Drama and Ritual of Early Hinduism.

• Author: Rocher, Ludo
• Position: Review

Drama and Ritual of Early Hinduism. By NATALIA LIDOVA. Performing Arts Series, vol. IV. Delhi: MOTILAL BANARSIDASS, 1994. Pp. xiii + 141. Rs 125.

Drama and Ritual of Early Hinduism, by Natalia Lidova, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of World Literature, Russian Academy of Sciences, in an English translation by Tatania Butkova, was published in Farley P. Richmond's "Performing Arts Series." Kapila Vatsyayan wrote a foreword.

This unassuming volume, 128 pages of text and notes, is replete with new ideas about the origin and early development of Indian theater. Perhaps the principal innovation is the author's claim, based on a detailed analysis of passages from the Natyasastra (hence NS) "which appeared in the early centuries A.D." (p. 108; "strictly speaking it has no precise date," p. 2), that, if early Indian theater has a ritualistic basis--the theory of a mundane origin of the theater is referred to (p. 3), but not further discussed--it is not, as most often assumed, the Vedic yajna but the non-Vedic puja, "a thoroughly different type of rite than yajna" (p. 41), not the successor of the yajna but "a specific practical form of cult [that] rather denies than follows the yajna" (p. 96); indeed, "the main goal of the puja was to oust soma libations" (p. 116). Lidova quotes NS 5.57 as showing that the purvaranga, for example, "should be a puja to gods and is a puja to gods and is conducive of dharma, fame and longevity" (p.22); "t he ceremonies of the foundation, building and consecration of the theatre belong to the class of paid" (pp. 36-37); etc. That is where Lidova differs from F. B. J. Kuiper, according to whom the purvaranga, which the NS defines as devatabhyarcanam (36.29), etc., "is equal to the Vedic sacrifice (yajna)" (Varuna and Vidusaka [1979], 122; already in "The Worship of the jarjara' IIJ 16 [1974-75]: 242). Kuiper takes this definition strictly: it "was not a simple metaphor" (Varuna, 123); on the contrary, Indian drama was a yajna performed at the king's expense and for his benefit (he is then its yajamana) by a group of actors (the Vedic priests) who received a reward for their performance (the daksina), The difference of opinion rests mainly on the interpretation of the term sammita in yajnena sammitam hy etad rangadaivatapujanam (NS 1.126,3.96). For Kuiper, who attaches little importance to the term pujana in this sentence, it means that "the 'worship of the gods' is equal to the Vedic sacrifice" (Varuna, 122...