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SIXTH INCARNATION AS APARĀJITA
239
invocation he portrayed the prologue with its parts. The singers, wearing various costumes, behind the scenes sang the introductory verse with jätirāgas,800 et cetera, introducing the characters. Then they began to act a drama, an ocean of the sentiments, charming from the combination of the elements of plot, situations, component parts of the divisions (of the play), and the divisions (sandhi).
At times there took place the representation of peace and war in Smara's kingdom with lovers' meetings, rivers of nectar of pure bliss, and with separations (of lovers), sources of various painful situations, with various devices for the union of lovers by atonement for improper acts.
Sometimes even the sophisticated townsmen were made to laugh, like the villagers, by fat men, men with projecting teeth, lame men, hunchbacks, flat-nosed men, men with disheveled hair, bald men, one-eyed men, and other deformed men; by ash-colored men; by men with buttock-bells,80 ,801 by musicians of the arm-pit 802 and the nose, by dancers of the ear and brow, by imitators of the speech of other people; by people deceitful and at the same time simple-minded, such as the buffoons and booncompanions.
Even wicked men, softened by speeches off-stage, by reproaches to fate, by shedding tears, by unsuitable requests, by rolling on the ground, by lamentations, by leaps from precipices, by hanging from trees, by entering into fire and water, by swallowing poison, et cetera, by blows with weapons, by beatings on the heart, frequently caused by the destruction of wealth and murder of the beloved, shed tears at times.
Sometimes men, though very self-possessed, were made to tremble (with anger) by biting the lips with the
800 121. See I, n. 415.
301 126. Cf. JAOS 59 (1939), p. 132 for the wearing of buttock
bells.
802 126. I am told that children put the hand under the arm and, by pressing down the arm, make a noise similar to a handclap.
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