BY PANDIT TARANATH

Culture is the goal and centre of life. It is the organisation of the whole being which has to react to an ordered environment, called ‘the world.’ This culture is therefore the urge of life, being the inevitable response, whether slow or quick, to the stimuli of ordered creation. When once this is realised, pleasure is transformed into bliss, the ephemeral reveals the Eternal in it, and the human becomes the Divine. Once this is realised as the highest attainment possible, the highest bliss available, the very nature of pleasure-loving in the human creates another urge of broadcasting the same consciously or unconsciously. It is the existence of such self-realised propagandists that accounts for the evolution of the race. It is such that hasten the dawn of progress, as, the West would call it. Therefore we in India concluded long ago that civilisation is the spontaneous spread of the process of self-realisation.

Thus far is the principle. It is the direct realisation of intuition and the conviction of intellect. But this cannot spread by itself unless the other party, the taught, are considered. Philosophy, to propagate, must pragmatise itself to pedagogy and the rock-bottom of pedagogy is the psychology of the taught. It is a well-known fact that the unknown can be learnt only with the aid of the known, or more technically, that knowledge is the correlation of a novel objective to an existing cognate. That cognates are the impressions caused by the stimulus of the inner being to environment is also admitted on all hands. These environments being different according to the very structure of the universe, different zones evoke different reactions creating different impressions. Though fundamentally human nature is the same in terms of pleasure and pain, the reactions to these two differ in mode and expression. This difference varies with different zones, originally by geographical differences, secondarily by the spontaneous customs and conventions of that zone. And people living in each one of them are what they are, the sum-total of the whole past. The individuality based on such differences is what the Vedantins ages ago called Samashti in India or, translated into English, group-consciousness. No teaching can be perfectly or harmlessly assimilated unless it is in tune with this group-consciousness. Samashti is the very being of the Vyashti, or the individual, as made by it. Explaining it still further, teaching, to fix itself must have a natural bearing on the ‘samskaras’ (roughly, impressions of the taught). Physically, the feelings may be the same on an average of pleasure or pain. But in the case of man, these two are not only physical factors but also mental, and this mental response, to put it more simply, the way in which men are moved by circumstances, differs with Samashtis. Superficially they may differ even with different individuals under the same Samashti but not fundamentally so. So teaching, for its success, depends not only on the purity of the lesson but also on the mind of the taught and the method of imparting. This much alone is not enough, for all living beings and man too are by nature fond of pleasure, and no system of education that does not incorporate pleasantness can spread itself-no instruction without interest and attraction.

The Ancients never stopped with regarding culture as conviction. They defined it as the process of ‘becoming’ of the individual through Samashti and the custom of the people. To them it was never the pointed pinnacle of a stray temple but the broad base of society. Its place of discovery might be the solitude, but its field of play is always society. The discoveries in the cave were to guide the conduct of the community. Intellectual convictions were to be the character of the many. Aspirations were meant to make aspirants after Truth. The mere conviction may be at best drawing-room manners which cannot be called culture. Mere manners are but acted poses or others’ realisations, but not expressions of a knowing and feeling heart. And what use is ruminating others’ cuds, or is it even possible? This great task of leading the beast and the bigot to a state of beatitude was no easy task. Aye, nor were the ‘Rishis’ of ordinary mettle to fight shy of it. With the eye fixed on Eternity and the hand of blessing on humanity, they rose equal to the task of evolving the ‘vyashti’ through the ‘mukti’ or beatitude. To this end, the ‘Vedas’ were written and these in their turn branched and branched, extending into a canopy over the whole head of hoary Aryavarta. That the Light of Eternity may shine in the ephemeral, the ‘Samhitas,’ ‘Brahmanas’, ‘Aranyakas’, ‘Upanishads’, ‘Shrouta’, ‘Grihya’ and ‘Dharmasutras’, the ‘Itihasas’ and the ‘Puranas’ were brought into existence. At a stroke we may place our hands on the top of the whole pile of these books, but are they the products of a day, a decade or a century in the past? They were the experiences of ages; and of seers who before the majesty of knowledge discovered the littleness of their realisations, who humbly before the stupendous-ness of knowledge regarded even their vastness and sublimity of realisation as at best an impetus to further research, and who made the burden of their stupendous knowledge the inspiringly humble cry of ‘neti’ (‘not this, not this’). The very expansiveness of their realisation taught them the fundamentals of the Law of Karma, of the duality of the universe, of the Eternity beneath the ephemeral, and of the One behind the many. And to teach this in all humility, this great lesson which today is called the Unity of God and the Brotherhood of man, they struggled week in and week out, and all that they wrote and said is but the garb of the fundamentals they realised within themselves. This record of their thought and work first and foremost is the ‘Veda’. It is said to be the fountain of knowledge. It was preserved by the Hindus even as the young one preserved by its mother. To give to it preservation and the best of attention, society split itself –the foremost part to specialise in this great possession of the Hindus. As time went on, this humble spring in an unfathomed land flowed through hills and valleys, enriched itself with innumerable tributaries, fertilising the soil with its laden wealth in the regions it flowed over, gave coolness, life and growth to the very earth and beings living upon it, to dimensions that hid by their very majesty the humble source from which they sprang. The ‘Puranas,’ ‘Itihasas,’ etc., referred to already were but the ramifications of the humble but subtle and sublime ‘Vedas’. Even as the root lies buried underneath the soil but to breathe beauty and life into flower and foliage, does the ‘Veda’ lie hidden at the back of the beautiful lore of Aryan knowledge. These like the living green, facing and growing towards, the sun are the index of the power behind. Scholars have divided the original ‘Samhitas’ into two parts, ‘Vidhi’ and ‘Arthavada.’ The former consists of rules to be followed to realise the bliss of life through its fundamentals. As rules become dogma which degenarates to superstition and bigotry in the case of those who cannot instinctively see the raison d' etre of those, the ‘why’ of these had to be explained, for the Aryan whose daily prayer concludes with ‘Akhasat’ could never reconcile to lop-sided dogma or doctrinaire extremism and therefore evolved a method of explaining and demonstrating the aphorisms of self-realised people through the ‘Arthavada’ which were further divided into three parts, ‘Gunavada’ ‘Anuvada’ and ‘Bhutanartanuvada’. These are not contemporary productions of the Aryan mind. These must have covered a period of many hundred years. Their very name indicates that the latter is always the simplification of the former. Even as we, see to-day, ‘made-easies’ are the signs of

