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LITERATURE
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taken towards a future Epic, so we have evidence of the first steps towards a future drama -- the production before a tribal concourse on fixed feast days of shows with scenery, music, and dancing. There is ample evidence in the Buddhist and Jain records, and in Asoka inscriptions, of the existence of these samajjiis, as they were called, as a regular institution.' That they are not mentioned in the priestly books need inspire no doubt upon the point. This is only another instance of the priestly habit of persistently ignoring what they did not like. We see from the Sigālovāda Suttanta · that recitations, or the telling of stories, in mixed prose and verse (akkhāna), also took place at these meetings. But this seems, from the evidence at present attainable, to have been distinct; and the interpretation of the word I have rendered “scenery” is open to doubt. We cannot talk, therefore, as yet, of drama. When we see, however, that these meetings took place at sacred places, on the hilltops, and that high officials were invited and had special seats provided for them, we find ourselves in presence, not of private undertakings, but of such religious and communal ceremonies as those to which the beginnings of drama have else. where also been traced back. It is true that the kind of religion which we have here to consider is not the religion of the brahmins. The general prohibition which forbade a brahmin to see or hear
See the passages quoted in Dialogues of the Buddha, 1. 9. 10, and Jacobi's Faina Sutras, 2. 303.
In Grimblot's Sept Suttas Palis, p. 300, where the reading must be corrected accordingly.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
