IV. DRAMA
Origins—“The Clay Cart”—Characteristics of Hindu drama—Kalidasa—The story of “Shakuntala”—Estimate of Indian drama
In one sense drama in India is as old as the Vedas, for at least the germ of drama lies in the Upanishads. Doubtless older than these Scriptures is a more active source of the drama—the sacrificial and festival ceremonies and processions of religion. A third origin was in the dance—no mere release of energy, much less a substitute for coitus, but a serious ritual imitating and suggesting actions and events vital to the tribe. Perhaps a fourth source lay in the public and animated recitation of epic verse. These factors coöperated to produce the Indian theatre, and gave it a religious stamp that lingered throughout the classic age† in the serious nature of the drama, the Vedic or epic source of its subjects, and the benediction that always preceded the play.
Perhaps the final stimulus to drama came from the intercourse, established by Alexander’s invasion, between India and Greece. We have no evidence of Hindu dramas before Ashoka, and only uncertain evidence during his reign. The oldest extant Hindu plays are the palm-leaf manuscripts lately discovered in Chinese Turkestan. Among them were three dramas, one of which names as its author Ashvaghosha, a theological luminary at Kanishka’s court. The technical form of this play, and the resemblance of its buffoon to the type traditionally characteristic of the Hindu theatre, suggest that drama was already old in India when Ashvaghosha was born.47 In 1910 thirteen ancient Sanskrit plays were found in Travancore, which are dubiously ascribed to Bhasa (ca. 350A.D.), a dramatic predecessor much honored by Kalidasa. In the prologue to his Malavika Kalidasa unconsciously but admirably illustrates the relativity of time and adjectives: “Shall we,” he asks, “neglect the works of such renowned authors as Bhasa, Saumilla, and Kaviputra? Can the audience feel any respect for the work of a modern poet, a Kalidasa?”48
Until recently, the oldest Hindu play known to research was The Clay Cart. The text, which need not be believed, names as author of the play an obscure King Shudraka, who is described as an expert in the Vedas, in mathematics, in the management of elephants, and in the art of love.49 In any event he was an expert in the theatre. His play is by all means the most interesting that has come to us from India—a clever combination of melodrama and humor, with excellent passages of poetic fervor and description.
A synopsis of its plot will serve better than a volume of commentary to illustrate the character of Indian drama. In Act I we meet Charu-datta, once rich, now impoverished by generosity and bad fortune. His friend Maitreya, a stupid Brahman, acts as jester in the play. Charu asks Maitreya to offer an oblation to the gods, but the Brahman refuses, saying: “What’s the use, when the gods you have worshiped have done nothing for you?” Suddenly a young Hindu woman, of high family and great wealth, rushes into Charu’s courtyard, seeking refuge from a pursuer who turns out to be the King’s brother, Samsthanaka—as completely and incredibly evil as Charu is completely and irrevocably good. Charu protects the girl, sends Samsthanaka off, and scorns the latter’s threat of vengeance. The girl, Vasanta-sena, asks Charu to keep a casket of jewels in safe custody for her, lest her enemies steal it from her, and lest she may have no excuse for revisiting her rescuer. He agrees, takes the casket, and escorts her to her palatial home.
Act II is a comic interlude. A gambler, running away from two other gamblers, takes refuge in a temple. When they enter he eludes them by posing as the idol of the shrine. The pursuing gamblers pinch him to see if he is really a stone god, but he does not move. They abandon their search, and console themselves with a game of dice at the foot of the altar. The game becomes so exciting that the “statue,” unable to control himself, leaps off his pedestal, and asks leave to take part. The others beat him; he again finds help in his heels, and is saved by Vasanta-sena, who recognizes in him a former servant of Charu-datta.
Act III shows Charu and Maitreya returning from a concert. A thief, Sharvilaka, breaks in, and steals the casket. Charu, discovering the theft, feels disgraced, and sends Vasanta-sena his last string of pearls as a substitute.
In Act IV Sharvilaka is seen offering the stolen casket to Vasanta-sena’s maid as a bribe for her love. Seeing that it is her mistress’ casket, she berates Sharvilaka as a thief. He answers her with Schopenhauerian acerbity:
A woman will for money smile or weep
According to your will; she makes a man
Put trust in her, but trusts him not herself.
