नाट्यशास्त्रम् (प्रथम भाग - अभिनवभारती एवं हिन्दी टीका सहित)

LXII

figures of the performers. And these, the wall and the screens, possibly did not contain anything other than the usual decorative designs. This simplicity in the character of the scenic apparatus was a nacessery concomitant of the peculiar technique of the Hindu drama, and its cause may be looked for in its early history. The introduction of magnificent scenery appears to be a later development in the history of drama. Similarly the back scene of the Shakaspearean stage consisted of a bare wall, and anything in the way of spectacular effect was created by the movements and grouping of actors

The production of an impression by means of painted scenery would have been alien to the taste of the ancient Hindus who were more or less conscious of the limitation of realism in their various arts. In order to make the spectators visualise the place and time of the dramatic story in hand, the Hindus had a different device. Numerous descriptions of place and time composed in rhythmic prose and verse, which are scattered over the classical Hindu plays, served very efficiently indeed the purpose of painted scenery. When properly read or sung, these passages very easily created an illusion of the place or the time described. The elaborate description of Vasantasenā's magnificent reisdence in the Mṛcchakaṭika was calculated to call up vividly its picture before the mind's eye. The same thing may be said of the grand description of the Daṇḍaka forest in the Uttararāmacarita. This device of making a scene lively, has been utilized by Shakespeare also. In appreciation of his very beautiful description of place and time, one critic says "The plays are full of such descriptive passages as can nullify the achievements of decorators and mechanics." It has already been mentioned that in the Shakespearean stage too painted scenery was unknown.

There being no scenery of any kind in the Hindu theatre which made no effort at realism, the spectators were required to use their imagination to the utmost. The demand on the spectator's imagination made by the ancient Indian producers of plays was further testified by their rules of conventional Zonal division (kakṣā-vibhāga) of the stage (XIV. 1-15). Some of these are as follows :

A Zone might change with the actor walking a few steps over the stage.² Any ancient Hindu play will furnish numerous examples of this convention. For example in the first Act of the Śakuntalā the king appears for the first time at a distance from Kaṇva's hermitage, but shortly afterwards he enters it by simply taking a few steps over the stage, looking around and saying. "This is the entrance of hermitage and let me enter it".

By the same kind of convention the inside and outside of a house was

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² Due to this kind of convention, scenes of the Hindu plays were not clearly separated as they are in a modern drama. This puzzled F. Hall who says :