an over-active life or the symptoms perhaps consequently of a sub-active brain. Can we infer the conditions of the times that gave birth to these? The same ‘Arthavada’ the ‘why’ of the ’Vidhi’ was more and more simplified as the power of understanding grew weaker or perhaps the desire for a vaster propaganda grew stronger. Logic, science, metaphysics, philosophy, psychology mostly introspective, one and all methods of analysis and ‘Vedanta’ of synthesis were for the purpose of broadcasting the fundamentals and the methods of realising them. Though in the medieval ages of Indian history, people erected their own gods, invented their own modes of worship and, alas! their own vituperations of other modes, the principle is sound. The Indian mind is still synthetic and explanatory. Men that praise their own leather have always been discarded by real India as cheap chucklers into the corner of oblivion: and the trend of analysis of problems and the synthesis of experiences, from whatever source they might be, and consequently the desire to expand in knowledge and to unify in Truth is in the very blood of the Indian. It is there even today as sound and unshaken as it was in the past. And this trend to meet with the need of the ages is proved by the evolution of the ‘Arthavada’ into the other three. ‘Gunavada’ elaborates upon its teachings; ‘Anuvada’ translates it still further with a view to make it meet all varieties of people; and ‘Bhutanarthavada’ is the demonstration of these through a kindergarten process of using men and objects as embodiments of particular varieties of life and showing through them how they work fair or foul as they are honoured or offended. The myriads of images in India come under this category, but dumb as they are to an unseeing mind, they are further simplified into talking images, the ‘dramatis personae’ which forms the origin of Indian drama. So do we see that drama is personfied kindergarten of the knowledge of the Ultimate. It was not conceived to excite but to educate, not to entice but to elevate, not only to please but to preserve and to perfect, in a word, to speak of God to man, to transmute man into God. It served the purpose of religion in one word. History tells us that it was only in the twelfth century that in Dunstable in Bedfordshire, the first religious drama was played by Church priests and it was only after that drama was used by them and their votaries to propagate scriptural teachings.

This was no easy task. To spread the culture of the race based on eternal verities, in a manner at once interesting and elevating, it needed the vision of the seers, the analysis of philosophers and scientists, and the sweetness of the poets and the artists. And so, the drama is called a Triveni Sangama a confluence of the three rivers–vision, philosophy and symbolic art.