Women are as inconstant as the waves
Of ocean, their affection is as fugitive
As streak of sunset glow upon a cloud.
They cling with eager fondness to the man
Who yields them wealth, which they squeeze out like sap
Out of a juicy plant, and then they leave him.
The maid refutes him by forgiving him, and Vasanta-sena by allowing them to marry.
At the opening of Act V Vasanta-sena comes to Charu’s house to return both his jewels and her casket. While she is there a storm blows up, which she describes in excellent Sanskrit.* The storm obligingly increases its fury, and compels her, much according to her will, to spend the night under Charu’s roof.
Act VI shows Vasanta leaving Charu’s house the next morning. By mistake she steps not into the carriage he has summoned for her, but into one which belongs to the villainous Samsthanaka. Act VII is concerned with a subordinate plot, inessential to the theme. Act VIII finds Vasanta deposited, not in her palace as she had expected, but in the home, almost in the arms, of her enemy. When she again spurns his love he chokes her, and buries her. Then he goes to court and lodges against Charu a charge of murdering Vasanta for her jewels.
Act IX describes the trial, in which Maitreya unwittingly betrays his master by letting Vasanta’s jewels fall from his pocket. Charu is condemned to death. In Act X Charu is seen on his way to execution. His child pleads with the executioners to be allowed to take his place, but they refuse. At the last moment Vasanta herself appears. Sharvilaka had seen Samsthanaka bury her; he had exhumed her in time, and had revived her. Now, while Vasanta rescues Charu, Sharvilaka accuses the King’s brother of murder. But Charu refuses to support the charge, Samsthanaka is released, and everybody is happy.50
Since time is more plentiful in the East, where nearly all work is done by human hands, than in the West, where there are so many labor-saving devices, Hindu plays are twice as long as the European dramas of our day. The acts vary from five to ten, and each act is unobtrusively divided into scenes by the exit of one character and the entrance of another. There are no unities of time or place, and no limits to imagination. Scenery is scanty, but costumes are colorful. Sometimes living animals enliven the play,51 and for a moment redeem the artificial with the natural. The performance begins with a prologue, in which an actor or the manager discusses the play; Goethe seems to have taken from Kalidasa the idea of a prologue for Faust. The prologue concludes by introducing the first character, who marches into the middle of things. Coincidences are innumerable, and supernatural influences often determine the course of events. A love-story is indispensable; so is a jester. There is no tragedy in the Indian theatre; happy endings are unavoidable; faithful love must always triumph, virtue must always be rewarded, if only to balance reality. Philosophical discourse, which obtrudes so often into Hindu poetry, is excluded from Hindu drama; drama, like life, must teach only by action, never by words.* Lyric poetry alternates with prose according to the dignity of the topic, the character, and the action. Sanskrit is spoken by the upper castes in the play, Prakrit by the women and the lower castes. Descriptive passages excel, character delineation is poor. The actors—who include women—do their work well, with no Occidental haste, and with no Far-Eastern fustian. The play ends with an epilogue, in which the favorite god of the author or the locality is importuned to bring prosperity to India.
Ever since Sir William Jones translated it and Goethe praised it, the most famous of Hindu dramas has been the Shakuntala of Kalidasa. Nevertheless we know Kalidasa only through three plays, and through the legends that pious memory has hung upon his name. Apparently he was one of the “Nine Gems”—poets, artists and philosophers—who were cherished by King Vikramaditya (380-413 A.D.) in the Gupta capital at Ujjain.
Shakuntala is in seven acts, written partly in prose, partly in vivid verse. After a prologue in which the manager invites the audience to consider the beauties of nature, the play opens upon a forest glade in which a hermit dwells with his foster daughter Shakuntala. The peace of the scene is disturbed by the noise of a chariot; its occupant, King Dushyanta, appears, and falls in love with Shakuntala with literary speed. He marries her in the first act, but is suddenly called back to his capital; he leaves her with the usual promises to return at his earliest convenience. An ascetic tells the sorrowing girl that the King will remember her as long as she keeps the ring Dushyanta has given her; but she loses the ring while bathing. About to become a mother, she journeys to the court, only to discover that the King has forgotten her after the manner of men to whom women have been generous. She tries to refresh his memory.
