uncle Kaṅsa, who first sought to destroy him in his childhood, and afterward paid the penalty of his evil deeds by death at the hands of Kṛṣṇa. This notice receives further elucidation by a famous passage, first adduced by Weber, in which Patañjali explains the justification of the use of phrases such as ‘He causes the death of Kaṅsa’, and ‘He causes the binding of Bali’.17Both these deeds, the actual killing, the actual binding, are deeds of the remote past; how then can the present be in place? The answer, we learn, is that the events are described in the present because the sense is, not that they are being actually done, but that they are being described. Of the modes of description no less than three are then set out. In the first place we have the case of the Çaubhikas or Çobhanikas, who before the eyes of the spectators actually carry out—naturally in appearance only in the first case—the killing of Kaṅsa and the binding of Bali; they represent in fact by action, without words, so far as this passage formally tells us, the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa, the binding of the evil Bali. Secondly, we have the painters; they describe by their paintings, for on the canvases themselves we see the blows rained on Kaṅsa and the dragging of him about; a painter, that is to say, kills Kaṅsa and has Bali bound by painting a scene describing these incidents. Thirdly, we have those who use words, and not action of the Çaubhika type, the Granthikas; they also, while relating the fortunes of their subjects from their birth to their death, make them real to the minds of their audience, for they divide[33]themselves into two parties, one set adhering to Kṛṣṇa, and one to Kaṅsa, and they adopt different colours, the adherents of Kaṅsa black, and those of Kṛṣṇa red, though, by what is probably an erroneous correction, the colours are ascribed in the inverse order by many of the manuscripts.This is clear and intelligible, and it is unfortunate that it has recently been misunderstood by Professor Lüders,18with disastrous results for the comprehension of the notice. The Çaubhikas are made to be persons who explain to the audience shadow pictures, a view which has not even the merit of Indian tradition, and, as will be seen below, contradicts entirely the facts known as to the shadow play in India, where it is recorded only in late mediaeval times. The traditional rendering in India of the statement is recorded by Kaiyaṭa, more than a thousand years later; it is frankly obscure; Professor Lévi19renders it as meaning that the Çaubhikas are those who teach actors, representing Kaṅsa, and so on, the mode of recitation, a version which is doubtless very difficult. The sense accorded to it by Professor Lüders is that the Çaubhikas explain to the audience dumb actors, a form of drama which is recorded as performed by the Jhāṁkīs of Bombay and Mathurā in modern India, but of which in ancient times we have no certainty, since this is the only passage which even remotely can be supposed to allude to it. The obvious view, that of Weber,20that we have a reference to a pantomimic killing and binding, seems irresistible; the use of the causative is explained by this fact; if Bali and Kaṅsa were persons of to-day the simple verb would express their binding and slaying; because it is mere actors, the causative is used, and its use denotes that the act is not now real but an exposition of a past act. ‘He causes the binding of Bali’[34]means ‘he describes the binding of Bali’. The only legitimate doubt on the passage is that regarding the exact mode of performance of the Çaubhikas; the wordpratyakṣamin the text insists that it is done before the eyes of the audience, and we may justly assume that the Çaubhikas performed manual acts. Did they also use dialogue? There is nothing in the passage either to show that they did or that they did not; the contrast which follows later with Granthikas, whose medium was words, is sufficiently pointed if they used action as well as words. The most that can be said is that Çaubhika or Çobhanika does not obtain currency later as denoting an actor, which may tell against the view that Patañjali is here actually alluding to drama proper. Further we cannot go; to argue that, if he had known drama proper, he must have clearly mentioned it, is to ignore entirely the manner of Patañjali, whose silence as to what he must have known is as common as his incidental mention of current topics.The error of Professor Lüders in insisting on a literal interpretation of the passage as referring to different sorts of narrators by words comes out with special clearness as regards the second class of persons alluded to by Patañjali. That they are painters whose canvases are living speeches was clearly recognized by the commentators in India. Haradatta tells us in the