Indian Antiquary Vol 62

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 109

MAY, 1033
RANDUM NOTES ON THE TRIVANDRUM PLAYS
97
problem for solution. Compare for a moment Kalidasa's masterpiece with its not entirely dissimilar theme. While Sakuntalâ's feelings are an essential part of the story, our attention is not merely not exclusively directed to them, but the emotion is deliberately kept pitched in a low key so as not to disturb the general tone of the play. The resulting pattern is much richer than that attained by Bhasa and more in accord with the conditions of the Indian theatre, in which, as has happened elsewhere, close association with sophisticated courts brought as consequences the demand for a happy ending and for æsthetic entertainment in place of emotional excitement. Bhâsa's methods however shonld lead in the natural course to attempts to probe the deepest recesses of passion or to explore the ultimates of human character and conduct, as the greatest of European tragedians set themselves to do. And in plays of that type, while we should be left at the close with a feeling of peace after storm, the conventional happy ending is an anti-climax, which jars on a sensitive audience. It is because the rules of the day forced such an ending on the SV that after the beautiful handling of the theme in the earlier acts we come to earth with a bump in the summary dénouement of the last act. His successors were therefore wise, given the conditions under which they worked, not to push further along the road he had opened, but to devote themselves to the exploitation of another aspect of his work. For in my view he is the first Sanskrit author, to whom the exact preservation of values,' if I may use a term of modern painting, is the essential of good drama and good writing. This is the quality denoted by rasa in its original meaning before the pedantry of the rhetoricians degraded it, and I shall have more to say about this in comparing the dialogue of the SV with that of the Daridracârudatta, but in this point he is the forerunner of Kalidasa, who is as supreme among poets for his handling of values, as Velasquez or Vermeer among painters.
The inference I draw from this line of reasoning is that no play can safely be attributed to Bhâsa, which does not show the same attitude to the theatre. One play undoubtedly does show it, namely the PY, and for this reason I would give it to him. In fact almost every scholar, whatever his opinion about the authorship of the plays as a whole, holds that these two plays are by the same hand. In the PY the problem is to present the character of an ideal minister in all its facets, his foresight and fertility of resource, his loyalty, his bravery and steadfastness. From this point of view it is at once apparent that Act ii, whose genuineness is doubtod by Professor Woolner, is a later interpolation, if only because it distracts our attention for too long from the real subject of the play. Very properly neither Udayana nor Mahasena are brought on the stage in the genuine parts of the play, because their superior social status would obscure Yaugandharayana's position as hero. Even after removing this obstruction to our enjoyment, the play is not entirely successful. The first act, for instance, is too lacking in dramatic effect with its long drawn out tale of Udayana's capture. Yet even this has its point. For while it would have been easy to present the story on the stage in a form which would have been far more thrilling to the audience, the point to which Bhasa wishes to direct our attention is not the capture of the king but the minister's reaction to it; it is his character alone which is to concern us. The translators object similarly to the lack of action in the last act.
These criticisms really amount to this, that the author has failed to observe the conditions of the stage in the solution of his problem. For the theatre demands that a play, which is not a poetio drama designed for the reader instead of the spectator, should enforce its point on us, whatever it may be, whether the development of a character, of a story, or of emotion, by purely dramatic methods, that is by means of action, situation and dialogue, and not by mere desoription of action and feelings, and there is too much of these last in the PY. I would go further and say that the play's failure is due in the last resort to faulty choice of subject. The theme is the minister's character, not his emotions under stress, but Bhâsa's gifts were not adapted to this. For as a dramatist he is at his best in situations which demand