Shakuntala. Do you not remember in the jasmine-bower,
One day, how you had poured the rain-water
That a lotus had collected in its cup
Into the hollow of your hand?
King. Tell on,
I am listening.
Shakuntala. Just then my adopted child,
The little fawn, ran up with long, soft eyes,
And you, before you quenched your own thirst, gave
To the little creature, saying, “Drink you first,
Gentle fawn!” But she would not from strange hands.
And yet, immediately after, when
I took some water in my hand, she drank,
Absolute in her trust. Then, with a smile,
You said: “Each creature has faith in its own kind.
You are children both of the same wild wood, and each
Confides in the other, knowing where its trust is.”
King. Sweet, fair and false! Such women entice fools. . . .
The female gift of cunning may be marked
In creatures of all kinds; in women most.
The cuckoo leaves her eggs for dupes to hatch,
Then flies away secure and triumphing.53
Shakuntala, spurned and despondent, is miraculously lifted into the air and carried off to another forest, where she bears her child—that great Bharata whose progeny must fight all the battles of the Mahabharata. Meanwhile a fisherman has found the ring, and seeing the King’s seal on it, has brought it to Dushyanta. His memory of Shakuntala is restored, and he seeks her everywhere. Traveling in his airplane over the Himalayas, he alights by dramatic providence at the very hermitage where Shakuntala is pining away. He sees the boy Bharata playing before the cottage, and envies his parents:
“Ah, happy father, happy mother, who,
Carrying their little son, are soiled with dust
Rubbed from his body; it nestles with fond faith
Into their lap, the refuge that he craves—
The white buds of his teeth just visible
When he breaks out into a causeless smile,
And he attempts sweet wordless sounds, . . .
Melting the heart more than any word.”54
Shakuntala appears, the King begs her forgiveness, receives it, and makes her his queen. The play ends with a strange but typical invocation:
“May kings reign only for their subjects’ weal!
May the divine Sarasvati, the source
Of speech, and goddess of dramatic art,
Be ever honored by the great and wise!
And may the purple, self-existent god,
Whose vital energy pervades all space,
From future transmigrations save my soul!“55
Drama did not decline after Kalidasa, but it did not again produce a Shakuntala or a Clay Cart. King Harsha, if we may believe a possibly inspired tradition, wrote three plays, which held the stage for centuries. A hundred years after him Bhavabhuti, a Brahman of Berar, wrote three romantic dramas which are ranked second only to Kalidasa’s in the history of the Indian stage. His style, however, was so elaborate and obscure that he had to be—and of course protested that he was—content with a narrow audience. “How little do they know,” he wrote, “who speak of us with censure. The entertainment is not for them. Possibly some one exists or will exist, of similar tastes with myself; for time is boundless, and the world is wide.”56
We cannot rank the dramatic literature of India on a plane with that of Greece or Elizabethan England; but it compares favorably with the theatre of China or Japan. Nor need we look to India for the sophistication that marks the modern stage; that is an accident of time rather than an eternal verity, and may pass away—even into its opposite. The supernatural agencies of Indian drama are as alien to our taste as the deus ex machina of the enlightened Euripides; but this, too, is a fashion of history. The weaknesses of Hindu drama (if they may be listed diffidently by an alien) are artificial diction disfigured with alliteration and verbal conceits, monochromatic characterization in which each person is thoroughly good or thoroughly bad, improbable plots turning upon unbelievable coincidences, and an excess of description and discourse over that action which is, almost by definition, the specific medium by which drama conveys significance. Its virtues are its creative fancy, its tender sentiment, its sensitive poetry, and its sympathetic evocation of nature’s beauty and terror. About national types of art there can be no disputation; we can judge them only from the provincial standpoint of our own, and mostly through the prism of translation. It is enough that Goethe, ablest of all Europeans to transcend provincial and national barriers, found the reading of Shakuntala among the profound experiences of his life, and wrote of it gratefully:
Wouldst thou the young year’s blossoms, and the fruits of its decline,
And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed;
Wouldst thou the Earth and Heaven itself in one sole name combine?
I name thee, O Shakuntala! and all at once is said.57