Nāyikā
The main heroine of the play is called the nāyikā; she, along with the nāyaka, plays the most important role in the drama.
The nāyikās are of three kinds – svīyā (‘one’s own’), anyā/ parakīyā (‘another’s’), sādhāraṇā (‘everyone’s’/ prostitute – veśyā).
A svīyā can either be a mugdhā, madhyā, or a pragalbhā depending on her experience in running a family. Aestheticians identify several more categories of nāyikās and finally arrive at about three hundred and eighty-four kinds of heroines. Interested readers may refer to Sāhitya-darpaṇa 3.112).
Other characters in the play come in association with the main hero and heroine; they usually play the roles of their aides and assistants.
The associates of the nāyaka include pīṭhamardaka (an important sub-character who comes as a part of the prāsaṅgika-vṛttānta in quite a few plays), viṭa[1] (a rouge/ knave), ceṭa (a servant), vidūṣaka (jester), mantri (minister), kubja (dwarf), eunuch, kirāta (hunter), ṛtviks (officiators of yāgas), ṛṣis (sages), friends, sāmanta (a subordinate king), and soldiers.
The associates of the nāyikā may include a female friend, a dāsī (a servant), a little girl who is being raised by the heroine, a lady of the neighbourhood, saṃnyāsinī, etc
Chandas and Gadya
In the Sanskrit theatre, both verses and prose occur. However, the number of vṛttas (metrical) patterns employed in Sanskrit dramas amounts to only about thirty. The vṛttas that occur frequently are about ten. They include – śloka (anuṣṭubh), vasantatilaka, mālinī, śikhariṇī, śārdūlavikrīḍita, sragdharā, puṣpitāgra, vaṃśastha, āryā, and praharṣiṇī. Vṛttas such as pṛthvī, indravajra, mandākrānta, vāitāḻīya, drutavilambita, aupacchandasika, upajāti, śālinī, and vaṃśastha don’t seem to have been employed prominently in the Sanskrit plays. The following vṛttas are very rarely found in the Sanskrit plays – mañjubhāṣiṇī, rathoddhata, daṇḍaka-vṛtta, bhujāṅga-prayāta, suvadana, vaiśvadevī, vidyunmālā, aparavaktraka, rucirā, and narkuṭaka
Vṛttas such as the anuṣṭubh, indravajra, and vaṃśastha can lend themselves well to the narration of the story. This is because of their structure; there is a kind of speed inherent to them, which can help capture the incidents of the story in a crisp but delightful manner. Sragdharā and śārdūlavikrīḍītacan be employed to convey profound ideas and also to portray more detailed episodes. Āryā, vasantatilaka, mālinī, puṣpitāgra, and vaitālīya can be set to a tāla pattern and can be rendered like a song.
Aśvaghoṣa is the earliest playwright known to us today. Nevertheless, it is quite evident that the tradition of Sanskrit theatre had taken its birth and had blossomed to its fullest extent by his times. However, we have only got fragments of a play composed by him. We cannot derive any kind of correlation between the different kinds of chandas employed in Sanskrit drama and the nature of the drama itself based on the fragments available today. We do know that music and dance were integral parts of Sanskrit theatre. Padya (verse) and more specifically, gīta lends itself well to be sung and gadya (prose) does not have this property. Furthermore, a verse composed in a chandas that has a natural tāla pattern within it (geya-chandas) is even easier to render in the form of a song. Therefore, it is quite likely that Sanskrit plays were composed using chandas that were easy to be tuned to a rāga and sung as a song.
As the tradition of the mahā-kāvyas and khaṇḍa-kāvyas grew in the Sanskrit literary tradition, they bore their influence on the composition of the plays as well. Playwrights then started employing longer chandases that could lend themselves easily to accommodate detailed varṇanā (description). These came in addition to the vṛttas that are easily malleable for story narration and singing. The plays composed by Kālidāsa, Śūdraka, and Bhāsa contain a higher number of anuṣṭubh-ślokas and ārya-vṛttas compared to those composed by Harṣa and Bhavabhūti. In many instances where Bhāsa uses a longer vṛtta, he breaks it between two or more characters and fits in a conversation in the vṛtta. Still, it is hard to say if the vṛttas were actually sung and danced during the times of Kālidāsa, Bhavabhūti and other poets. They might have been merely recited.
Whereas nṛtya, i.e., solo dance is essentially based on the elaboration of bhāvas connected with a particular scene thereby evoking rasa, in a play, an elaborate story needs to be depicted in an impactful manner. The story must be presented through the speech of its characters; thus, it is also possible that nṛtya grew as an independent stream of art and nāṭaka, right from its birth had gadya, i.e., prose embedded within it. It is also possible that the early plays had employed vṛttas such as śloka, which can carry out the function of gadya in quite an effective manner; just like gadya, verses that are set to anuṣṭubh-ślokas can be employed for narrating stories and incidents in detail. Nevertheless, it is hard to say the exact nature of the plays that existed in the centuries and millennia prior to Aśvaghoṣa. It is quite difficult to answer the following questions – Did gadya exist right from the early Sanskrit plays or was it added later? If it was added in the later days, when exactly did it happen? How did it evolve? What was the purpose of the ślokas in the earlier plays? It is hard to answer these questions as the early history of the Sanskrit theatre tradition seems to be lost in oblivion.
Just as a poet would use the choicest of syllables to bring in the effect of different rasas, playwrights probably employed different varieties of chandas to evoke different rasas. Some treatises on chandases, in fact, even discuss the nature of chandas and the rasa that they can effectively evoke. This kind of aucitya i.e., propriety can be seen in some of the compositions of the early playwrights. However, the later playwrights do not seem to have paid much attention to this kind of aucitya and have indiscriminately employed various chandases paying no heed to the rasa they are required to evoke.
The gadya of the play was originally in the form of simple phrases and sentences, just like everyday conversations. However, after the times of Bāṇa and due to the influence of campū-kāvyas, the segments of gadya in plays seemed to get complex and pedantic to the extent of becoming unnatural and artificial; they were filled with unnecessary embellishments and became heavy with unnecessary detailing.
The current series of articles is an enlarged adaption of Prof. A. R. Krishnasastri's Kannada treatise Saṃskṛta-nāṭaka. They are presented along with additional information and footnotes by Arjun Bharadwaj.
[1] viṭa m. (derivation doubtful) a voluptuary, sensualist, bon-vivant, boon-companion, rogue, knave; (in the drama, esp. in the Mṛcchakaṭika, he is the companion of a dissolute prince and resembles in some respects the Vidūṣaka, being generally represented as a parasite on familiar terms with his associate, but at the same time accomplished in the arts of poetry, music, and singing; ifc. a term of reproach; also ‘the keeper of a prostitute. (The Monier-Williams Dictionary)
