Note 116 — II POST-VEDIC LITERATURE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA

A further source of literary inspiration must undoubtedly be seen in the work of the lyric poets, of whose work clear evidence, as well as some scattered fragments, is preserved to us in the Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali.116 Moreover, to these lyric writers it is probable that the drama owed some of its metrical variety; in the development of the metres with a fixed number of syllables, each of determined length, from the older and freer Vedic and epic forms, it may be taken as certain that the erotic poets, who had a narrow theme to handle, and had every motive to aim at variety of form and effect, must have contributed largely, a conclusion which is also strongly suggested, if not proved, by the very names of the metres with their erotic suggestion.117