Part 2 — III DRAMATIC THEORY XIII THE THEORY OF THE DRAMATIC ART
Reading edition
1. The Treatises on Dramatic Art
2. The Nature and the Types of the Drama
3. The Subject-Matter and the Plot
The number of Acts which a play should contain varies according to the nature of the drama; in the Nāṭaka the number must be at least five, and may be ten; in other cases one Act suffices. Normally the Acts are simply numbered; in some cases, as in that of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, names are given, doubtless not by the poet.
4. The Characters
A woman, who is in the power of another, may be the wife of another man or a maiden. An amour with a married woman may not form the subject of the dominant sentiment in the play, but that for a maiden may occur as an element in the principal or the secondary action. Even when a parent or guardian is willing to permit a maiden’s marriage, there may be other obstacles, as in the case of the love of Mālatī and Mādhava and in Vatsa’s numerous amours. The woman who is common to all (sādhāraṇī) is a courtesan, skilled in the arts, bold, and cunning; she accepts as lovers the rich, the foolish, the self-willed, the selfish, and the impotent so long as their money lasts, then she has them turned out of doors by her mother, who acts as go-between. If she is a heroine, she must be represented as in love, like Vasantasenā in the Mṛcchakaṭikā, except in a Prahasana or farce, where she can be depicted as fleecing her lovers for comic effect; she must not figure as a heroine if the hero is divine or royal.
The same division of classes is applied to all the other characters (pātra) which can appear in a play, but a much more fundamental classification is that by sex, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Most of the rôles are such as are incidental to the life of a palace, for the normal drama deals with the amours of a king, and his entourage and that of the queen account for practically all the normal characters of the drama.
5. The Sentiments
The view of Lollaṭa, which is classed as one of the production (utpatti) of sentiment and regarded as that of the Mīmāṅsā school, is opposed by the doctrine of Çrīçan̄kuka, regarded as the Naiyāyika view, which interprets the manifestation of sentiment as a process of inference. The emotions, love, &c., are inferred to exist in the actor, though not really present in him, by means of the determinants, &c., cleverly exhibited in his acting; the emotion thus inferred, being sensed by the audience, through its exquisite beauty, adds to itself a peculiar charm and thus finally develops into the state of a sentiment in the spectator. This view, however, is open to the fatal objection that it is commonly admitted that it is not inference, or any other derivative mode of knowledge, which produces charm, but perception alone, and no adequate ground exists for disregarding this general truth in this case.
It is now possible to understand clearly the essential relation of the spectator to the actors; we see on the stage, for instance, Rāma and Sītā, who excites his affection, aided by suitable circumstances of time and place; this affection is intimated by speech and gesture alike, which indicate both the dominant emotion of love and its transient shapes in the various stages of love requited. The spectacle evokes in the mind of the spectator the impressions of the emotion of love which experience has planted there, and this ideal and generic excitation of the emotion produces in him that sense of joy which is known as sentiment. The fullness of the enjoyment depends essentially on the nature and experience of the spectator, to whom it falls to identify himself with the hero or other character, and thus to experience in ideal form his emotions and feelings. He may even succeed in his effort to the extent that he weeps real tears, feels terror and sorrow, but the sentiment is still one of exquisite joy. We may compare the thrill of pleasure which the most terrifying narration excites in us, and we are all conscious of the sweetness of sad tales.
The sentiments may all be employed in drama, but there are rules affecting their use. In each play there should be a dominant sentiment; in the Nāṭaka it should be the erotic or the heroic; other sentiments are merely auxiliary, but that of wonder is especially appropriate in the dénouement; indeed something in the way of supernatural intervention is often convenient to extricate the plot. An excess of sentiments is as bad as a defect; if there are too many they destroy the unity of the whole and detach it into a series of ill-connected fragments, while the excessive use of action and of rhetorical display is equally destructive to the merit of a piece.
The Çakuntalā illustrates excellently the sentiment of love as the ruling motive of the play; the heroic sentiment appears in the verses in Act II in which the hermits extol the king; the horrible in Act VI in the scene in which Mātali menaces the Vidūṣaka; terror is evoked by the description of the dusk at the close of Act III; the whole play from the arrival of Kaṇva in Act IV to the departure of Çakuntalā produces the sentiment of pathos, while that of fury is called into being by the close of Act VI from the despairing cries of the Vidūṣaka to the entry of Mātali; finally wonder is aroused by the strange incident at the close when the king picks up the bracelet fallen from the arm of the child which, unknown to him, is his own son by the wife whom he has in ignorance repudiated. The Nāṭikās afford excellent examples of the erotic sentiment; Harṣa, in complete accord with the rules of the drama, helps out his plot in both the Ratnāvalī and the Priyadarçikā by the use of incidents evoking the sentiment of wonder; the imprisonment of Sāgarikā in the former play evokes the sentiment of pathos, while terror is excited by the description in Act II of the wild confusion caused by the monkey’s escape from the royal mews. The sentiment of fury is frequently evoked in the Mahāvīracarita and the Veṇīsaṁhāra; the Mālatīmādhava affords excellent illustrations evoking horror, while the Mahāvīracarita is permeated by the sentiment of heroism. The Nāgānanda reveals heroism in another aspect, that of the perfection of compassion and nobility, for, as we have seen, Jīmūtavāhana is not to be regarded as a hero in whom calm prevails.
