Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/34

Rh time when there is no doubt of the existence of a Sanskrit drama.

The Rāmāyaṇa lends no aid to the attempt to establish an early existence of drama; we hear of festivals and concourses (samāja) where Naṭas and Nartakas delight themselves, and even of the speaking of Nāṭakas; in another passage the term Vyāmiçraka denotes, if we believe the commentator, plays in mingled languages. But, accepting all these references as genuine, which we are not obliged to do, the passages have manifestly no claim to early date, for other reasons than the allusions, and leave us again without any early evidence.

But, while the epics cannot be said to know the drama, there is abundant evidence of the strong influence on the development of the drama exercised by the recitation of the epics. The long continued popularity of these recitations is attested throughout the literature; at the beginning of the seventh century A.D. a Brahmin, Somaçarman, akin to the royal house of Cambodia, presented to a temple in that far-off outpost of Indian civilization a complete copy of the Bhārata, in order that regular recitations might take place, and almost contemporaneously Bāṇa in the Kādambarī depicts the queen as hastening to the temple of Çiva to hear the recitation of the epic. Four centuries later Kṣemendra reproaches his contemporaries with their equal eagerness to hear such recitations, and their reluctance to carry out in practice the excellent advice contained in them. We have vivid accounts from recent time of such recitations not only in temples but in villages, when the generosity of some rich man has secured the presence, if need be, for three months or longer of the reciters, Kathakas, to go over the hugh poem, which claims to be an encyclopaedia of all useful knowledge as well as the best of poems. The reciters divide themselves into two classes, the Pāṭhakas, who repeat the poem, and the Dhārakas, who expound it in the vernacular for the edification of the people, whose deep interest in the recitations is attested; if the Rāmāyaṇa is the epic chosen for recitation, the departure