Sanskrit dance and drama

[Roland Steiner]

On 5 May 99, at 17:30, Venkatraman Iyer wrote:

> Indu Shekhar, Sanskrit drama: its origin and decline,
> E.J.Brill, 1960 (2nd ed., Delhi, 1977)

> How do Sanskritists rate this work?
See, e.g., the (justified) criticism by L. Renou, "La recherche sur 
le théâtre indien depuis 1890", in: S. Lévi, Le théâtre indien, 
réimpression, 1963, p. XII, n. (7): "Récemment, l´ouvrage de 
Shekhar [...] fait état d´une provenance anâryenne: hypothèse 
souvent formulée pour d´autres secteurs de l´indianisme et qui 
semble dispenser d´explication interne rationnelle." ("Recently, 
the work of Shekhar [...] points to a non-Aryan provenance: a 
hypothesis which has been often formulated with respect to 
other fields of Indian studies and which seems to exempt [itself] 
from a rational internal explication.")

For more details, see F.B.J. Kuiper, Varu.na and Viduu.saka, 
On the origin of the Sanskrit Drama, Amsterdam, etc. 1979. Cf., 
e.g.:
-- p. 116: "An entirely different thesis has been defended by 
Indu Shekar, who argued that the drama was a product of an 
non-Aryan culture of India. The present study will show why I 
think that the evidence available points to a different conclusion."
-- p. 116, n. 29: "It is true, influence of non-Aryan cultures has 
too often been invoked, without the slightest proof , as a _deus 
ex machina_ to explain difficult problems. If, however, there are 
specific (mostly linguistic) indications pointing to that conclusion, 
there is obviously no point in ignoring their existence, our task 
then being to try to understand what the role of the influence can 
have been in the whole context of Indian culture."

Regards,
Roland Steiner