There is doubtless pedantry in the theory of sentiment; the choice of eight emotions, the subordination to them of transitory states, the enumeration of determinants and consequents, are largely dominated by empiricism, and not explained or justified. But in its essentials the theory may be admitted to be a bold and by no means negligible attempt to indicate the essential character of the emotional effect of drama.
6. The Dramatic Styles and Languages
The grand manner is appropriate to the sentiments of heroism, wonder, and fury, and in a less degree to the pathetic and erotic. Virtue, courage, self-sacrifice, compassion, and righteousness are its subjects, not sorrow. Its divisions are the challenge (utthāpaka), as in the Mahāvīracarita, Act V, Vālin defies Rāma; breach of alliance (saṁghātya) among one’s foes, which may be brought about by deliberate stratagem, as in the Mudrārākṣasa, or by fate, as in the Rāma dramas Vibhīṣaṇa severs himself from Rāvaṇa; change of action (parivartaka) as when in the Mahāvīracarita Paraçurāma offers to embrace Rāma, whom he came to overthrow; and the dialogue (saṁlāpa) of warriors such as that of Rāma and Paraçurāma in the same play.
The violent manner accords with the sentiments of fury, horror, and terror. It employs magic, conjuration, conflicts, rage, fury, and underhand devices. Its elements include, first, the almost immediate construction (saṁkṣipti) of some object by artificial means, such as the elephant of mats made to contain Udayana’s men in the lost Udayanacarita; but others interpret this member as a sudden change of hero, whether real, as in the substitution of Vālin for Sugrīva, or merely a change of heart on the hero’s part, as in Paraçurāma’s submission to Rāma; in either case only a secondary hero can change or be changed, else the unity of the drama would disappear. The other elements are the creation of an object by magic means (vastūtthāpana); the angry meeting of two persons who end by fighting (sampheṭa), as do Mādhava and Aghoraghaṇṭa in the Mālatīmādhava; and a scene of tumultuous disturbance (avapāta), such as that when the monkey escapes in the Ratnāvalī or of the attack on Vindhyaketu in the Priyadarçikā, Act I.
Sweetness, the source of pleasure, causing as it were the melting of the heart, is appropriate in the sentiments of love in enjoyment, pathos, love in separation, and calm; it is normal in love in union, and rises in degree successively in the other three forms of sentiment; unmixed in the others, in that of calm it is combined with a small degree of strength, because of the relation of the sentiment of calm to the emotion of disgust. Strength causes the expansion of the heart; it rises in vehemence in the sentiments of heroism, horror, and fury, and it is found also in that of terror. The quality of clearness is appropriate to all the sentiments, and is that which causes the sense to become intelligible, pervading the mind as fire does wood or water a cloth, as the outcome of merely hearing the words. The precise mode in which sweetness is produced is by the use of mutes other than cerebrals, with their appropriate nasals, r and ṇ with short vowels, and no compounds or short compounds; strength results from the use of compound letters, doubled letters, conjunct consonants of which r forms part, cerebrals other than ṇ, palatal and cerebral sibilants, and long compounds. The older names, Vaidarbha, Gauḍa, and Pāñcāla are now given up in favour of refined (upanāgarikā), harsh (paruṣā), and soft (komalā). But Mammaṭa reminds us that in drama very long compounds are undesirable, a rule ignored largely by the later dramatists.
The case of figures, whether of sound or sense, is somewhat similarly handled; the figures are compared with the ornaments which, placed on a man’s body, and through this union with him, gratify the soul; the figures adorn words and meanings which are parts of poetry by their union with them, and thus serve to heighten the sentiment, provided one exists. If there is no sentiment, through the defective ability of the poet, then the figures serve merely to lend variety to the composition, and even when sentiment exists the figures may fail to be appropriate to it. Both figures and qualities thus are in a very intimate relation with the sentiment, but that does not mean that the two are identical.
The Nāṭyaçāstra provides for the use of Dākṣiṇātyā in the case of soldiers (yodha), police officers (nāgaraka), and gamblers (dīvyant), and there are slight traces in the Mṛcchakaṭikā of the existence of this dialect. Bālhīkā is assigned by the same authority to the Khasas and the northerners, but has not yet been traced in any drama.
