The vīthī, lāsya and nāṭikā, and the daśarūpa List in the Nāṭyaśāstra

Abstract

This article aims to show that the term vīthī, the tenth in the daśarūpa list of plays found in the early dramatic treatises, does not refer to a play but to a number of small-scale dramatic scenes. As such, the vīthī is an exception in the list, which otherwise is made up of fully-fledged plays. However, as a collection of scenes, it does form a group with numbers 8 and 9, the prahasana and bhāṇa, each of which has two lives, namely as complete plays and as scenes within plays. The vīthī plays we have are all late reconstructions based on the general characteristics mentioned in the dramatic treatises. In some of the treatises the daśarūpa list is extended by the lāsya, another term designating a number of minor dramatic scenes which involve singing and dancing. It will be argued that the lāsya – as well as another set of minor dramatic types, the uparūpakas – came to be included into the dramatic theory through its occurrence within the nāṭikā, a type of play that is presented as a mixture of the nāṭaka and prakaraṇa, numbers 1 and 2 in the daśarūpa list, and was consequently not counted separately. It will furthermore be shown that the daśarūpa list consists of three clearly distinct groups, namely of 1–2 (nāṭaka, prakaraṇa and supernumerary nāṭikā) and 8–10 (prahasana, bhāṇa and vīthī), separated by a group of five types of play (3–7) dealing with battle and its aftermath. Of the latter five no early, classical examples have come down to us; apparently their topics have fallen outside the sphere of interest of the kāvya literary tradition.