Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/315

310 given by love, sweetness, radiance, courage, dignity, and self-control. Then come ten graces; the sportive imitation of the movements or words of the beloved one, the swift change of aspect at his arrival, tasteful arrangement of one's ornaments to increase radiance of appearance, studied confusion of ornaments, hysteria (kilakiñcita), in which anger, fear, joy, and tears mingle, manifestations of affection (moṭṭāyita) on hearing the beloved mentioned or seeing his portrait, pretended anger (kuṭṭamita) on the lover touching hair or lip, affected indifference (bibboka), born of excess of pride, a graceful pose (lalita), and the bashfulness which forbids speech even when an opportunity presents itself. To these twenty Viçvanātha adds eight more graces; the pride which is vain of youth and beauty, the ennui which besets the maiden in her lover's absence, the naïveté which displays itself in pretended ignorance and innocence, the distraction evinced by ornaments in disorder, wandering glances, and truant words, curiosity, the meaningless laugh of youth and high spirits, the tremors of fear causeless but common in the presence of the lover, and the sportive play of young affection. The same source gives us in great detail the modes in which the different types of heroine display their affection, in maidenly modesty or in shameless boldness, an analysis showing keen and deep insight into all the outward manifestations of love at an Indian court. Less praiseworthy is the perverse ingenuity which enumerates the different types of heroine, and educes first 128 from the combination of the eight forms of relationship to the lover with the sixteen kinds based on the division of wife, another's, and hetaera. These are then multiplied by three on the basis of the division of all characters as high class, middle class, and low class.

The same division of classes is applied to all the other characters (pātra) which can appear in a play, but a much more fundamental classification is that by sex, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Most of the rôles are such as are incidental to the life of a palace, for the normal drama deals with the amours of a king, and his entourage and that of the queen account for practically all the normal characters of the drama.

The king's confidant and devoted friend is the Vidūṣaka, a Brahmin, ludicrous alike in dress, speech, and behaviour. He is a