Note 18 — II POST-VEDIC LITERATURE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA

This is clear and intelligible, and it is unfortunate that it has recently been misunderstood by Professor Lüders,18 with 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 Lévi19 renders 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,20 that 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’ 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 word pratyakṣam in 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.