Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/95

90 lines. The metres employed are very numerous, as is natural in a poetry in which the verse serves essentially the purpose of displaying the skill of the writer. In addition to the Çloka we find the Upājati (-- ---), the Çālinī, Vaṅçasthā (-- --x-x-), Praharṣiṇī (---, uuuu -u-u--), Vasantatilaka (--0-vuu ), Mālinī (u--, -), Çikhariṇī (v‒‒‒‒‒, uuu --), Harinī (-, ---), Çārdūlavikrīḍita (-—-uu-u-uuu-, --~--~-), Sragdharā (0, -), and Suvadanā (-————-, uuu -,---), the last of these metres being almost a stranger to the drama, though it appears in Bhāsa, in the Mudrārākṣasa, and once in Varāhamihira. The tendency to seek sound effects is clear in a Çikhariṇī verse.

That so many metres of elaborate form should be found is of great interest, not merely as testimony of the early development of the Kāvya literature, but also because we see that the drama as early as Açvaghoṣa, and doubtless long before him, had definitely accepted the verses not as essential elements of the dialogue as are the verses in Greek drama, but as more or less ornamental excursions. In the absence of any complete play we cannot say what proportion of Çlokas was observed by Açvaghoṣa; we may suspect that it was not higher than in Bhāsa, if so high. Now the Çloka by its comparative simplicity and brevity, and by the ease of its structure, might well have served the same purpose in the Indian drama as did the trimeter in that of Greece, and it is curious to speculate what might have been the fate of the drama if it had been felt possible to write it throughout in verse. But evidently by Açvaghoṣa's age the distinction between prose and stanzas, essentially lyric in type, was fixed, and the elaborate structure of the stanza, normally with four lines of equal length and identic structure, the longer lines having also caesuras, rendered it quite unsuitable as a medium of conversation. Thus early in the drama we find a defect in form which was gradually to become more and more marked and to render the dialogue, that is the essential feature of the drama, less and less the subject of the labours of the dramatists.