Page:Bibliography of the Sanskrit Drama.djvu/28

8 win for their author a place among the greater poets of the world. Their richness of fancy and appreciation of nature, added to the beauty of poetic technique and choice of language, have never been equaled in India, and bear favorable comparison with the dramas of any nation.

The play of Śakuntalā has been known in Europe since its translation by Sir William Jones in 1789, by which work that great Orientalist really introduced Sanskrit poetry to the West and started the study of Hindu literature. The play is a nāṭaka, or heroic comedy, of seven acts, and its plot is drawn from the first book of the Mahābhārata. The subject of the drama is the love of King Duṣyanta for Śakuntalā, their separation by accident, and their ultimate reunion in the presence of their son after the lapse of some years. The importance of this play lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect Sanskrit drama extant, but also in the fact that its great literary merit, as was evident from Sir William's translation, aroused a widespread interest in the literature of India throughout Europe. It was enthusiastically received by the followers of the Romantic School and exercised a genuine influence upon them. Jones's English version was soon rendered into other languages, and independent translations from the original Sanskrit have since been made into almost all the tongues of Europe, so that I am able to record versions and adaptations of the play in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, and Bohemian.

Kālidāsa's other important play is the Vikramorvaśī. It was first translated into English into 1827 by Horace Hayman Wilson, a scholar who devoted a great part of his life to the study of the Sanskrit drama, and whose 'Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus' is a standard work even to-day. Later investigations have rendered some of his views antiquated, but his book remained for years the only work upon the Sanskrit drama as a whole, until the appearance, in 1890, of Sylvain Lévi's admirable and scholarly treatise, Le Théâtre indien, a work indispensable to students. The plot of the Vikramorvaśī is briefly as