Note 9 — IV DRAMATIC PRACTICE XIV THE INDIAN THEATRE

The other actors, of whom there must often have been many in pieces with crowds introduced, are to have the qualities of the Sūtradhāra in as generous a measure as may be; they are divided, however, according to their qualifications into superior, medium, and third-rate actors.9 The principal parts in any drama are, however, few; the king, the Vidūṣaka, the parasite, the heroine, and a companion are stock types. The division of rôles is seldom shown in the prologues, whence are derived most of the details of our knowledge of actual performances. The Sūtradhāra in the Ratnāvalī and the Priyadarçikā plays the part of Vatsa, his younger brother that of Yaugandharāyaṇa in the former play and that of Dṛḍhavarman in the latter; the Sūtradhāra and the Pāripārçvika take in the Mālatīmādhava the rôles of Kāmandakī and her pupil Avalokitā respectively. This taking of women’s parts by men is not by any means the normal practice; the Naṭī normally plays an important female part;10 in the embryo drama in the Priyadarçikā we find that the heroine’s part is played by Āraṇyikā, and the hero’s part was to have been performed by another girl Manoramā, but Vatsa, without the queen’s knowledge, insinuated himself into the scene in propria persona. In the legend of Bharata’s exhibition of the Lakṣmīsvayaṁvara the nymph Urvaçī is represented as playing the chief rôle, and in Dāmodaragupta’s Kuṭṭanīmata, where an actual representation of the Ratnāvalī is described, we find a woman in the rôle of the princess. The Nāṭyaçāstra11 expressly admits of three modes of representation; the rôles may be filled by persons of appropriate sex and age; the rôles of the old may be taken by the young and vice versa; and the rôles of men may be played by women and vice versa. The taking of women’s parts by men has, curiously enough, a very early piece of evidence, for the Mahābhāṣya mentions the word Bhrūkuṅsa, which was used to denote a man who made up as a female.12