Sanskrit Drama Research Articles

Shakuntala's Storytellers: Translation and Performance in the Age of World Literature (1789–1912)

Since its first translation into English in 1789, the Sanskrit drama Abhijñānaśakuntala (The Recognition of Shakuntala) by Kalidasa has retained a place of prominence in the discipline/body of works currently identified as "world literature." Figured as the illustrative example of premodern Indian literary prowess and the foundation of the country's cultural output, The Recognition of Shakuntala has remained a staple of world literary education and criticism since the early nineteenth century. As a dramatic text, however, the play has also enjoyed a rich and diverse performance history, one that is not nearly as well documented, well studied, or well critiqued as contributive to a corresponding concept of world theatre. This essay compares William Jones's landmark translation with two pioneering theatrical productions given of the play in London: that of the Parsi Victoria Dramatic Company in 1885, and of the Elizabethan Stage Society in 1899. Drawing from a range of theatrical ephemera as well as a close reading of Jones's translation alongside the Sanskrit manuscript on which it was based, this essay argues for a fundamental difference between translation and performance as methods of production through which the canons of world literature and world theatre, respectively, are curated, by emphasizing the significance of embodiment, or the absence thereof, in constructions of universal humanism during the long nineteenth century.

Editorial Comment

Editorial Comment E.J. Westlake "I have observ'd those countries, where trade is promoted and encouraged, do not make discoveries to destroy, but to improve, mankind; by love and friendship, to tame the fierce and polish the most savage; to teach them the advantages of honest traffick by taking from them, with their own consent, their useless superfluities, and giving them in return what, from their ignorance in manual arts, their situation, or some other accident, they stand in need of." So recites the character of Trueman at the top of act 3 in George Lillo's 1731 drama The London Merchant. Trueman has apprenticed to the merchant Thorowgood and has been learning the basic tenants of capitalism. He has absorbed the ideas of the rising merchant class—specifically, the notion that free trade and democratic ideals go hand in hand. The roots of colonialism lie within this confluence of aggressive capitalism in the form of spreading Enlightenment ideals throughout the world, a project every capitalist has an obligation to pursue. As Thorowgood responds, "[i]t is the industrious merchant's business, to collect the various blessings of each soil and climate, and, with the product of the whole, to enrich his native country." Each of the essays in this issue touches on the themes of colonialism, labor, neoliberalism, and capital. Amanda Culp examines the politics of translation vis-à-vis the first version of the Sanskrit drama The Recognition of Shakuntala, translated into English by William Jones in 1789. The dramatic text, she argues, then took its place as part of the English literary canon. By comparing two theatrical productions of the play in the late nineteenth century, Culp reveals the ways in which colonial, Orientalist constructions of universal humanism shape the production and reception of what had become an English "classic." The Elizabethan Stage Society performed the Jones translation in 1899 with white actors in brownface makeup, and with the Regents Park botanical gardens standing in for the "tropical vegetation" of India. Less successful was an earlier staging by the Parsi Victoria Dramatic Company, a company of actors from Bombay, labeled "absurd" by English reviewers. Culp notes, however, that the rejection of the Indian production by English audiences may not have been so much because of the foreign costumes and language, but rather that the bodies of the artists, who were not practitioners of classical Indian performance but actors trained in English staging conventions, created an uncomfortable doubling for English spectators. Culp observes that "the subaltern bodies performing onstage were not ultimately too dissimilar from those that habitually performed at the Gaiety or, even more upsetting, from those seated in the audience." Siyuan Liu focuses on the evolution of several forms of xiqu in the twentieth century. He examines the writing of scholar Zhou Zuoren, a professor at Beijing University in the mid-twentieth century influenced by the work of Enlightenment folklorist Johann Gottfried Herder. Liu argues that the work of Herder and the writing of John Locke influenced Chinese thinkers to embrace the revival and reconstruction of classical art in a way that parallels the trajectory of European antiquarianism. Citing Richard Bauman [End Page ix] and Charles Briggs's description of a modernity that was both a "nostalgia for a vanished past and a growing ideological commitment to progress," Liu chronicles the project of recovering folkloric tradition through to the reform campaign against xiqu in the early years of the People's Republic of China. The disavowel of Asian labor is the subject of Chris Eng's essay on the 2014 revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He notes that the revival, two decades after the original production, must be read within the context of the "neoliberal incorporation of queerness and transness into the folds of normativity." Eng examines the problematic labeling of the title character as trans and the characterization of transness as a violent injury, and the equally problematic privileging of the white gay male over trans and racial Others. Written as passing moments within the play, the use of camp to dismiss and ridicule the Asian labor that makes Hedwig's performance possible places the musical within a contemporary matrix of imperialism, in...