The addition of Chāyās or translations in Sanskrit to explain the Prākrit is normal in the manuscripts of the dramas, and it is certain that it is old, for it is alluded to by Rājaçekhara in his Bālarāmāyaṇa. Evidently, even so early as A.D. 900, there was no public which cared for Prākrit without a Sanskrit explanation.
7. The Dance, Song, and Music
8. The Preliminaries and the Prologue
9. The Types of Drama
The types of drama are distinguished by the theorists according to the use which they make of the various dramatic elements enumerated. The highest of the ten main forms, Rūpakas, is the Nāṭaka or heroic comedy. The term is generic; it may denote any representation whether by pictures or dumb show, but it has also the more important specific sense of the drama proper.
10. The Influence of Theory on Practice
The Nāṭaka, accordingly, remains the form of drama par excellence, a pre-eminence due to its comparative freedom from narrow restrictions as well as to the submissive spirit of the dramatists. The form serves very different purposes; it accommodates itself not only to the grace and charm of Kālidāsa, but to the unmeasured and irregular genius of Bhavabhūti; it permits of the political drama of Viçākhadatta, as well as the philosophical disquisitions of Kṛṣṇamiçra and the devotional fervour of Kavikarṇapūra’s Caitanyacandrodaya.
The Prakaraṇa is essentially similar to the Nāṭaka save in the social status of the hero and heroine; the distinction between the Mālatīmādhava and a Nāṭaka is far less important than the similarity. The Mṛcchakaṭikā, indeed, departs from type, but that is not surprising now that it is known that it is based on Bhāsa’s Cārudatta, which is not merely the work of a man of unusual talent, but came into being before the rules of the drama had attained the binding force they later achieved. The Nāṭikā, however, which is likewise closely allied to the Nāṭaka, became stereotyped at an early stage, leaving no room for serious innovation; the charms of the song and dance appear to have prevailed, and to have dissuaded efforts at originality of plot. The Vyāyoga is hardly more than an aspect of the Nāṭaka; the spirit of such works as those of Bhāsa in this genre is reflected in many passages of the Mahāvīracarita and the Veṇīsaṁhāra.
The farce and the monologue, of which we have many specimens in the later drama, are confined to representations of the lower and coarser side of life, but curiously enough they fail entirely to achieve what might have seemed the legitimate aim of a vivid portrayal of the lives and manners of contemporary society; tradition has proved too strong for the dramatists whose works deal with types, not individuals. On the other hand, we find practically no living tradition of the construction of dramas of the other five classes of the theory, Ḍima, Samavakāra, Īhāmṛga, Vīthī, and Utsṛṣṭikān̄ka. We may legitimately assume that these were types erected on little foundation of fact, and that, while the theory could restrict enterprise, it could not induce life in forms which had no real vitality of their own. The mere fact that later poets occasionally patronize these forms is sufficient evidence of the strength of the authority of the Çāstra. It is amazing, however, that we find no serious effort to produce pure comedy; the farce and the monologue may hover on the borders of that form; they certainly never attain it.
To the force of the tradition is presumably to be ascribed the absence of any effort at tragedy, though its absence undoubtedly coincides with the mental outlook of the Indian people and their philosophy of life. Bhāsa has indeed been claimed as a tragedian, but with complete disregard for the facts; there is in fact in his dramas disregard of the rule which objects to death on the stage, but the slain are always evil men, whose death is just punishment; the Ūrubhan̄ga may to us be tragic, but that is because we are not adorers of Viṣṇu who regard with relish the fate of the enemy of that god, the evil Duryodhana. The tragic sentiment is nowhere recognized, for the term (raudra), which is unhappily often so rendered, is the sentiment which is based on anger, and has nothing truly tragic in it. The idea is, indeed, entirely wanting in the theory as it is in the practice.
11. Aristotle and the Indian Theory of Poetics
Other suggestions of Greek influence may also be adduced; thus we have the mention of what seems a derivative of the Greek caryatides in the description of the theatre; the monologue may be based on the Greek Mime, and we have the actual mention in a passage of the Çāstra of Yavanas, while the description of the Viṭa suggests derivation from the Greek parasite. But it is impossible to take these pieces of evidence as conclusive proof of borrowing; we are, in fact, faced with the usual difficulty that, if there were borrowing, the Indian genius has known how to recast so cleverly and to adapt what it borrowed so effectively that the traces which would definitely establish indebtedness cannot be found. In all the instances enumerated there is no doubt similarity, but there is also essential difference such as renders independent development of the Indian doctrine at least as probable as borrowing.