Some Literary Aspects of the Absence of Tragedy in the Classical Sanskrit Drama

EVERYONE who is acquainted with Sanskrit dramatic literature is aware that one of the most striking characteristics of the so-called classical drama is the absence of a tragic ending. The discovery of the manuscripts of the thirteen plays attributed to Bhdsa proves that this was not true of the older dramas, as some of them are real tragedies. But this fact only makes more puzzling and more interesting the problem of the consistercy with which the later dramatists avoided the tragic ending. In a number of the later plays there are many distressing occurrences during the progress of the action, but there is never any tragedy in the sense of calamity which remains at the close of the last act. There are near approaches to this but the tragic outcome is always prevented by the timiely assistance of a friend or the intervention of the gods. As Dr. Lindenau has pointed out in his Bhdsa-Studien,1 there must have been known to Bhdsa a form of the Ndtya-Sastra older than the recension we have. In this older form the strict rules concerning the happy ending were probably lacking. In the Bhdrata known to us, however, and in other dramaturgical works, the rules on this point of avoiding an unhappy ending are very definite and they were very strictly followed by the classical dramatists. The text-books of dramaturgy, as we have them, in giving the different conclusions which a play might have, seem to make no provision for anything opposed to the ultimate happiness of the hero and heroine,2 and it is distinctly stated that the death of the hero or principal person should not occur anywhere in the play.3

Art · Drama · Literature · Sanskrit · Sanskrit literature · Tragedy (event) · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Indian History and Philosophy · Philosophy