Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/376

320 of the body, executed in harmony with singing and music. Indeed, the root naṭ and the nouns nāṭya and nāṭaka, which are now applied to dramatic acting, are probably mere corruptions of nṛit, to ‘dance’, nṛitya, ‘dancing’, and nartaka, ‘a dancer’. Of this dancing various styles were gradually invented, such as the Lāsya and Tāṇḍava, to express different actions or various sentiments and emotions.

“Very soon dancing was extended to include pantomimic gesticulations accompanied with more elaborate musical performances, and these gesticulations were aided by occasional exclamations between the intervals of singing. Finally, natural language took the place of music and singing, while gesticulation became merely subservient to emphasis in dramatic dialogue.”

Such was the origin of the Indian drama, and dramatic literature, comparable in every sense with that of Greece and Rome: and a development of the drama in northern Europe, in the absence of Greece, and Rome, and of Christianity, would probably have yielded a very close parallel to that of India. But it is to the actual effect of Christianity upon the drama of Europe to which I desire to direct attention.

In the following diagram I have endeavoured to give in graphic form my conception of the lines of development of the classical and European drama, with the special object of showing the influence of Christianity on the latter. It will be observed that there is nothing to correspond to classical drama in Teutonic countries, in which to some extent the actual classical drama was utilised.