Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/346

Rh gazelle enchants Duḥṣanta, who just then enters. Viçvanātha, on the other hand, treats this form as an instance of continuance (avalagita), and interprets the phrase as denoting the supersession of the director's action; thus, in the lost Kundamālā, about to call on the actress to dance, he hears the word, 'Lady, descend', and realizes that it is a reference to Sītā, who is being led into exile. He admits also the abrupt dialogue (udghātya) as a means of connexion; thus in the Mudrārākṣasa the director alludes to the demon of eclipse as eager to triumph over Candra, the moon, and Cāṇakya behind the scenes calls out, 'Who then while I live claims to triumph over Candragupta?' and enters a moment later. The theorist Nakhakuṭṭa is also credited with the view that a voice behind the scenes or from the air may be used to introduce the chief personage.

This account of the preliminaries and the prelude presents obvious difficulties both in itself and in connexion with the actual specimens of the Sanskrit drama. The Daçarūpa and Viçvanātha alike give no details of the preliminaries, and the Nāṭyaçāstra indicates that, in addition to the complete form of Pūrvaran̄ga, there might be an abbreviated form and also an extended form with additional ceremonials. There is an obvious overlapping between the Pūrvaran̄ga and the rest of the performance, for the last element of the former, the giving the content of the drama in the Prarocanā, is essentially an element in the latter. We are quite definitely told by Viçvanātha that in his time there was not a complete performance of the preliminaries; when, therefore, we find in Bhāsa's dramas that there is no mention of the name of the author or the drama in the prologue, we may safely assume that it was after his time that the practice grew up of transferring from the preliminaries, which were not a matter for the poet, the substance of the Prarocanā, and embodying it in the poet's own work. In Viçvanātha's time also we are told that the Sūtradhāra or director performed the whole of the work assigned in the theory to him and the Sthāpaka. But it is extremely difficult to say how far back this goes; the extant dramas with occasional exceptions, such as Rājaçekhara's