e of the two damsels of the god of
love helping one another to pluck the red and green bud from the mango
tree; or of gentle domestic pathos--such as that of the courtesan
listening to the prattle of her lover's child, one of the prettiest
scenes of a kind rarely kept free from affectation in the modern drama.
For the _denouement_ in the narrower sense of the term the Indian
dramatists largely resort to the expedient of the _deus ex machina_,
often in a sufficiently literal sense.[14]

Characters.

Every species of drama having its appropriate kind of hero or heroine,
theory here again amuses itself with an infinitude of subdivisions.
Among the heroines, of whom not less than three hundred and eighty-four
types are said to be distinguished, are to be noticed the courtesans,
whose social position to some extent resembles that of the Greek
_hetaerae_, and association with whom does not seem in practice, however
it may be in theory, to be regarded as a disgrace even to Brahmans.[15]
In general, the Indian drama indicates relations between the sexes
subject to peculiar restraints of usage, but freer than those which
Mahommedan example seems to have introduced into higher Indian society.
The male characters are frequently drawn with skill, and sometimes with
genuine force. Prince Samsthanaka[16] is a type of selfishness born in
the purple worthy to rank beside figures of the modern drama, of which
this has at times naturally been a favourite class of character;
elsewhere,[17] the intrigues of ministers are not more fully exposed
than their characters and principles of action are judiciously
discriminated. Among the lesser personages common in the Indian drama,
two are worth noticing, as corresponding, though by no means precisely,
to familiar types of other dramatic literatures. These are the
_vit[=a]_, the accomplished but dependent companion (both of men and
women), and the _vid[=u]shaka_, the humble associate (not servant) of
the prince, and the buffoon of the action.[18] Strangely enough, he is
always a Brahman, or the pupil of a Brahman--perhaps a survival from a
purely popular phase of the drama. His humour is to be ever intent on
the pleasures of a quiet life, and on that of eating in particular; his
jokes are generally devoid of both harm and point.

Diction.

Scenery and costume.

Thus, clothing itself in a diction always ornate and tropical, in which
(as Ruckert has happily expressed it) the prose i