that the play, I confess, was a drop into bathos. We descended to
speech, even to tedious burlesque. But the analogy was all the closer to
mediaeval mysteries. In ages of Faith religion is not only sublime; it is
intimate, humorous, domestic; it sits at the hearth and plays in the
nursery. So it is in India where the age of Faith has never ceased. What
was represented that night was an episode in the story of Krishna. The
characters were the infant god, his mother, Jasodha, and an ancient
Brahmin who has come from her own country to congratulate her on the
birth of a child. He is a comic character--the sagging belly and the
painted face of the pantomime. He answers Jasodha's inquiries after
friends and relations at home. She offers him food. He professes to have
no appetite, but, on being pressed, demands portentous measures of rice
and flour. While she collects the material for his meal, he goes to
bathe in the Jumna; and the whole ritual of his ablutions is elaborately
travestied, even a crocodile being introduced in the person of one of
the musicians, who rudely pulls him by the leg as he is rolling in
imaginary water. His bathing finished, he retires and cooks his food.
When it is ready he falls into prayer. But during his abstraction the
infant Krishna crawls up and begins devouring the food. Returning to
himself, the Brahmin, in a rage, runs off into the darkness of the hall.
Jasodha pursues him and brings him back. And he begins once more to cook
his food. This episode was repeated three times in all its detail, and I
confess I found it insufferably tedious. The third time Jasodha scolds
the child and asks him why he does it. He replies--and here comes the
pretty point of the play--that the Brahmin, in praying to God and
offering him the food, unwittingly is praying to him and offering to
him, and in eating the food he has but accepted the offering. The mother
does not understand, but the Brahmin does, and prostrates himself before
his Lord.

This is crude enough art, but at any rate it is genuine. Like all
primitive art, it is a representation of what is traditionally believed
and popularly felt. The story is familiar to the audience and intimate
to their lives. It represents details which they witness every day, and
at the same time it has religious significance. Out of it might grow a
great drama, as once in ancient Greece. And perhaps from no other origin
can such a drama arise.

VI

AN INDIAN SAINT