Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/339

334 increase such distinction, is necessarily regarded as inadequate. If the doctrine is interpreted to mean that it is the possession of all the qualities which makes a poem, then all compositions in the Gauḍa and Pāñcāla styles would be denied the rank of poetry; if the presence of a single quality gave the right to the style of poem, then a perfectly prosaic verse passage containing the quality of strength would have to be dubbed a poem, while a stanza containing elegant figures, but no qualities, would be denied that style, which in point of fact is regularly accorded by usage and must be recognized as valid.

As regards language we have, as often in the theory, no explanation of a principle which is laid down as accepted, the divergent use of Sanskrit and Prākrit in the same play. Yet it cannot be held that, when the theory was developed in such works as the Daçarūpa, and very possibly in the Nāṭyaçāstra itself, the usage of the plays could be put down simply to the copying of the actual practice in real life. That such was its origin we may believe in the general way; the Vidūṣaka in the Mṛcchakaṭikā derides a woman using Sanskrit as resembling a young cow with a rope through her nose; but there is evidence that already in the time of the Kāmaçāstra the use of Prākrit was artificial. We are there told that the cultured man about town (nāgaraka) in social meetings (goṣṭhī), should neither confine himself to Sanskrit nor to the vernacular (deçabhāṣā) if he is to win repute for good manners. We have here a sign that matters were already, at the time of the Kāmaçāstra, much in the same condition as in modern India, where the use of Sanskrit terms with the vernacular is a regular sign of education. Now Vātsyāyana tells us clearly that those who frequent such gatherings are hetaerae, Viṭas, Vidūṣakas, and Pīṭhamardas, in short the wits of the court, and to them in the theory is assigned Çaurasenī and kindred Prākrit dialects. We are justified, therefore, in assuming that at Vātsyāyana's epoch in actual life, as opposed to the conventional existence of the stage, Prākrits were definitely out of employment. The same text includes in the requisites of the knowledge of a hetaera the knowledge of the local speech, and, as there is no doubt of the knowledge of the Andhras as kings by Vātsyāyana, it is interesting to note that in the famous passage