Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/416

396 396 DRAMA [INDIAN. distinctions may be almost infinitely varied according to the point of view adopted for the classification. The historical sketch of the drama attempted in the following pages will best serve to indicate the successive growth of national dramatic species, many of which by asserting their influence in other countries and ages than those which gave birth to them, have acquired a more than national significance, The art of acting, whose history forms an organic though a distinct part of that of the drama, necessarily possesses a theory and a technical system of its own. But into these it is impossible here to enter. One claim, however, should be vindicated for the art of acting, viz., that though it is a dependent art, and most signally so in its highest forms, yet its true exercise implies a creative process. The conception of a character is determined by antecedents not of the actor s own making ; and the term originality can be applied to it only in a relative sense. Study and reflection enable him, with the aid of experience and of the intuition which genius bestows, but which experience may in a high degree supply, to interpret, to combine, and to sup plement given materials. But in the transformation of the conception into the represented character the actor s func tions are really creative ; for here he becomes the character by means which belong to his art alone. The distinctive- ness he gives to the character by making the principal features recognized by him in it its groundwork ; the consistency which he maintains in it between groundwork and details ; the appropriateness which he preserves in it to the course of the action and the part borne in it by the character : all these are produced by himself, though suggested by the conception he lias derived from his materials. As to the means at his disposal, they are essentially of two kinds only ; but not all forms of the drama have admitted of the use of both, or of both in the same completeness. All acting includes the use of gesture, or, as it has been more comprehensively termed, of bodily eloquence. From various points of view its laws regulate the actor s bearing, walk, and movements of face and limbs. They teach what is aesthetically permitted and what is aesthetically pleasing. They deduce from observation what is appropriate to the expression of particular affections of the mind and of their combinations, of emotions and passions, of physical and mental conditions joy and grief, health and sickness, waking, sleeping, and dreaming, mad ness, collapse, and death of particular ag2S of life and temperaments, as well as of the distinctive characteristics of race, nationality, or class. While under certain conditions as in the masked drama the use of bodily movement as one of the means of expression has at times been partially restricted, there have been, or are, forms of the drama which have altogether excluded the use of speech (such as pantomime), or have restricted the manner of its employ ment (such as opera). In the spoken drama the laws of rhetoric regulate the actor s use of speech, but under con ditions of a special nature. Like the orator, he has to follow the laws of pronunciation, modulation, accent, and rhythm (the last in certain kinds of prose as well as in such forms of verse as he may be called upon to reproduce). But he has also to give his attention to the special laws of dramatic delivery, which vary in soliloquy and dialogue, and in such narrative or lyrical passages as may occur in his part. The totality of the effect produced by the actor will in some degree depend upon other aids, among which those of a purely external kind will not be lost sight of. But the significance of costume in the actor, like that of decoration and scenery in an action, is a wholly relative one, and is to a large measure determined by the claims which custom enables the theatre to make, or forbids its making, upon the imagination of the spectators. The actor s real achievement lies in the transformation which the artist himself effects ; nor is there any art more sovereign in the use it can make of its means, or so happy in the directness of the results it can accomplish by them. The origin of the INDIAN drama may unhesitatingly be described as purely native. The Mahometans when they overran India brought no drama with them ; the Persians, the Arabs, and the Egyptians were without a national theatre. It would be absurd to suppose the Indian dranvi to have owed anything to the Chinese or its offshoots. On the other hand, there is no real evidence for assuming any influence of Greek examples upon the Indian drama at any stage of its progress. Finally, it had passed into its decline before the dramatic literature of modern Europe had sprung into being. The Hindu writers ascribe the invention of dramatic enter tainments to an inspired sage Bharata, or to the communi cations made to him by the god Brahma himself concerning an art gathered from the Vedas. As the word Bhumtu signifies an actor, we have clearly here a mere personifica tion of the invention of the drama. Three kinds of entertainments, of which the ndtya (defined as a dance combined with gesticulation and speech) comes nearest to the drama, were said to have been exhibited before the gods by the spirits and nymphs of Indra s heaven, and to these the god Siva added two new styles of dancing. The origin of the Indian drama was thus doubtless religious ; it sprang from the union of song and dance in the festivals of the gods, to which were afterwards added narrative recitation, and first sung, then spoken, dialogue. Such scenes and stories from the mythology of Vishnu are still occasionally enacted by pantomime or spoken dialogue in India (jdtras of the Bengalis ; rasas of the Western Provinces) ; and the most ancient Indian play was said to have treated an episode from the history of that deity, the choice of him as a consort by Laxrni, a favourite kind of subject in the Indian drama. The tradition connecting its earliest themes with the native mythology of Vishnu agrees with that ascribing the origin of a particular kind of dramatic performance the sanylta to Kfishiia and the shepherdesses. The author s later poem, the Gitagovind^, has been conjectured to be suggestive of the earliest species of Hindu dramas. But while the epic poetry of the Hindus gradually approached the dramatic in the way of dialogue, their drama developed itself independently out of the union of the lyric and the epic forms. Their dramatic poetry arose later than their epos, whose great works, the Mahdbhdrata and the Rdmdyana, had again been long pre ceded by the hymnody of the Vedas just as the Greek drama followed upon the Homeric poems, and these had been preceded by the early hymns. The beginnings of the Indian drama may accordingly belong to the 3d century B.C., or to a rather earlier date. But by the time it produced the first specimens with which we arc acquainted, it had already reached its zenith ; and it wan therefore looked upon as having sprung into being as a perfect art. We know it only in its glory, in its decline, and in its decay. The history of Indian dramatic literature may be roughly divided into the following periods : I. From the 1st century B.C. to the IQth century A.D. This period belongs to the pro-Mahometan age of Indian history, but to that second division of it in which Buddhism had already become a powerful, factor in the social, as well as in the moral and intellectual, life of the land. It is the classical period of the Hindu drama, and includes the works of its two indisputably greatest masters. Of these Kalidasa was by far the earlier, who lived at the Origin. First! i (classic