CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE ZONES AND THE LOCAL USAGES ETC.

1. One should fix the Zones [of the stage] after knowing the division of the three [kinds of] playhouse, that have been mentioned before by me.

The arrangement of drums

2. The producer [of a play] should arrange the drums between the two doors of the tiring room, which I have described before.

The Zonal division

3. The Zonal division¹ is to be indicated by going about on the stage. [When one is in a particular] Zone [of the stage, it] will change [lit. be another] with his walking out of it.

Utility of the Zonal division

4-6. [It is] from the [convention of] the Zonal division that one is to know [whether the place in which the scene has been laid] is a house, a city, a garden, a pleasure resort, a river, a hermitage, a forest, the earth, the sea, [any part of] the Three worlds, any one of the Seven great divisions of the earth or its continents, any of the different mountains, the sky (lit. light), the [surface of the] earth or the nether world (rasātala), the places of rest, cities or palaces of the Daityas¹.

7. The Zones should be fixed with reference to places such as a city, a forest, a continent or a mountain in which the scenes have been laid (lit. the event occurs).

---

1 (B.XIII.1, G.1). ¹ See NŚ. II. 63ff.
2 (B.XIII.2, G.2).
3 (B.XIII.3, G.3). ¹ As modern devise of the change of scenes was absent in the ancient Hindu theatre, the convention of the Zonal division indicated the locality in which different characters met.
4-6 (B.XIII.4-6, G.4-6), ¹ B. reads daityanūgālayas for daityānām ālayas.
7 (B.XIII.7, G.7).