About The Book
Classical drama of India is one of the most refined traditions of world theatre. combining literature, music, dance, and aesthetics. Its foundation lies in the ancient treatise Natyashastra written by the sage Bharata Muni around the early centuries. of the Common Era. This text explains the principles of drama, stagecraft, acting. gestures, costumes, and the theory of rasa (aesthetic emotion), which is central to Indian dramatic art. Indian classical drama flourished mainly during the Gupta and post-Gupta periods. The plays were usually written in Sanskrit and were performed in royal courts and temple theatres. Among the greatest playwrights was Kalidasa, whose famous drama Abhijnanasakuntalam considered a masterpiece of world literature. Other notable dramatists include Bhasa, known for plays such as is Svapnavasavadattam, and Shudraka, the author of the celebrated social drama Mrichchhakatika (The Little Clay Cart). Classical Indian dramas usually combine romance, heroism, and moral values. They rarely end in tragedy; instead, they emphasize harmony, justice, and the triumph of good over evil. Music, dance, and expressive gestures form an essential part of the performance, creating a rich visual and emotional experience. Thus, classical Indian drama represents a unique synthesis of literature and performing arts and has greatly influenced later theatre, dance-drama traditions, and cultural performances across India.
Introduction
THE SOMEWHAT unusual form of this book, which is determined by the character of its subject, warrants a short prefatory explanation. If the truly remarkable Sanskrit drama were more familiar or readily accessible than is in fact the caac, a descriptive method would be rightly preferred. But in fact no account that is not concentrated upon fundamentals can be seriously rewarding. The book is, accord-ingly, a sequence of reflective essays built around a central idea, developing a single thesis from various angles, considering first the features of the Indian drama the nearest to that of the West, and so coming by deliberate degrees to the unique problem posed by a theatre at once spiritually contemplative and theatrically. successful. The reader should not, then, anticipate an historical survcy or a comprehensive description. The carlier chapters define the aims which this drama serves, the later chapters, the means which the playwrights employ through their manipulation of form and detail. Few books have thus far appeared in English and surprisingly few in the Western languages as a whole dealing with the Sanskrit theatre in any general terms whatsoever. Studies in India itself have been in almost every sense of the word dispersed, issuing from many hands, appearing in widely different parts of the country, and as a rule treating some highly specialized topics. Feeling, perhaps, that an insuperable wall has been created by the outside world against a current interest in the Sanskrit theatre, the Indian scholars themselves have shown scant interest in interpreting to others the splendors of their dramatic literature. In short, they have written relatively little from the point of view of comparative literature. Meanwhile the attention of the West has been primarily occupied with its own rich ancunulations of drama and has, fortu nately, made some fruitful excursions into the theatre of the Far East, especially of China and Japan. Even that eminently going concern, the dance-theatre of Bali, has attracted popular attention in the West and recent Hindu dancers, as Shan Kar, whose art dispenses with language, have seemed better carriers of the spirit of India than the great dramatists who wrote some fiftcen hundred years ago in a language now almost exclusively academic. A further obstruction to fresh study by English scholars has been the oblique blessing of an undoubted masterpiece in exposition of literary and dramatic history, A. B. Keith's Sanskrit Drama, published over a generation ago. Few Indians have thus far written with equal authority. So thorough a survey, generous in its extent, meticulous in its documentation, and mature in its judgments, apparently has had for several decades the dubious good fortune of discouraging fresh inquiry. Yet his unquestionable erudition notwithstanding, it has gradually become clear that Keith wrote from a number of prepossessions ill adapted to favoring a broad-minded or sympathetic view. His defect is partly owing to a commit-ment to British morality but much more to a conservative view in aesthetics leading him to discover the norm for serious drama in Greek tragedy and the ultimate wisdom in theatrical opinion in the theories of Aristotle. Thus classical prejudices are superimposed upon British principles, the British principles themselves leaning considerably more upon the precepts of Matthew Arnold than upon the practices of Shakespeare. Keith approached Indian drama and poetry with an analytical mind but a cold heart. Within the last forty years, a warmer and more sympathetic understanding has developed. Imagination in the theatre or out of it is very diff-erent today from what it was in the times of Pinero. The change in the times encourages a new outlook. Because its method is primarily speculative, this book is organized on lines totally different from those of an orthodox history of drama-tic literature. The evolution of the drama from the historical view-point is barely mentioned; none of the singularly vexed chrono-logical puzzles are debated; no author is studied intensively; no apparatus for scholarly research is proposed and no textual exegesis offered. No philological problems are discussed and analysis is presented more with the English-speaking reader or even stage-producer or man of the theatre in mind than the professional.
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