A play, then, was a luxurious rarity in India, and this must account for the small number that are known. It was not a popular representation. There was no distinction of pit, dress-circle, or 'gods;' no clapping or hissing, no well - led orchestra to come to the rescue at a critical moment. The audience was a king or nobleman, surrounded by his court and his guests, a reverend and learned assembly of Brahmins and nobles, who had not paid for their places, and had not therefore the right to be critical.

Again, the place of acting was simple in the extreme. The covered court of the nobleman's palace, or a large shed erected for the purpose, with a curtain drawn across one end, to serve for the entrance of the actors from the green-room, sufficed for these representations. No scenes were used: all was left to the imagination; and the only other arrangement was perhaps a second curtain hung at right angles to the first, so as to divide the stage, and enable a double action to proceed upon it, as in the case of the 'Mrichchhakati,' where one party are supposed to be within a house, the other without it.

The Hindoos had no mechanical apparatus; but they were not deterred by the want of it from introducing the most violent changes of position. Everything was managed by gesticulation and talk. One personage on the stage exclaims, 'Here comes the king in a chariot;' and the next moment his majesty enters, preceded by his charioteer, who is making violent gesticulations of flogging imaginary horses, while the monarch himself sways to and fro, to mark the speed at which they are supposed to be going. Another personage advises his friend to flee for refuge to yonder house, and points emphatically to the curtain, leaving it to the imagination of the spectator to erect any edifice he thinks best in that direction. The minor properties, such as seats, divans, drinkingcups, and so forth, may have been brought on; and in some of the later plays we even find live cattle introduced. In all these respects, the Hindoo stage would seem to resemble to a great extent our own English one in the time of Shakspere, when the announcement, 'This is a street,' 'This is Windsor Park,' preceded the entrance of the performers.

So much for theatrical arrangements. We have now to consider the pieces themselves.

If asked to classify the styles of dra

matic performance in the present day, we should say they were eight. Tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and farce, are the more properly dramatic; opera, ballet, burlesque, and pantomime, less so. The Hindoo writers divide them into two grand classes, which comprehend these eight categories: the plays proper, and the performances decidedly improper; which latter belong to a later and lower age of society, and consist of ballet, burlesque, and broad farce, containing a sufficiency of coarse satire and ribaldry, delighting in magic, portents, and impossible marvels, and having for hero and heroine people of the lowest castes, Shúdras, watercarriers, washermen, and public executioners.

The pure drama is subdivided into ten classes, of which the first two are by far the most important, and include all the classical plays of India. We must, however, here premise, that the distinction between tragedy and comedy is unknown in India. There is no tragedy, and no pure comedy. Since the drama has sprung from the enactments of religious festivals, it is either mythological, historical, or of love scenes. The plot almost invariably ends well, but the action may be as tragic as you please during the piece.

The taste of which Horace has made a rule when he says, 'Let not Medea slay her children before the people,' is acknowledged by Hindoo dramatists, and certain things are excluded from a play, as being too shocking for the audience. Some of these are, solemn imprecations, exile, degradation, or loss of caste, national calamities, kissing, biting, scratching, eating, sleeping, taking the bath, inunction, and the marriage ceremony.'

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We fear that Mr Phelps would be puzzled to preserve the 'legitimate drama' in all its integrity, if the keepers of the public morals were now to lay such restrictions as these upon our stage; but we must not forget that these performances, being so much rarer in India, had doubtless a much more powerful effect on the audience than they can have with us; and indeed we remember when, as a child, we were taken for the first time to Drury Lane, to see Macready in one of his best pieces, we were so much affected when the hero was in danger of his life, that we leaped up, and screamed for help.

