Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/355

 But, if the marks of family life and family worship meet us everywhere in Chinese plays, the social system of caste—a system directly opposed to anything like Chinese election and examination—has left its marks scarcely less distinctly on the Indian drama. Thus, the prologue of the Indian plays (partly imitated in the Vorspiel of Goethe's Faust) is really a piece of religious ceremonial conducted by the Bráhmans, and is without parallel in the thoroughly secular drama of China. The hereditary system of caste has not only led Indian critics to assign minutely the proper characteristics of personages taken from different social grades, but has even left its mark on the language used by the dramatis personæ. Heroes and principal personages speak Sanskrit, while the women and inferior characters use the modifications of that language comprehended under the term Prákrit. "According to the technical authorities," says Professor Wilson, "the heroine and principal female characters speak Saurasení; attendants on royal personages, Mágadhí; servants, Rajputs, and traders, Arddha or mixed Mágadhý. The Vidúshaka, or Buffoon, speaks the Práchí or Eastern dialect; rogues use Avantiká or the language of Ougein;" and altogether, as Professor Wilson himself adds, if these and other directions were implicitly followed, "a Hindu play would be a polyglot that few could hope to understand; in practice, however, we have rarely more than three varieties, or Sanskrit and a Prákrit more or less refined." An interesting example of this appropriation of language to social status may be observed in the second act of the Mudrá Rakshasa. Here Viradhagupta, an agent of Rakshasa, enters disguised as a snake-catcher, and, in keeping with the social status of the character he has for the moment assumed, addresses the passers-by in Prákrit, but when they have gone