Note 46 — IV BHĀSA

In technique Bhāsa does not accord entirely with the later rules of the theorists. The Nāṭyaçāstra, it is true, when it forbids the exhibition of battle scenes contradicts itself, and Bhāsa freely permits them, as must have been the case in the primitive drama in which Kṛṣṇa slew Kaṅsa. The maidens, however, he bids watch the mortal combat of Ariṣṭa and Kṛṣṇa from afar. Daçaratha’s death he admits; the bodies of Cāṇūra, Muṣṭika, and Kaṅsa lie on the stage, and Vālin perishes there as well as Duryodhana, but all these are evildoers, and their death evokes no sorrow. The same simplicity doubtless accounts for the introduction of the mythological figures of the Bālacarita, whom we need not imagine to have been elaborately costumed; they announce their nature or are described,46 and the spectator supplies the imagination requisite to comprehend them.