Professor Lévi,100 whose opposition to Windisch regarding the possibility of Greek influence on the Indian drama has been noted, is himself responsible for the suggestion that the rise of the Sanskrit drama, as opposed to the more popular religious drama in Prākrit, is to be attributed to the Çakas, whose advent to India was one of the causes of the rapid decadence of the Greek principalities in the north-west. The theory is based on a general view of the elevation of Sanskrit to the rank of the language of literature, as opposed to its restriction to use as the learned and sacred language of the Brahmins. The inscriptions, on the whole, show that Sanskrit as an epigraphic language was introduced by Rudradāman whose Girnār inscription of A.D. 150 is wholly in Sanskrit, though Sanskrit appears in part in Uṣavadāta’s inscription of A.D. 124. The Western Kṣatrapas, of Çaka origin, were, he holds, the first to bring Sanskrit down to earth, while not vulgarizing it, as contrasted with the Hindu and orthodox Çātakarṇis of the Deccan who retained Prākrit in their inscriptions down to the third century A.D. The character of the Çakāra may be regarded in this light; in its hostility to the Çakas it reveals a period when either a prince was opposed to the Çaka rule, or the Çaka dominion had just fallen and was fresh in the minds of the people. The Mṛcchakaṭikā may retain a confused version of the events of the second century A.D. A specific connexion between the Çakas and the creation of drama may be seen in the terminology of the Nāṭyaçāstra, and that of their inscriptions. Rudradāman refers to his grandfather Caṣṭana as Svāmin and Sugṛhītanāman, and Svāmin is freely used in the epigraphic records of the kings of the line from Nahapāna (A.D. 78) onwards. Further Rudrasena in A.D. 205, in referring to his royal ancestors, Caṣṭana, Jayadāman, Rudradāman, and Rudrasena, gives them the epithet of Bhadramukha, ‘of gracious countenance’. These terms, Lévi argues, correspond with the use laid down in the Nāṭyaçāstra, which must have borrowed from contemporary official usage. Further, Rudradāman uses the term Rāṣṭriya as applying to Puṣyagupta, who under [70]Candragupta, the Maurya, some four and a half centuries earlier established the reservoir which he had repaired, and this term occurs in the Çakuntalā and the Mṛcchakaṭikā in the sense of brother-in-law of the king, the sense given to it in the Amarakoça, the earliest Sanskrit lexicon of established authority. To these considerations may be added that Ujjayinī, the capital of the Western Kṣatrapas of Mālava, is a centre, round which as a fan radiate the three great literary Prākrits of the drama, Çaurasenī, Māgadhī, and Māhārāṣṭrī, thus accounting for their use, which else would be difficult to explain.

Lévi’s suggestion, which was accompanied by an admission that the Mṛcchakaṭikā or its source was older than he had formerly argued, and that the possibility of Greek influence was thus increased, has been accepted by Professor Konow101 with the important modification that in face of the fact that the oldest dramas known to us, the fragments of Açvaghoṣa and those of Bhāsa, ignore Māhārāṣṭrī and that Çaurasenī is the normal prose tongue, he accepts Mathurā as the home of the drama, and ascribes it to about the middle of the first century A.D. This view he supports by the fact that the rulers of Mathurā were also Çaka Kṣatrapas, or Satraps, whose control extends back at least to the beginning of the first century A.D.

It may be feared that neither theory will stand critical investigation, however tempting it may be to obtain an exact date for the Sanskrit drama. The discovery of Açvaghoṣa’s fragments shows that the drama has already attained a very definite and complete form, and we really cannot with any probability assume that the creation of drama preceded this by no more than a century. Even a century, however, brings us further back than the middle of the first century A.D., for Konow’s date of Kaniṣka, about A.D. 150,102 is probably considerably too late, and should be placed fifty years earlier at least. We are thus separated from Rudradāman by a period of 150 years, probably more, and the theory that the Western Kṣatrapas introduced Sanskrit into the drama falls hopelessly to the ground on chronological considerations alone.

The argument from the use of technical terms is clearly untenable. That Rāṣṭriya in Rudradāman’s inscription has the sense [71]of ‘brother-in-law’ is not supported by the slightest evidence, and is most improbable; the term doubtless denotes governor, and the restricted use is a later development. The use of Svāmin as the mode of addressing the king is not recorded in the Nāṭyaçāstra, and to argue that it, being given in the Daçarūpa and the Sāhityadarpaṇa, must be borrowed from Bharata, as Konow does, is quite impossible. On the contrary, Bharata103 gives the style to the Yuvarāja, or Crown Prince, presumably as distinct from the king. In the extant dramas after Bhāsa it is not used of the king or Crown Prince. Sugṛhītanāman, denoting perhaps ‘whose name is uttered with respect’, has no parallel in Bharata; only in the later theory do we find Sugṛhītābhidha, which, however, is prescribed merely for the address of a pupil, child, or younger brother to a teacher, father, or elder brother, and therefore stands in no conceivable relation to the term used by Rudradāman. Bhadramukha is the address to a royal prince in Bharata; it is used of kings by Rudrasena, and the literature ignores the specific or royal use. The lack of accord is complete and convincing; if the drama had originated under the Western Kṣatrapas of Ujjayinī, it would not have been so flagrantly out of harmony with the official language.

The whole error of these arguments rests in the belief that the drama developed as a Prākrit drama before it was turned into Sanskrit. The same theory has been applied to every department of secular Sanskrit literature without either plausibility or success; the Mahābhāṣya knows Sanskrit Kāvya before any Prākrit Kāvya is recorded.104 But, apart from this, it is essential to remember that the drama was religious in origin and essentially connected with epic recitations, and that for both reasons Sanskrit claimed in it a rightful place from the inception. It is certain that the recitations known by Patañjali were in Sanskrit, and it is difficult in the extreme to understand how in the view of Lévi and Konow a Prākrit drama proper ever came into being. Before the coalescence of the epic recitation and the primitive mime believed in by Konow, there cannot have been any drama on his own theory; when they coalesced, Sanskrit must have from the first been present. [72]

The discovery of Açvaghoṣa’s fragments undoubtedly helps greatly to bring the creation of the drama very close up to the time of Patañjali, if not to that date. The first century B.C. can with fair certainty be assumed to be the very latest period at which the appearance of a genuine Sanskrit drama can be placed. If indeed Professor Lüders’s former date for Kaniṣka were correct and he were the founder of the Vikrama era of 57 B.C.,105 then the Sanskrit drama must be dated a century at least earlier, and we would have the paradoxical position that on Professor Lüders’s date of Açvaghoṣa he must place the drama at not later than Patañjali, while when dealing with the Mahābhāṣya evidence he doubts the existence of the drama. Professor Lüders has overlooked this dilemma, which, however, we may evade on his behalf by recognising that he erred in assigning to Kaniṣka a date which the evidence available in 1911 already showed to be quite untenable.