Drama does not mean merely something amusing but that which uses amusement to reveal verities. It has neither the flippancy of an empty joke nor the seriousness of a philosophy, for the former would mean flirting with life and the latter would mean being pessimistic and creating worries where they often really are not. The real play of the world and life in it begins in the mind, and if it can be arranged by any artist to play it there in an organised manner, it really is the first kind of play. If the verities of life can be so well embodied in words as to picture in the mind of the hearer the life of the world as it is and as it

ought to be, it surely is a feat for the artist. Such feats are not dreams of mere rhetoric but were actually realised by seers like Vyasa and Valmiki, but when times changed it needed the introduction of what are called ‘drisya kavya’ meaning visible poetry i.e. drama. Some great thinkers of India even go the extent of regarding drama as the sign of degradation of imagination in the poet and the readers or hearers as well; real drama should give the vision and not a demonstration.

What should be the fundamentals of this great art then? The answer is not far to seek. If the art is meant to show life as it is and as it ought to be, it is clear that the function of the stage is to epitomise the world not only of actualities but also of the verities behind that go to govern them visibly or invisibly. To Hindu thought, as it is to modern science and ethics, the whole of creation is a dual throng ‘dvandva.’ Pleasure and pain to the Hindu mind are not independent whole truths. They are not isolated forsooth. They are but the obverse and the reverse of the Truth yet unrealised. The feeling of each by itself means the ignorance of what the Hindu calls ‘Sat.’ Therefore to see the Truth embosomed, by these, which are but surface waves of that great ocean, is Knowledge which frees one from the whole throng. Knowledge to the Indian is not that which merely gives what the world calls comfort, power and pelf, but that which puts him on a pedestal wherefrom he sees the ugliness of the isolated parts of his previous experiences merged in the beauty of the whole, where the transient is seen as the Eternal by his transcendental vision. Only here is bliss the urge of life and the conclusion of all philosophy and religion. To describe its methods most efficiently and attractively is the function of teachers and the raison d' etre of drama. Beatitude of dual-bound being lies in the vision of the Beauty of the Whole, of which only parts are seen by the limited vision of the ignorant, and to give this vision is the motive of religion and art, the syntheses of all human faculties.

Drama therefore cannot logically be the depiction of life as it is seen and lived on the surface by mankind, for is it not already realised in life actual? The invisible other side, the undercurrent which life is oblivious to in pleasure and pain, should be suggested by drama for it to justify its existence. Then only can it expand Vision. It may be good enough to only ‘hold the mirror up to nature’ but it surely is better to hold the x-ray to see through and thus see the whole. Therefore drama can neither afford to be picture-painting nor didactic. The former has no lesson, the latter has no life. The one has nothing to teach and the other has no appeal, having no touch with life; drama therefore ought be the embodiment of both and should through life reveal both sides of life, the seen and the unseen, the conscious undertakings as well as the subconscious under-currents, the causes put together and the effects in oblivion. If its purpose is to help the masses to organise life to make it conducive to the Highest intelligible, the dramatist must remember that dry ethical sermons alone cannot be appreciated by them, much less remembered. Abstract thought is not possible for the majority of mankind as it stands today, and it can think only in forms. This aspect of psychology must be foremost in the mind of the dramatist; and dramatists too can be judged by seeing how far they have fulfilled this object of drama. Every form they see moving on the stage must give them, rather be for them, a symbol of both the realities and the unseen verities of life. Every recollection of the form once seen must have for them in life and its innumerable struggles the inspiration, the guide, and the warning.

Life being what it is, neither pleasure nor pain exclusively, drama can never be a tragedy or a comedy exclusively, unless the former means the sudden pounce of the watchful Nemesis, the revelation of the snake in the sleeve snugly warming itself there to gain strength in an atmosphere where all was well under the cloak. The purpose of it all should be not to make life pessimistic or optimistic, but at least visionful if not transcendental, watchful if not visionful. Not only that, but it must help to build also by suggesting processes of doing so. How full of the purpose of drama are the words of Romeo to the Franciscan Lawrence when he says, "Hang up philosophy, unless philosophy can make a Juliet." Yet how many have Juliet as the ideal at least, if Juliets have not appeared already on the great stage of life, is left for sober minds to judge. If tragedy brings death itself as the end of love and not the warning vision of it, life which loves life itself most will help love at arm's length as the very bane of it; and what would life be without Love but dry and boring calculation, one long pain having pleasure but in the struggle to avoid pain? Can such tragedies help mankind to the heights of the Senai of Celestial Light? What use has the common world for a Christ who is only put to the Cross for his Love, only to bleed and to die, but never to resurrect? It is the Vision of Resurrection that makes the inevitable Cross a bed of roses, and no drama can have a mission for the commonalty which has not that Vision to give. For this has a seer said that drama is the representative of all ‘sastras’ the deep of the harmony of emotions that inspire Vision, and the proximity of God–the ‘pratinidhi’ of all thinkers, the ‘nidhi’ of ‘navarasas’ and the ‘sannidhi’ of God.