Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/339

 attributed to Kálidása, the first act opens on the Himálayan Mountains, and, a troop of Apsarasas, or nymphs of heaven, entering, the opportunity for such passages may be readily conceived. As a brief specimen from this play, we may select the closing words of the second act spoken by King Parúravas:—

In the third act of the same play a description of the rising moon is put into the mouth of Parúravas; and in the fourth act, the scene of which lies in the forest of Akalusha, the lyrical descriptions of Nature are too numerous to admit of easy illustration. From other plays examples of natural description might readily be collected, such as the lines of Vasantí, beginning, "The sun, with glow intense," etc., in the second act of the Ultara-Rama-Charitra, the scene of which is the forest of Janasthána, along the river Godáveri. But, instead of uselessly multiplying examples from. these and other Indian plays, we shall turn aside to observe a similar prominence of Nature in the Chinese and Japanese dramas.

§ 84. If the Hindu critic attributes the legendary origin of his drama to an inspired sage, Bharata, or even to the god Bráhma, the less ambitious Celestial is content to refer the origin of his theatre to the Emperor Hiouen-tsong, of the T'ang dynasty, founder of an Imperial Academy of Music and of the Chinese drama (cir. 736 ). Among the Chinese neither music nor