Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/348

Rh or the like, and is accompanied by a benediction, consisting of twelve inflected words (with nominal or verbal endings) or eight lines (quarter-verses); this would exclude the beginning of the Vikramorvaçī, but Abhinavagupta permits of a greater variety of forms. In Viçvanātha's view the Nāndī is part of the preliminaries, which must be preserved, however much these are shortened. It is clear, therefore, that gradually the benediction, like the Prarocanā with its appeal to the benevolence of the audience, came to be worked into the play by the author himself, though the period when the custom became normal cannot be stated with any precision, and in the south of India, at any rate, the older practice of leaving the benediction to the Sūtradhāra seems to have been sometimes followed. There can, indeed, be little doubt that the extent to which the preliminaries were retained differed from time to time; Viçvanātha evidently contemplates their almost total disappearance, but the Amṛtodaya of Gokulanātha in the sixteenth century assumes their presence; the authority of the Nāṭyaçāstra told heavily in their favour, and the stock phrase, Enough of this ceremony,' which occurs frequently at the opening of the plays, doubtless refers to the dance, song, and music with which the drama was prefaced.

These facts explain the confusion of the notices of the theorists as to the actor by whom the benediction is to be recited. We find ascribed to Bharata the view that a special actor, the Nāndī, should recite it, or that duty should be performed by the Sūtradhāra; another authority permits the Sūtradhāra or any other actor to recite it. The situation is complicated by the rule that at the end of the preliminaries the Sūtradhāra is supposed to leave the stage and the Sthāpaka to come on, while our dramas, as a rule, have the benediction followed by the entry of the Sūtradhāra, or rarely, as in the Pārthaparākrama, the Sthāpaka. The theory, therefore, suggests that the benediction is recited by the Sūtradhāra or