The exact purpose of such a play is not obvious, but it looks rather like a literary tour de force, possibly in preparation for some form of performance[1] at which the dialogue was plentifully eked out by narrative by the director and the other actors. It is incredible, however, that, as we have it, it can ever have served any practical end, and its chief value, such as it is, is to reflect possibly the form of drama of a period when the drama had not yet completely emerged from the epic condition. We should thus have the old work of the Granthikas reinforced by putting part of the dialogue in the mouths of real actors. But it would be dangerous in so late a production to lay any stress on the possibility of deriving hence evidence for the growth of the early drama. It is, however, legitimate to note that there are similarities between the type and that of the performance of a Tamil version of the Çakuntalā.[2] The curious number of Acts has been suggested as indicating that the original was otherwise divided than a normal drama, but on this it would be dangerous to lay much stress.
The metre of the play exhibits the extraordinary fact of 253 Çārdūlavikrīḍita stanzas to 109 Çloka, 83 Vasantatilaka, 77 Sragdharā, 59 Mālinī, and 55 Indravajrā type. This fact, in the version of Madhusūdana, is sufficient to show how far we are removed from anything primitive.
The type of the Mahānāṭaka may be compared with the Gitagovinda,[3] which, written by Jayadeva under Lakṣmaṇasena in the twelfth century A.D., exhibits songs sung by Kṛṣṇa, Rādhā, and her companion, intermingled with lyric stanzas of the poet, describing their position, or the emotions excited, and addressing prayer to Kṛṣṇa. The work is a poem, and can be enjoyed simply as such, but it is also capable of a quasi-dramatic presentment. It reveals a highly-developed outcome of the simple Yātrās of the Kṛṣṇa religion.
In the Gopālakelicandrikā[4] of Rāmakṛṣṇa of Gujarāt, of unknown date, but certainly later than the Mahānāṭaka and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, we have an irregular drama whose form has
- ↑ Lüders's attempt to read, in Madhusūdana's recension only, saubhyāḥ, shadow players, is clearly absurd; ZDMG. lxxiv. 142, n. 3.
- ↑ Lévi, TI. i. 244; G. Devèze, Çakuntalā, Paris, 1888.
- ↑ Lévi, TI. i. 235 ff.; Keith, Sansk. Lit., pp. 121 ff.
- ↑ Ed. W. Caland, Amsterdam, 1917. Cf. ZDMG. lxxiv. 138 ff.; IA. xlix, 232 f.