The classes of the pure drama are as follows:-1. Nátakas, mythological or historical pieces, the highest style of play,

somewhat resembling in plot and action the tragedy of the Greeks, and the heavy dramatic poems of Racine and Corneille. In these pieces the hero should be either a favourite demigod, or a well-known monarch, or historical hero. The heroine is generally a celestial nymph, whose beauty is beyond all description. The plot should either be a love-tale, or deeds of war and chivalry. Unity of action must be preserved, but variety of place is permitted. These pieces are frightfully long, consisting rarely of less than ten acts, never of less than five, and taking from five to six hours to perform. The famous play, the 'Hero and the Nymph,' of which we shall have occasion to speak at length, is one of this class. 2. Prakarana. These are pure love-tales, not drawn from history, and of a less exalted character than the preceding. The only proviso made is, that the hero should be well born, while the heroine may be a courtesan.

The remaining eight consist of monologues, dialogues, one-act, and three-act pieces. The plots are military, mythological, or intriguing. The hero in one must be a demon, in another a god. The last, called Prahasana, is broad farce, satirising the privileged orders, but particularly the Brahmins and hypocritical ascetics, just as the old novels of Italy attacked the priesthood. It is in one act, with a plot, in which the luxury and sensuality of the higher, and the hypocrisy of the religious, classes is always the theme of ridicule. Though the satire is broad, it is not so coarse as the Greek comedy or the school of our own Congreve.

We are not inclined to think that the earlier Hindoo dramatists adhered to, or even possessed, any definite rules for dramatic composition. The rules were invented from the dramas, not the dramas from the rules. The play-writer did, indeed, study the art of stage-managenient. It was he, probably, who inserted the stage directions with which the Hindoo plays are crowded, down to such trifling instructions as the shaking of the head or raising the hand; but these were suggested probably by his own artistic genius, rather than by any set canons.

Still, there are certain broad necessities which guided all the earlier and purer writers. Such, for instance, were the characters introduced. It seems to have been the aim of the dramatist to please rather than to affect his audience. He had a testy master in the front seats, who

might stop his salary, or cut off his head, if the hero or heroine met with a tragic end. Shakspere would have been exiled, if he had tried to play 'Romeo and Juliet' in India.

To this end, the Hindoo play-writer preserves a just midway between tragedy and comedy, and carries out that excellent rule which the poet of Avon well knew how to obey-'a little laughter freshens up our tears.' 'Every play has its fool,' somebody has said; and certainly the Latin comedians knew the value of a Davus, and Shakspere takes care to send our grief to grass, by introducing some laughingstock of a clown or servant. So a Sanscrit play, too, is not complete without what are called minor, but often very important characters.

The principal of these is the Vidushaka. He is as nearly as possible the Conviva of Latin comedy, the gracioso, the humble friend, the diner-out, the confidant, and shadow of the hero, whom he is always following about, and upon whom he lives. He is generally of a ridiculously ugly appearance, humpbacked or bandylegged. He is always ready to eat and drink, and always hungry just at the moment when the hero has reached the veriest depth of despair, and turns to him for consolation. Come and dine,' is the answer, followed by a luxurious bill of fare, at the prospect of which he smacks his lips, and his mouth waters. Here, for instance, is his soliloquy, when out hunting with the king, in Shakuntalá:'—

Heigh-ho, what an unlucky fellow I am! sporting propensities. Here's a deer!' Worn to a shadow by my royal friend's

"There goes a boar!' 'Yonder's a tiger!' This is the only burden of our talk, while in the heat of the meridian sun we toil from jungle to jungle, wandering about in the paths of the woods, where the trees afford us no shelter. Are we thirsty ? Nothing to drink but the foul water of Are we hungry? some mountain stream. Nothing to eat but roast game, which we must swallow down at odd moments, as best we can. peace to be had. Sleeping is out of the Even at night there's no question, with joints all strained by dancing attendance on my sporting friend; or, if I do happen to dose, I am awoken at the very earliest dawn by the horrible din of a lot of rascally beaters and huntsmen, who must needs surround the wood before sun

rise, and deafen us with their clatter.*

Vide the 'Shakuntala,' translated by MONIER WILLIAMS. Hertford, 1855. This

And so on with a list of his grievances, like the Barber of Seville. The next secondary character is the Vita, or parasite. He is in constant attendance on the hero, or, when the heroine is a courtesan, as occasionally happens, he may be attached to her person. He is rather a low character, who manages all the dirty work, carries messages, arranges meetings, and so forth.