simplest and plainest language that when men look at a picture on which is shown the death of Kaṅsa at the hands of Vāsudeva they interpret the picture as the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa by the blessed Vāsudeva, and thus by the pictured Vāsudeva cause to be slain the pictured Kaṅsa, for this is the conception which they form as they gaze, and he adds, very naturally, that this explains the practice of saying of artists that they cause the slaying of Kaṅsa, the binding of Bali.21It would be difficult to see how the idea could have been more forcibly expressed, but Professor Lüders interprets it in the sense that artists occasionally explain their own pictures to others, an idea which is not merely wholly impossible, but renders Haradatta’s[35]language nonsense. On this basis he finds that the Çaubhikas added to their business of explaining shadow pictures that of showing and explaining other pictures, in this respect again without any support from tradition.Finally Professor Lüders denies any division of parties among the Granthikas, whose name he derives, like the scholiasts, from the use of manuscript books in recitation, rejecting the idea of cyclic rhapsodes suggested by Dr. Dahlmann.22The derivation is too speculative in sense to be relied upon, but there is no doubt that the Granthikas were reciters. Their exact means of expressing the sense is not quite clear owing to the unlucky divergence of reading in the text, and the fact that the precise meaning of the second word in the most probable reading (çabda-gaḍu-mātram)23is wholly unknown. It is, accordingly, wholly illegitimate to assert that they used words alone, and on the score of that to deny that they could be said to divide themselves into two parties, one of followers of Kaṅsa, one of adherents of Kṛṣṇa, bearing appropriate colours. This view reduces us to the impossible theory that the division of parties refers to the audience. Apart from all questions of regard for the Sanskrit language, which Patañjali should be assumed capable of writing, the ludicrous result is achieved that among a pious audience of Kṛṣṇa adorers we are to suppose that there were many who favoured Kaṅsa, the cruel uncle whose vices are redeemed by not a single virtue, and for whose fate Sanskrit literature, pious and devout, shows not a sign of regret. The change of colour, which is asserted to be the only possible sense of the termvarṇānyatvam, wholly without ground, is referred to the spectators, who turn red with anger if supporters of Kaṅsa, black with fear if they support Vāsudeva. Professor Hillebrandt, who has unfortunately accepted the new theory to the extent that he believes that there were persons who carried round pictures and explained them for a living, justly declines to believe in the possibility of a Hindu audience containing persons who wished the success of Kaṅsa, and he accepts the plain fact that the Granthikas took parts. The colours he[36]explains, however, as indicating the sentiments which the two parties feel, a view for which there is the authority of theNāṭyaçāstrawhich ascribes to each sentiment an appropriate colour, and, accepting the reading of Kielhorn, he is compelled to assume that the supporters of Kaṅsa on the stage showed as the dominant sentiment fury, while those of Kṛṣṇa are reduced to manifest fear as the sentiment of their side. But it is frankly incredible that the followers of Kṛṣṇa, the invincible, who calmly and coolly proceeds from victory to victory culminating in the overthrow of his wicked uncle, accomplished with ease and celerity, should show fear as the dominant sentiment, and it is clear that on this view we should accept the reading which inverts the descriptions,24thus allotting to the supporters of Kaṅsa the fear, to those of Kṛṣṇa the fury of slaughter and revenge. But in this trait it is more probable, as will be seen below, that we have a trace of the religious origin of the drama.25
In Pāṇini15we find mention of Naṭasūtras, text-books for Naṭas, ascribed to Çilālin and Kṛçāçva; the fact is recorded because of the formation of the names assumed by their followers, Çailālins and Kṛçāçvins. The names are curious; it has been suggested by Professor Lévi to see in them ironical appellations; the Kṛçāçvins are those whose horses are meagre, with an ironic reference to the great Indo-Iranian hero Kṛçāçva, while the Çailālins have nothing but stones for their beds in pitiful contrast with the fame of the Vedic school of that name, whoseÇailāli Brāhmaṇais known to us. But we unfortunately are here as ever in no position to establish the meaning of Naṭa, which may mean no more than a pantomime. The conclusion is important, for Pāṇini’s date is most probably the fourth centuryB.C., and the fact that he has no term certainly denoting drama is of significance.
