Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/116

Rh in the former the number of interlocutors is three in two cases against one or two as usual later; there are other signs of his fondness for triads. The introduction normally is styled Sthāpanā, not as later Prastāvanā, and it is extremely simple; after a Nāndī, not preserved, has been pronounced – perhaps behind the scene – the director enters, utters a benediction, and is about to make an announcement when a sound is heard which leads up to the actual drama. No mention of the poet's name or the work is found, but these we may suggest were left to the preliminaries which even in the Naṭyaçāstra were elaborate, and which doubtless were performed before Bhāsa's plays, as they were essentially religious rites in honour of the gods. On the other hand, the close, the Bharatavākya, of the later theory is varied in Bhāsa. The conventions as to the use of speech, aloud, aside to another, or to the audience alone are well known, and effective use is made of the voice from the air or behind the scene, as in the Abhiṣekanāṭaka, when Rāvaṇa taunts his prisoner and asks, who can set her free when her rescuers are dead; the voice replies, 'Rāma, Rāma'.

There are unquestionably primitive traits in Bhāsa's art; he uses with dangerous freedom the device by which some one departs and returns straightway, to narrate what must have taken long to happen; thus in the Abhiṣekanāṭaka, Çan̄kukarṇa is bidden send a thousand men against Hanumant; he departs at once, to return and tell that they have fallen. Free use is made also, as in the epic, of magic weapons in the conflict, as in the battle of Duryodhana and Kṛṣṇa in the Dūtavākya. So also in the Madhyamavyāyoga we find Ghaṭotkaca employing his magic power to produce water from a rock; then he binds Bhīma in a magic noose, from which he is delivered by a magic formula. In the Dūtavākya the discus of Kṛṣṇa