Besides these, the hero and heroine have each their confidant, and the former has sometimes some fixed rival, who never leaves him any peace till he is despatched. In the 'Mrichchhakati,' this rival is excellently drawn in the person of the king's brother-in-law, who is in love with the heroine. He is a bullying, cowardly, illmannered, conceited, noisy fop. He affects a vast deal of learning, which was probably the fashion when the play was written, and strings together a number of historical and mythological names, which have nothing to do with one another, in an amusing malaprop fashion.

Of the sixty pieces extant, not more than seven are of any importance, and five poets are named as their authors. Of these, Kalidása is by far the most celebrated, and his plays, long popular among the learned in India, were those which were first introduced into Europe. The celebrated 'Shakuntala,' and the scarcely less beautiful 'Vikrama and Urvashi,' are his two best. Bhavabhúti claims the next place, as the author of the tender love-scenes in the 'Málati and Madhava,' and of the heroic pieces, the 'Vira' and 'Uttara Ráma Charitra'the adventures of Ráma and their sequel. The 'Mrichchhakati,' which, for the marked painting of its characters, the beauty of its poetry and philosophy, and the strangeness of its plot, deserves, to our mind, to rank next to the 'Shakuntalá,' is ascribed, in the opening of the piece itself, to a famous monarch, Shúdraka, but a doubt exists whether he is to be considered really as the writer of the play, or merely as the Mecenas to whom the humble dramatist gratefully ascribed its authorship.

To Kalidasa and Bhavabhúti only three plays each are ascribed, and the internal evidence of their style leaves no doubt that this account is true. It is curious volume is one of the most elegantly embellished Oriental productions that we know, and is worth looking at, if only for the magnificent arabesques which cover its pages.

to mark from this how different a thing was the drama in India to that of the West. In Greece, Sophocles could write no less than 130 plays, which were, of course, all performed, much about the same time that Euripides was producing 92 others; and in the middle ages Lope de Vega wrote no less than 2000 plays!

The comparison proves, on the one hand, what a rare luxury play-acting must have been; on the other, that pieces were never written but by command, and with the intention of performing them, whether good or bad.

Of the respective dates of these authors, who, besides being the best, are undoubtedly the earliest, we know but little. Of their lives, of course, we know still less. Kalidása, however, is, par excellence, the poet of India, and he is one of the few authors who probably wrote himself the works which go under his name. He is a great favourite with Indian chroniclers of all ages; so much so, that every historian asserts his existence during the reign of that monarch whom he prefers to exalt. Thus we have a long account of the poet as adorning the court of the Emperor Bhoja, who reigned at Oujein towards the end of the tenth century, and who was undoubtedly a great patron of letters and art, and was surrounded by nine literary celebrities, who were called the nine gems of his court. But a sad character is here given of our dramatist. He is made out to be one of those spendthrift, lavish, wild, and wayward creatures of genius, whose good hearts and lofty aspirings are the only redeeming points in their character, and whom we cannot help liking in spite of ourselves. His adventures are amusing, and we wish we had space to give specimens of them. He was the intimate of the monarch, who nevertheless preserved his royal dignity, and constantly reproved the excesses of his favourite, whose ready wit and brilliant repartee is all that saves him from complete disgrace.

But whether this be a true character of the author of the finest play ever written in Asia, or not, Orientalists seem to have decided that the real Kalidása, the poet and dramatist, did not live in Bhoja's time. Other more valid accounts represent him as residing at the court of monarch in every respect resembling his Vikramaditya, or Vikrama the Great, a successor Bhoja, with whom he is constantly confounded, and at whose court

likewise nine gems of genius flourished. This emperor reigned about 56 B.C., and antiquarians have come to the conclusion that this is about the date of Kalidasa's writings.

