m. Thus, from the union of dance and song, to which were
afterwards added narrative recitation, and first sung, then spoken,
dialogue, was gradually evolved the acted drama. Such scenes and stories
from the mythology of Vishnu are still occasionally enacted by pantomime
or spoken dialogue in India (_j[=a]tras_ of the Bengalis; _r[=a]sas_ of
the Western Provinces); and the most ancient Indian play was said to
have treated an episode from the history of that deity--the choice of
him as a consort by Laxmi--a favourite kind of subject in the Indian
drama. The tradition connecting its earliest themes with the native
mythology of Vishnu agrees with that ascribing the origin of a
particular kind of dramatic performance--the _sang[=i]ta_--to Krishna
and the shepherdesses. The author's later poem, the _G[=i]tagovinda_,
has been conjectured to be suggestive of the earliest species of Hindu
dramas. But, while the epic poetry of the Hindus gradually approached
the dramatic in the way of dialogue, their drama developed itself
independently out of the union of the lyric and the epic forms. Their
dramatic poetry arose later than their epos, whose great works, the
_Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata_ and the _Ramayana_, had themselves been long
preceded by the hymnody of the _Vedas_--just as the Greek drama followed
upon the Homeric poems and these had been preceded by the early hymns.

There seems, indeed, no reason for dating the beginnings of the regular
Indian drama farther back than the 5th century A.D., though it is
probable that the earliest extant Sanskrit play, the delightful, and in
some respects incomparable, _Mrichchhakat[=i]k[=a]_ (_The Toy Cart_),
was considerably earlier in date than the works of K[=a]lid[=a]sa.
Indeed, of his predecessors in dramatic composition very little is
known, and even the contemporaries who competed with him as dramatists
are mere names. Thus, by the time the Indian drama produced almost the
earliest specimens with which we are acquainted, it had already reached
its zenith; and it was therefore looked upon as having sprung into being
as a perfect art. We know it only in its glory, in its decline, and in
its decay.

The history of Indian dramatic literature may be roughly divided into
the following periods.

First period (classical).

I. _To the 11th Century A.D._--This period virtually belongs to the
pre-Mahommedan age of Indian history; but already to that second
division of it in which Buddhism had bec