his aid be lent
To hold her in her mid-descent--
For earth alone will never bear
Those torrents hurled from upper air;
And none may hold her weight but He,
The Trident-wielding deity,'
Thus having said, the Lord supreme
Addressed him to the heavenly stream;
And then with Gods and Maruts went
To heaven, above the firmament."

SAKOONTALA

BY

KALIDASA

[_Translation by Sir Monier Monier-Williams_]

INTRODUCTION

The drama is always the latest development of a national poetry--for the
origin of poetry is in the religious rite, where the hymn or the ode is
used to celebrate the glories of some divinity, or some hero who has
been received into the circle of the gods. This at least is the case in
Sanscrit as in Greek literature, where the hymn and ballad precede the
epic. The epic poem becomes the stable form of poetry during the middle
period in the history of literature, both in India and Greece. The union
of the lyric and the epic produces the drama. The speeches uttered by
the heroes in such poems as the "Iliad" are put into the mouths of real
personages who appear in sight of the audience and represent with
fitting gestures and costumes the characters of the story. The dialogue
is interspersed with songs or odes, which reach their perfection in the
choruses of Sophocles.

The drama is undoubtedly the most intellectual, as it is the most
artificial, form of poetry. The construction of the plot, and the
arrangement of the action, give room for the most thoughtful and
deliberate display of genius. In this respect the Greek drama stands
forth as most philosophically perfect. The drama, moreover, has always
been by far the most popular form of poetry; because it aids, as much as
possible, the imagination of the auditor, and for distinctness and
clearness of impression stands preeminent above both the epic narrative
and the emotional description of the lyric.

The drama in India appears to have been a perfectly indigenous creation,
although it was of very late development, and could not have appeared
even so early as the Alexandrian pastorals which marked the last phase
of Greek poetry. When it did appear, it never took the perfect form of
the drama at Athens. It certainly borrowed as little from Greece as it
did from China or Japan, and the Persians and Arabians do not appear to
have produced any dramatic masterpieces. The greatest of dramatists in
the Sanscrit