Note 68 — II POST-VEDIC LITERATURE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA

The early evidence adduced for the existence of the shadow-drama is wholly unreliable. Professor Konow suggests that the term Rūpa used in the fourth Rock Edict of Açoka, where he speaks of exhibiting spectacles of the dwellings of the gods, of elephants and bonfires, refers to a shadow device, in apparent ignorance of the true sense abundantly illustrated by the attested facts as to the mode of such representations in Buddhist literature;68 he accepts the wholly absurd view that Rūpaka as a name of the drama is derived from such shadow projections, while in fact it obviously denotes the visible presentation, the normal and early sense of Rūpa. Equally unfortunate is the effort to discover that the Sītābengā cave69 shows signs of grooves in front, which might have served in connexion with the curtain necessary for a shadow play, and much more so is the effort to explain Nepathya, the name of the tiring-room behind the curtain in the Sanskrit drama, from a misunderstood Prākrit nevaccha, which in its turn might represent a Sanskrit naipāṭhya—never found—denoting the place for the reader; apparently the shadows are in this view explained by some person behind the curtain. The philological combination is quite impossible.