Note 55 — II POST-VEDIC LITERATURE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA
Reading edition
Professors Hillebrandt55 and Konow56 agree in the main in maintaining the view that it is an error to look to religious ceremonies as explaining the origin of the drama. True, these ceremonies have a share in the development of the drama, but they themselves are merely the introduction into the ritual of elements which have a popular origin. We are to believe that a popular mime existed, which, with the epic, lies at the bottom of the Sanskrit drama.