Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/249

244 drama of allegory on philosophical topics, which claim as their right Sanskrit as a mode of expression. The Sanskrit of the author thus represents the medium of his habitual use in discus- sions and is appropriate to the matters dealt with.

This is essentially the period when the dramatic rules, strong in their hold earlier over the minds of dramatists, attain even greater sway. It is to this that we owe the few specimens we have of the rarer types of drama which are not represented among the scanty remains of the classical drama. There is no reason to suppose that these types were popular among the earlier dramatists; they had, it seems, their vogue in the time before the Nāṭyaçāstra assumed its present form, but were rejected as unsuitable by the classical drama. We have also specimens of types which may have been regularly produced in classical times, but none of which are represented in the extant literature. Finally, we have specimens of new forms, the result of efforts to introduce into Sanskrit dramatic forms which had sprung up in more popular circles.

2. The Nāṭaka

The Nāṭaka remains throughout the post-classical period of the drama the natural exponent of the higher form of the dramatic art. No change of importance appears in its character; it merely steadily develops those features which we have seen in full process of production in Murāri and Rājaçekhara, the subordination of action to description, and the degeneration of the description into a mere exercise in style and in the use of sounds.

The character of the decline is obvious enough in the Prasannarāghava, a Nāṭaka in seven Acts, in which the logician Jayadeva (c. A.D. 1200), son of Mahādeva and Sumitrā, of Kuṇḍina in Berar, endeavours to tell again the story of the Rāmayaṇa. In Act I a disciple of Yajñavalkya appears and repeats from the speech of two bees heard behind the scene the news they are discussing; the Asura Bāṇa is to rival Rāvaņa for the hand of