Bhavabhúti, otherwise called Shrikantha, was the son of a Brahmin of Berar, in South India. In the History of Kashmeer, he is said to have been patronised by Yashovarma, King of Kanouj, which would make his date about A.D. 720, which Wilson takes to be the proper one. He was thus nearly eight centuries later than Kalidása.

Lastly, Shúdraka is supposed to have flourished between the first and second centuries after Christ.

The six plays which are extant of these dramatists range, therefore, over nearly eight centuries, beginning at about our own era. The other two which are considered classical are of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The chief remains of the religious character of the drama, found in its classical productions, is the commencement and conclusion with a benediction, or invocation to some deity. In Kalidása's pieces this laudation is addressed to Shiva, the third person of the Hindoo triad, who at that period was the prominent object of worship at the city of Oujein, where these plays were performed.

The benediction over, the manager himself comes before the curtain, and calls to an actor or actress, with whom he converses about the piece they are about to perform, and to whom he gives some account of its author, the play itself, and the other actors, in order that the audience may have an opportunity of hearing the author's praises sung. This, in fact, answers to our play-bills, and the extravagant encomiums sometimes accorded to the dramatist and his productions are no less absurd than the braggadocio with which new pieces used to be announced some years back. There was an analogous custom in the Greek comedy. In the middle of the play, the chorus advanced in files to the theatron or front of the stage, and began the parabasis, which contained an account of the author and all his poetical affairs. As a specimen of this prelude, we may give the encomium in the opening of the 'Mrichchhakati:’

There was a celebrated poet, whose gait was like that of the elephant, whose eyes resembled those of the chakora [the Greek partridge], whose face was like the full

moon, and who was of stately person and profound veracity, chiefest of the Kshatriya [or warrior] caste, and distinguished by the name of Shúdraka. He was well versed in the 'Rik' and 'Sáma Vedas,' the mathematical sciences, elegant arts, and the management of elephants [as we should Valiant say, a good horseman]. was he in war, and ready to encounter single-handed the elephant of his foe. Yet he was void of wrath, eminent amongst those skilled in the 'Vedas,' and affluent in pity. A prince was Shúdraka.

The manager then describes the salient features of the plot, and after a little talk, a voice is heard behind the scenes, the characters rush on, and the play begins.

The scenes are marked, as in the French drama, by the exit of one and the entrance of another character. The stage is never left empty till the end of the act, when all the characters retire, the Hindoo stage not possessing the convenience of a 'drop.'

As we have said, the two most celebrated pieces are the 'Shakuntala,' commonly called the 'Lost Ring,' and the 'Vikramorvashi,' which is best translated by the 'Hero and the Nymph.'

The plots of both of these are simple, and bespeak the age in which they were written. As usual, the hero, though an earthly monarch, is raised to the sphere of a demigod by his wondrous deeds, and is the favoured friend of the lesser deities. The Hero and the Nymph,' however, is somewhat more mythological than the 'Shakuntala.' The heroine in the former is actually one of the Apsarases, or heavenly nymphs, whose duty it is to attend on the Sun, and who are for ever wandering amid clouds and over mountain-tops in mid-air.

The plot of the 'Hero and the Nymph' is very pretty. Urvashi, the loveliest of these airy beings, had in some manner offended Indra, the King of Heaven, and her punishment was, that she, the houri whose charms had hitherto been reserved for the blessed, should fall in love with, and eventually espouse, a mortal.

The man chosen by fate for this happy lot was Pururavas, the second monarch of the lunar dynasty, a hero of untold prowess, and the familiar friend of the god Indra himself. It is related, that this king was one day visited by Virtue, Wealth, and Desire in person, who came, like Juno, Pallas, and Venus to Paris, to find out which of them he preferred.

