Indian English Drama: Introduction
What does one mean when one refers to ‘Indian Drama’? In one of the largest and most populous and certainly most culturally diverse countries of the world, where does one begin to situate, or even to begin with, discover any singular phenomenon of the kind? With its fifteen national languages, and more than eight hundred dialects, the spectrum of India
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Thank you for an enlightining article.Please allow me to add a little more detail:The origin of theatre in ancient India or rather folk theatre and dramatics can be traced to the religious ritualism of the Vedic Aryans to about 3500 years back in the Indo-Aryan states of Rig Vedic times. This folk theatre of the misty past was mixed with dance, food, ritualism, plus a depiction of events from daily life. It was the last element, which made it the origin of the classical theatre of later times. Panini's grammar of Sanskrit was responsible the transition from Vedic Sanskrit to classical Sanskrit, hence marking the end of the Vedic period.
ReplyDeleteSylvain Levi (Le Theatre Indien): `The Sanskrit drama may legitimately be regarded as the highest product of Indian poetry, and as summing up in itself the final conception of literary art achieved by the very self – conscious creators of Indian literature. An English translation of Shudraka’s Mrichhkatika was staged in New York in 1945. Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch, the dramatic critic of the Nation, wrote the following : “Here, if anywhere, the spectators will be able to see a genuine example of that pure art theatre of which theorists talk, and here, too, he will be led to meditate upon that real wisdom of the East which lies not in esotericdoctorine but in a tenderness far deeper and truer than that of the traditional Christianity which has been so thoroughly corrupted by the hard righteousness of Hebraism…. A play wholly artificial yet profoundly moving because it is not realistic but real……….. Nowhere in our European past do we find, this side the classics, a work more completely civilized..”