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.