He received them all with due respect, but could not conceal his laudable preference for Virtue. The other two were piqued, and pronounced their fearful curses on him. That of Desire was, that he should be torn from the being he loved most, and should wander mad and raging in the forest of Kartikeya.

One day the monarch was returning in his aerial chariot from a visit to Indra, when he heard loud cries for help resounding through the sky, and soon discovered that they proceeded from two lovely nymphs, of whom Urvashi was one, and whom certain demons-of a class which are ever at war with the gods-had carried bodily away.

It is at this point that the first act opens. The king, of course, hastens after the ruffians, and rescues the nymphs. Here an opportunity is presented to both of falling in love with one another, which they have no hesitation in doing. But the nymph cannot be released from her duties, and accordingly quits the monarch to return to her attendance on the Sun.

Act the second opens with the jealousy of Pururavas's present wife and queen, who has heard of the king's little affaire de cœur, and of course is up in arms. A scene then takes place between the king and his confidant, the Vidúshaka, or gracioso, in the palace-garden, in which the monarch confesses his desperate love for Urvashi, and the diner-out consoles him after the usual culinary fashion. Presently Urvashi and her friend descend from the skies, and while they remain invisible to the other two, the heroine writes a love-message on the leaf of a birch, and throws it at the king's feet. The denouement then takes place, and for a moment the king and his beloved are happy in each other's society. But just as the nymph is tearing herself away, to return to the skies, the queen and her attendant break in upon them. A scene of jealous reproaches ensues, till the monarch, falling on his knees before his offended spouse, wins her for awhile from

her anger.

Meanwhile Urvashi has been called to special duties among the gods. Indra has given a large entertainment, and, as it appears the deities are no less fond of the theatre than mortals, he has arranged a little representation of the fable called the 'Choice of Lakshmi.' In this Urvashi had to take the part of Lakshmi herself, the Indian Venus; but her thoughts are

so absorbed by the handsome mortal, that when she has to say, 'My heart is fixed on Purushottama,' she inadvertently lets slip the name of Pururavas instead. Indra is much amused at the mistake, and bids her go and be happy with her lover.

Act the third is occupied with the reconciliation of the king and queen, and the consent of the latter to the king's marriage with Urvashi. They are wedded then, and dwell in happiness for awhile. But the curse of Desire was destined to be fulfilled. In an inauspicious moment, Pururavas turns his faithless eyes to some other maid. The jealous Urvashi will not believe his protestations of fidelity, and rashly hurries away into the forest of Kártikeya, the Indian Mars.

To this forest a curse, to be dreaded by all women, had been attached:'Whatever maid may enter there, Must quit her form of woman fair, Turn'd to a creeping flower. Nought shall release her from the plight Save Durga's jewel, glistening bright, Gifted with magic power.' So befell it with the imprudent Urvashi.

The fourth act is one of the most powerful things ever written. It introduces

Pururavas, mad with sorrow at the loss of his bride. He seeks her raging through the forest of Kartikeya. At every step he addresses himself to some new object: mistakes for a flying demon, then a peafirst a cloud, which in his madness he cock, a cuckoo, a swan, a ruddy goose, a bee, an elephant, a mountain, a river, anxious questions, none tell him of his and an antelope. None respond to his beloved; but ever and anon a beautiful under the type of a wild elephant, or a song bursts out, describing his anguish dying swan, and swelling each time with From time to time he faints in his weary more rapid, more impassioned music. search, but at length, after a long strain of passionate, insane despair, he chances on a jewel, which is none other than the celebrated gem of Durga.

Withheld from his beloved, his eyes filled with tears, the Lord of the Elephants wanders forlorn in the forest, with a brow

wearied with sorrow.

In despair he flings the gem away, when a voice warns him to take it again, for the sake of its magic power. He does so, and ere long passes a lowly creeper.

This slender plant, with its branches moist with rain, as one whose lips are