lture of a caste, by
the side of one which represents the fullest development of the artistic
consciousness of such a people as the Hellenes. The Indian drama cannot
be described as national in the broadest and highest sense of the word;
it is, in short, the drama of a literary class, though as such it
exhibits many of the noblest and most refined, as well as of the most
characteristic, features of Hindu religion and civilization. The ethics
of the Indian drama are of a lofty character, but they are those of a
scholastic system of religious philosophy, self-conscious of its
completeness. To the power of Fate is occasionally ascribed a supremacy,
to which gods as well as mortals must bow;[22] but, if man's present
life is merely a phase in the cycle of his destinies, the highest of
moral efforts at the same time points to the summit of possibilities,
and self-sacrifice is the supreme condition both of individual
perfection and of the progress of the world. Such conceptions as these
seem at once to enfold and to overshadow the moral life of the Indian
drama. The affections and passions forming part of self it delineates
with a fidelity to nature which no art can afford to neglect; on the
other hand, the freedom of the picture is restricted by conditions which
to us are unfamiliar and at times seem intolerable, but which it was
impossible for the Indian poet's imagination to ignore. The sheer
self-absorption of ambition or love appears inconceivable by the minds
of any of these poets; and their social philosophy is always based on
the system of caste. On the other hand, they are masters of many of the
truest forms of pathos, above all of that which blends with resignation.
In humour of a delicate kind they are by no means deficient; to its
lower forms they are generally strangers, even in productions of a
professedly comic intention. Of wit, Indian dramatic literature--though
a play on words is as the breath of its nostrils--furnishes hardly any
examples intelligible to Western minds.

Poetry of the Indian drama.

The distinctive excellence of the Indian drama is to be sought in the
poetic robe which envelops it as flowers overspread the bosom of the
earth in the season of spring. In its nobler productions, at least, it
is never untrue to its half religious, half rural origin; it weaves the
wreaths of idyllic fancies in an unbroken chain, adding to its favourite
and familiar blossoms ever fresh beauties from an inexha