Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/120

 Bhasa's Style 115 Abhişekanataka the dramatist is content with one. On the other hand he owes to it the relative simplicity of his diction, and his freedom from the excesses of the poetic equivalent of the nominal style, which comes to dominate later Sanskrit literature. The use of long compounds is obviously and plainly undramatic; carried to excess it must have rendered a Sanskrit drama unin- telligible even to a highly cultivated audience as far as the verses were concerned, and it is an essential dramatic merit in Bhasa that his expression is far easier to follow than in much of later dramatic poetry. He possesses in fact that clearness, which is theoretically a merit of the Kavya style, but which is signally neglected by the average Kavya writer in his anxiety to display the complete familiarity which he possesses with every side of the art of poetry. As far as we can judge from the scanty frag- ments of Açvaghoṣa's dramas, that poet was more complex than Bhasa, and certainly so in his epics, which aided powerfully in the formation of Kalidasa's epic and dramatic style. Bhasa, of course, is not in the slightest degree akin to a poet of the people; he is an accomplished master of the art of poetry, but one whose good sense and taste preserve him from adopting in drama the artifices which are permitted in the court epic and lyric which were intended to be studied at leisure. The simple and sententious is beloved of Bhasa: thus Karna repels the objections of Çalya to his parting with armour and earring to the disguised Indra:¹ çiksa kṣayam gacchati kalaparyayat: subaddhamülä nipatanti padapāḥ jalam jalasthanagatam ca çuşyati: hutam ca dattam ca tathaiva tisthati. 'Learning decayeth with the passing of time; though firm their roots, trees fall; the water of a lake drieth up; but sacrifices and gifts endure.' When Sītā is forced to undergo the ordeal by fire Lakṣmaṇa exclaims : 2 vijñāya devyaç çaucam ca çrutvācāryasya çãsanam dharmasnehäntare nyasta buddhir dolayate mama. 'I know the queen's chastity; I have heard the bidding of our preceptor; like a swing, my mind doth move 'twixt duty and 1 Karnabhäāra, 22. 2 Abhisekanāṭaka, vi. 21. H2