How they changed: Therukoothu performace in a noisy city

When it first evolved several hundred years ago, the Kerala Koothambalam, a theatre attached to a temple, heard performances of Sanskrit drama in a quiet, almost rural surroundings. Mizhavu, a very loud and important part of the performance, did not drown the words. But now it does. Many performances these days use microphones and loudspeakers to overcome the cacophony outside. The space we are measuring is in the heart of Thrissur, a thriving city in Kerala. This is a study of the acoustics of the Koothambalam, a wooden structure which has not changed much in the last several centuries. We will also be recording a koothu, one of the plays performed in this space. As well as take accurate measurements and photographs. We will also record the performance in a studio, to process with the ambisonic impulse responses recorded in the theatre, to recreate the sound of the performance in quieter times. The presentation will be a talk with brief audio and visual samples.)

Fear in Greek and Sanskrit Drama

This essay compares Greek and Sanskrit drama from the perspective of their aesthetic aims. It examines briefly the role of pity and fear in Aristotle as a point of departure for a more general study of emotion in Sanskrit drama, where fear comprises but one mood sought in the aesthetic experience. The discussion is based on the theoretical understanding of drama as elucidated by Bharata in the Nāţyaśāstra and Abhinavagupta in his commentary to this work.

FREEDOM IN PERFORMANCE: ACTRESSES AND CREATIVE AGENCY IN THE KUTIYATTAM THEATRE COMPLEX

Widely known among Indian theatre forms for its historical inclusion of female performers, the Kutiyattam theatre complex of Kerala encompasses three related performance forms – Kutiyattam, the enactment of Sanskrit drama with multiple actors and actresses; Chakyar Koothu, men’s solo verbal performance; and Nangiar Koothu, women’s solo acting performance. While women were nearly erased from the Kutiyattam stage through a variety of techniques over time, the postcolonial period has seen a dramatic revival of both Nangiar Koothu and women’s roles onstage in Kutiyattam, reflecting a wider democratisation of the art in terms of both performers’ bodies and performance spaces. This article considers the contemporary performance by professional Kutiyattam actresses of both Nangiar Koothu and Kutiyattam. While the two forms belong to a single overarching performance complex, they are remarkably different in terms of women’s performance. Drawing from nearly two years of ethnographic research among the Kutiyattam community in Kerala from 2008- 10, it highlights the perspectives of actresses themselves. In examining whether actresses prefer performing Kutiyattam or Nangiar Koothu and why, the article explores questions of gender and creative agency in women’s contemporary Kutiyattam performance.

Strange Creatures Can Be Animals Too: A Response to Brian Richardson

It is always a pleasure to read anything by Brian Richardson. Not only has he read more really weird books than I have ever read, or will, but he shores up his arguments so adroitly and writes with such a friendly eye on his reader that it makes it hard to disagree with him. But disagree I must. THE TERM ITSELF My first concern is that the is itself unnatural, despite Richardson's assertion that for him and his colleagues the word is a narratological term with connotations (393). And certainly he is right when he claims that they can deploy the cleansed of any position concerning any cultural practices, individual actions, or sexual preferences commonly designated as by society (393). But unnatural is wedded to natural, which in turn is wedded to nature. This connotation is much harder to strip away. That the label narratology was prompted by Monica Fludernik's Towards a Natural Narratology makes it even more difficult to accept as devoid of extranarrative connotations. Fludernik at least put in quotation marks, a cautionary move that Richardson has not made. Yet with or without quotation marks, unnatural misleads since what it applies to is entirely natural. In Unnatural Narrative, Richardson himself inadvertendy provided support for my point when he urged narratologists to follow the example of biologists who enthusiastically enlarge their field by including unusual, extraordinary, or minority types: After all, biologists are excited by the discovery of new forms of life and are eager to extend or expand their models to include them, as recently happened during the exploration of geothermal rifts deep in the Pacific Ocean along the ridges of undersea volcanoes, which led to the discovery of hitherto unknown life-forms. Needless to say, no biologist tried to minimize or discredit them by saying they were merely anti-biological forms or demanding the discoverers admit that such entities are extremely rare. (163-64) But neither, needless to say, would any biologist call those hitherto unknown life-forms unnatural. My case is that, just as those giant tube worms in the Pacific are an instance of the natural production of unexpected biological outliers, so the emergence of radical, antimimetic texts are instances of the natural production of unexpected narrative outliers. And just as the former process goes as far back as biology itself, so the production of strange antimimetic texts, as Richardson himself notes, goes back at least as far as ancient Sanskrit dramas (396). There is more than an analogy here between biology and the production of fictions. Both, I believe, share the same sequential evolutionary structure, dependent on a necessary process of variation and mutation. As Darwin showed, what we call species are in fact moving targets of ever-changing complexity, repeatedly throwing off variant forms, slight or extreme, that, enabled by a constant bricolage with the organic equipment they already have and the affordances available in the environment, evolve on their own or go extinct. In human beings, this flexibility increased by many orders of magnitude when we acquired the capability of abstract, symbolic thought and communication. At linguistic, social, and cultural levels, this capability has allowed us to adapt not only by maintaining a necessary order but also by creating opportunities for disorder. Disorder may be destructive, and seriously so, but it also creates possibilities and often does so out of destruction. This is our nature; it is what we do. If we are equipped with a need for order, we are also equipped with what Morse Peckham called a rage for chaos. (1) We enjoy messing with things--especially in the comparative safety of fiction, where we have been messing with fictive worlds since we began making them. In other words, the production of strange, impossible, antimimetic new works of fiction is natural. …

