Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus - Translated from Original Sanskrit

They are also discriminated from older writings by the predominance of narrative and by wire-drawn comon-place descriptions of the periods of the day or the season of the year of the rising and setting of the sun or moon of the scorching heats of the summer or the reviing influence of spring. [...] The dances of the Chorus were no less important than their songs and the arrangementXX THE DRAMATIC SYSTEM of the ballet was as much the task of the author as the invetion of the plot. [...] The Sallya-Dapmia names the Saugandhihiharalia as an example the Da;Rdpaloa specifies the Jiimadagnya-Jaya the latter alluding either to the defeat of KArtaviryArjuna or to the subjugation of the military tribe by the Brahmanical hero Paragu-Rama the son of Jamadagni. [...] We may doubt the success of the Hindu mechanicians in representing the mountain and the snake the churning-staff and rope or the agitations of the mighty main from which sprang the personfications of health and beauty and the beverage of immortality : this was in all probability clumsily contrived ; but the gods and demons were well dressed and better acted and with the patronage of a Ra [...] In the Ndt'aicas and Ndeikds we have the nymphs of heaven the brides of demigods the wives of saints and female saints themselves and the deified woods and rivers; in the plays of pure fiction we have princesses and courtesans ; and in the pieces of intrigue the different imates of the harem.