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Regarding the first of these, I can easily agree with him when he says that our theatre, as Bharata conceived it, was intended to be a Palace of Art. But this remained only an ideal. The real theatre of the Hindus is what can be reconstructed from the references from the masterpieces of our great dramatists, like Sudraka Kalidasa, Harsha, Bhavabhuti and a Bhasa; and this reconstructed theatre does not justify the assumption that the ancient Hindu theatre was a Palace of Art. The writer will be doing a real service if he will substantiate his glowing picture by positive references to the works of our dramatists.

The living theatre of ancient India, built on the model of Bharata, has probably survived only in Kerala in what is known as the Kuttambalam. But even there, this temple theatre does not satisfy the artistic expectations that are engendered in us by Bharata.

Coming to the second point, the writer has implied that one has to seek for the ancient art of the Nata in Greater India. This may be true; but I may point out that the art of the Nata, as elaborated by Bharata, is cultivated in an intensive degree in India and one can meet with the same in its living form in the acting of the Cakyar and the Kathakalikkaran even today in that little corner in the south-west of India, I mean Kerala, which has conserved for us much of our ancient Hindu cultural heredity and tradition and which, therefore, forms the repository of many things that India elsewhere has lost.

Much, indeed, may be done by ourselves here, if we have the requisite interest and if we keep our eyes and ears open. We have still with us lots of things in every department of our cultural antiquities which await systematic documentation, careful scrutiny and scientific study at our hands. And it behoves every cultured individual who takes pride in his ancient heredity and tradition to spend at least a portion of his learned leisure in the direction of the elucidation of our glorious past.

K. R. PISHAROTI,
Annamalai University.

REPLY

Sir,

The theatre was called a Palace of Art because in the theatre, as in the temple, all the arts united in a common service. The Ranga Mandapa arose in the imagination of the master-builder and carver; no less important was the role of the painter. There was also the art of the mask-maker who gave plastic shape to the refinements of facial expression, not to mention such minor arts as that of the armourer or jeweller. It was therefore suggested that in the theatre these diverse but beautiful arts blended in a common symphony.

Not only did the plays begin with song and dance but opportunities were found for their deft introduction in the body of the plays themselves, as in the pictorial dance of Malavika or the Apabhramsa songs of Vikramorvasiam. The minute directions in the text of the plays to the Nata in his own terminology indicate that Abhinaya was always the principal means of expression. The painter's art was remembered in the frescoes of Uttararamacharita or the portraits of Malatimadhava or the group in the picture gallery where Agnimitra first recognised Malavika. The sculptor's art furnished the theme in Pratima Nataka. Even the jeweller's art was slyly worked in, in the ornaments presented by the sylvan goddesses to Sakuntala. It was the wonderful beauty-sense of the playwright which recognised the aesthetic appeal of the arts and worked every one of them into the texture of his composition for the end of making beauty more beautiful.

Invaluable as the art traditions of Kerala are for reconstructing the classic stage, there are similar and sometimes richer traditions in Greater India, and Java remembers much that even Kerala has forgotten. I did omit Kathakali; so did I omit the much-maligned nautch which embodies the bulk of Angikabhinaya, the Ras Lila impersonations of the North, the open-air drama which has survived in every part of India, etc.–all ultimately based on Natya, for this reason that I intended to suggest rather than exhaust, and that I wrote not a thesis but just a Note.

K. V. RAMACHANDRAN.