In Patañjali,16the author of theMahābhāṣya, whose date is certainly to be placed with reasonable assurance about 140B.C., we find much more effective evidence bearing on the existence of drama. We learn from his criticism on a rule laid down by his predecessor Kātyāyana, as to the use of the imperfect tense of things which a person has himself seen, that it was normal[32]to use in his time phrases describing a past event as if it had occurred before the eyes of the speaker; we can understand this only of a character in a dramatic performance of some kind, and it is significant that the phrase cited in illustration of the usage is ‘Vāsudeva has slain Kaṅsa’. The reference is to the famous legend of Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva, and his wicked uncle Kaṅsa, who first sought to destroy him in his childhood, and afterward paid the penalty of his evil deeds by death at the hands of Kṛṣṇa. This notice receives further elucidation by a famous passage, first adduced by Weber, in which Patañjali explains the justification of the use of phrases such as ‘He causes the death of Kaṅsa’, and ‘He causes the binding of Bali’.17Both these deeds, the actual killing, the actual binding, are deeds of the remote past; how then can the present be in place? The answer, we learn, is that the events are described in the present because the sense is, not that they are being actually done, but that they are being described. Of the modes of description no less than three are then set out. In the first place we have the case of the Çaubhikas or Çobhanikas, who before the eyes of the spectators actually carry out—naturally in appearance only in the first case—the killing of Kaṅsa and the binding of Bali; they represent in fact by action, without words, so far as this passage formally tells us, the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa, the binding of the evil Bali. Secondly, we have the painters; they describe by their paintings, for on the canvases themselves we see the blows rained on Kaṅsa and the dragging of him about; a painter, that is to say, kills Kaṅsa and has Bali bound by painting a scene describing these incidents. Thirdly, we have those who use words, and not action of the Çaubhika type, the Granthikas; they also, while relating the fortunes of their subjects from their birth to their death, make them real to the minds of their audience, for they divide[33]themselves into two parties, one set adhering to Kṛṣṇa, and one to Kaṅsa, and they adopt different colours, the adherents of Kaṅsa black, and those of Kṛṣṇa red, though, by what is probably an erroneous correction, the colours are ascribed in the inverse order by many of the manuscripts.
This is clear and intelligible, and it is unfortunate that it has recently been misunderstood by Professor Lüders,18with disastrous results for the comprehension of the notice. The Çaubhikas are made to be persons who explain to the audience shadow pictures, a view which has not even the merit of Indian tradition, and, as will be seen below, contradicts entirely the facts known as to the shadow play in India, where it is recorded only in late mediaeval times. The traditional rendering in India of the statement is recorded by Kaiyaṭa, more than a thousand years later; it is frankly obscure; Professor Lévi19renders it as meaning that the Çaubhikas are those who teach actors, representing Kaṅsa, and so on, the mode of recitation, a version which is doubtless very difficult. The sense accorded to it by Professor Lüders is that the Çaubhikas explain to the audience dumb actors, a form of drama which is recorded as performed by the Jhāṁkīs of Bombay and Mathurā in modern India, but of which in ancient times we have no certainty, since this is the only passage which even remotely can be supposed to allude to it. The obvious view, that of Weber,20that we have a reference to a pantomimic killing and binding, seems irresistible; the use of the causative is explained by this fact; if Bali and Kaṅsa were persons of to-day the simple verb would express their binding and slaying; because it is mere actors, the causative is used, and its use denotes that the act is not now real but an exposition of a past act. ‘He causes the binding of Bali’[34]means ‘he describes the binding of Bali’. The only legitimate doubt on the passage is that regarding the exact mode of performance of the Çaubhikas; the wordpratyakṣamin the text insists that it is done before the eyes of the audience, and we may justly assume that the Çaubhikas performed manual acts. Did they also use dialogue? There is nothing in the passage either to show that they did or that they did not; the contrast which follows later with Granthikas, whose medium was words, is sufficiently pointed if they used action as well as words. The most that can be said is that Çaubhika or Çobhanika does not obtain currency later as denoting an actor, which may tell against the view that Patañjali is here actually alluding to drama proper. Further we cannot go; to argue that, if he had known drama proper, he must have clearly mentioned it, is to ignore entirely the manner of Patañjali, whose silence as to what he must have known is as common as his incidental mention of current topics.
