रत्नावली नाटिका (सम्राट हर्षवर्धन - शास्त्रीय नाटिका रत्न सम्पूर्ण ४ अङ्क सान्वय सटीक)

INTRODUCTION vii civilization. This is one of the notable reasons of Sanskrit drama being inaccessible to the general mass and for this reason a qualified audience (gunagrāhinī parishat) is always sought for and on their satisfactions absolutely depended the success of dramatic representation. As Dr. Keith holds, "The drama bears, therefore, essential traces of its connection with the Brahmins. They were idealist in their outlook, capable of large generalizations but regardless of accuracy in detail, and to create a realistic drama was wholly incompatible with their temperament. The accurate delineation of facts or character was to them nothing ; they aimed at the creation in the mind of the audience of sentiment, and what was necessary for this end was all that was attempted". Following this idealistic bent of the Brahmanic school the dramatists sometimes thought it a necessity to effect changes in the original from which their theme had been derived with a view to representing his persons as consistently ideal in their character so that their representation may evoke in the mind of the audience a perfection of sentiment. Thus some changes are effected in Dushyanta and S'akuntalā of the original epic with a view to removing all blemishes from their character and thus the representation of their character being far removed from reality presents an example of perfect ideal sentiment of love-arousing emotion in the mind of the learned audience. From the viewpoint of this idealistic character Sanskrit drama cannot be described as national in the broadest and the highest sense of the word as the Hellenic plays are called. It is in short a drama of a literary class though as such it exhibits many of the noblest and most refined as well as the most characteristic features of Hindu religion and civilization. The ethics of Indian drama are of a lofty character, but they are those of a scholastic system of religious philosophy self-conscious of its completeness. In the delineation of the characters and movement of the plot the supremacy is attributed to the power of fate to which the gods as well as the mortal world bow.