Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/59

54 the use of shadow-figures to illustrate the epic recitation; this, united with the art of the old Naṭas, gave birth to drama, though he is not certain whether such a real drama existed or not at the time of Patañjali, and Konow sets its appearance much later.

The early evidence adduced for the existence of the shadow-drama is wholly unreliable. Professor Konow suggests that the term Rūpa used in the fourth Rock Edict of Açoka, where he speaks of exhibiting spectacles of the dwellings of the gods, of elephants and bonfires, refers to a shadow device, in apparent ignorance of the true sense abundantly illustrated by the attested facts as to the mode of such representations in Buddhist literature; he accepts the wholly absurd view that Rūpaka as a name of the drama is derived from such shadow projections, while in fact it obviously denotes the visible presentation, the normal and early sense of Rūpa. Equally unfortunate is the effort to discover that the Sītābengā cave shows signs of grooves in front, which might have served in connexion with the curtain necessary for a shadow play, and much more so is the effort to explain Nepathya, the name of the tiring-room behind the curtain in the Sanskrit drama, from a misunderstood Prākrit nevaccha, which in its turn might represent a Sanskrit naipāṭhya – never found – denoting the place for the reader; apparently the shadows are in this view explained by some person behind the curtain. The philological combination is quite impossible.

Pischel's evidence for the early existence of the shadow-drama is all of it without value. The term rupparūpakam occurs in v. 394 of the comparatively old Therīgāthā of the Buddhist Canon, but it may indicate a puppet-play, and this is rendered very probable by the mention of a puppet only just before in the text; if not, it doubtless means, as taken by the commentator, a piece of jugglery, an art always loved in India; unfortunately the age of the text is uncertain, so that even for the puppet-play it gives no precise date. It is certain that rūpadakkha, a term used in the Milindapañha – a work of dubious date – has no such reference, nor lūpadakha in a cave at Jogīmārā. To find rūpopajīvana in the Mahābhārata used in the sense of