Note 13 — IV DRAMATIC PRACTICE XIV THE INDIAN THEATRE

The reputation of actors and actresses was low and unsavoury; they are reputed to live on the price of their wives’ honour (jāyājīva, rūpājīva), and Manu imposes only a minor penalty on illicit relations with the wife of an actor on the score of their willingness to hand over their wives to others and profit by their dishonour.13 The Mahābhāṣya gives equally clear testimony of the lack of chastity among the actresses or their predecessors.14 The law book of Viṣṇu15 treats them as Āyogavas, a mixed caste representing the fruit of alliances, improper and undesirable, between Çūdras and the daughters of the Vaiçya; to be an actor or a teacher of the art is ranked as a lesser sin in Baudhāyana.16 The Kuçīlava is described as a Çūdra, who ought to be banished;17 his evidence, and indeed that of any actor, is not to be accepted in law,18 and Brahmins may not accept food offered by an actor,19 a fact attested by the Sūtradhāra in the prologue to the Mṛcchakaṭikā who can find no one in Ujjayinī to accept his hospitality. Actors again are classed in Manu with wrestlers and boxers. An actress was often, if not necessarily, one of the great army of courtesans; Vasantasenā, the hetaera of the Cārudatta and Mṛcchakaṭikā, is herself skilled in acting, and has in her household maidens learning to act, and Daṇḍin includes lessons in this art in his account of the education of the perfect courtesan in the Daçakumāracarita.