The error of Professor Lüders in insisting on a literal interpretation of the passage as referring to different sorts of narrators by words comes out with special clearness as regards the second class of persons alluded to by Patañjali. That they are painters whose canvases are living speeches was clearly recognized by the commentators in India. Haradatta tells us in the simplest and plainest language that when men look at a picture on which is shown the death of Kaṅsa at the hands of Vāsudeva they interpret the picture as the slaying of the wicked Kaṅsa by the blessed Vāsudeva, and thus by the pictured Vāsudeva cause to be slain the pictured Kaṅsa, for this is the conception which they form as they gaze, and he adds, very naturally, that this explains the practice of saying of artists that they cause the slaying of Kaṅsa, the binding of Bali.21It would be difficult to see how the idea could have been more forcibly expressed, but Professor Lüders interprets it in the sense that artists occasionally explain their own pictures to others, an idea which is not merely wholly impossible, but renders Haradatta’s[35]language nonsense. On this basis he finds that the Çaubhikas added to their business of explaining shadow pictures that of showing and explaining other pictures, in this respect again without any support from tradition.
Finally Professor Lüders denies any division of parties among the Granthikas, whose name he derives, like the scholiasts, from the use of manuscript books in recitation, rejecting the idea of cyclic rhapsodes suggested by Dr. Dahlmann.22The derivation is too speculative in sense to be relied upon, but there is no doubt that the Granthikas were reciters. Their exact means of expressing the sense is not quite clear owing to the unlucky divergence of reading in the text, and the fact that the precise meaning of the second word in the most probable reading (çabda-gaḍu-mātram)23is wholly unknown. It is, accordingly, wholly illegitimate to assert that they used words alone, and on the score of that to deny that they could be said to divide themselves into two parties, one of followers of Kaṅsa, one of adherents of Kṛṣṇa, bearing appropriate colours. This view reduces us to the impossible theory that the division of parties refers to the audience. Apart from all questions of regard for the Sanskrit language, which Patañjali should be assumed capable of writing, the ludicrous result is achieved that among a pious audience of Kṛṣṇa adorers we are to suppose that there were many who favoured Kaṅsa, the cruel uncle whose vices are redeemed by not a single virtue, and for whose fate Sanskrit literature, pious and devout, shows not a sign of regret. The change of colour, which is asserted to be the only possible sense of the termvarṇānyatvam, wholly without ground, is referred to the spectators, who turn red with anger if supporters of Kaṅsa, black with fear if they support Vāsudeva. Professor Hillebrandt, who has unfortunately accepted the new theory to the extent that he believes that there were persons who carried round pictures and explained them for a living, justly declines to believe in the possibility of a Hindu audience containing persons who wished the success of Kaṅsa, and he accepts the plain fact that the Granthikas took parts. The colours he[36]explains, however, as indicating the sentiments which the two parties feel, a view for which there is the authority of theNāṭyaçāstrawhich ascribes to each sentiment an appropriate colour, and, accepting the reading of Kielhorn, he is compelled to assume that the supporters of Kaṅsa on the stage showed as the dominant sentiment fury, while those of Kṛṣṇa are reduced to manifest fear as the sentiment of their side. But it is frankly incredible that the followers of Kṛṣṇa, the invincible, who calmly and coolly proceeds from victory to victory culminating in the overthrow of his wicked uncle, accomplished with ease and celerity, should show fear as the dominant sentiment, and it is clear that on this view we should accept the reading which inverts the descriptions,24thus allotting to the supporters of Kaṅsa the fear, to those of Kṛṣṇa the fury of slaughter and revenge. But in this trait it is more probable, as will be seen below, that we have a trace of the religious origin of the drama.25