When the God Meets a Tribal Girl: Narasiṃha’s Second Marriage in the Light of the Vāsantikāpariṇayam

A widely diffused pattern of a recognized god who takes a second wife, usually local, has essentially articulated the acculturation of tribes or other spatially and socially separated groups. This motif has been discussed regarding South Indian literary traditions, where two brides are opposites in terms of origin, status and appearance, and a double marriage metaphor that aims at reconciliation of two distant spheres should be often contextualized within bhakti ideology. The motif of unconditional devotion of the additional wife to her husband is also closely connected to Vijayanagara politics: a local girl as a spouse may reflect the extension of both royal and spiritual power symbolized by the god. The present paper explores the strategy and purpose of the adaptive re-use of a vernacular legend from the area of Ahobilam about the love between Narasiṃha and a Cencū huntress, as extolled by the author of a Sanskrit drama entitled Vāsantikāpariṇayam.

Aesthetic Codification of the ‘Unsavoury’ from Nāṭyaśāstra and the Poetics to Postdramatic Theatre

In examining the notion of entelechy – defined by Aristotle as the ‘final cause’ in drama – Zornitsa Dimitrova shows that depictions of ‘unsavoury’ content are only justified insofar as they are part of larger networks of aesthetic codification. The unsavoury cannot be an end in itself; neither can it function as an aesthetic category in its own right. Rather, it is a means related to pathos, or suffering, in Greek tragedy and bībhatsa, the ‘odious sentiment’ of the Sanskrit drama. Within such networks of codification, the purpose of the unsavoury is to carry forward the drama to an emotionally uplifting end: katharsis in the Poetics and ananda in Nāṭyaśāstra. This purposiveness – already visible in the entelechial nature of the dramatic plot – relates to a concept of mimesis implicitly understood as a term actional and interactionist in character. But only with the emergence of postdramatic theatre and the dissolution of plot does the unsavoury begin to function as an aesthetic category in its own right. Zornitsa Dimitrova is a doctoral graduate of Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and holds degrees in Indology, Philosophy, and English Literature from the Universities of Sofia and Freiburg. Her research interests include performance and ritual studies, dramatic theory, and mimesis.

“Los orígenes del teatro” (Nāṭyopatti). Traducción anotada del primer libro del Nāṭyaśāstra

Se ofrece aquí una primera traducción al castellano, ricamente anotada, del primer libro del Nāṭyaśāstra, el gran tratado sobre dramaturgia sánscrita fechado hacia los siglos ii-iv de nuestra era. Titulado “Los orígenes del teatro” (Nāṭyopatti), el libro narra en clave mítica las circunstancias, razones y sucesos que llevaron a la creación del arte teatral. Entre otros aspectos, el texto destaca por la gran cantidad de tradiciones que en él convergen, así como por su retórica de integración, en buena medida reflejo de los profundos cambios que la cultura sánscrita experimentó durante los primeros siglos de la era común. En particular tiene el potencial de abrir un frente distinto en torno a la polémica sobre los orígenes del drama sánscrito, por encima de la usual dicotomía entre un origen védico-ritual y uno al margen del ritualismo brahmánico.

Studies in Kūṭiyāṭṭam : The Living Sanskrit Theatre of Kerala

From the vast literature of classical and medieval Sanskrit drama, only one tradition of live performance has survived—the intricate, elaborate, and refined art form known as Kūṭiyāṭṭam, still performed by a handful of families in central and southern Kerala on the south-west coast of India. To be precise : performances of Kūṭiyāṭṭam now tend to be truncated, reduced to two or three hours in a single night, as opposed to the full-length performances that would normally range from twelve hours to over 150 hours spread out over many days or nights. Since the older economic basis of the tradition in temple endowments has been lost, this art now competes in the open market with all other, modern forms, including contemporary cinema. Nonetheless, in recent years, under the aegis of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, full-length Kuṭiyāṭṭam productions by the Nepathya team of Mūḻikkuḷam have been re-introduced, and major parts of the classical repertoire are now once again amenable to viewing and study. An analytical study of the tradition must address a series of primary questions : Why have the performances, always limited to a single act of one of the classical texts, taken the strange shape we find today, with its central structural feature of imaginative retrospection (nirvahaṇam) ? What is the nature of the expressivity embodied in these complex performances ? Are there thematic unities at work ? How are we to understand the radical personalization of the character as presented to us over many hours on stage ? Can we define the peculiar, contrasting temporalities at work in these performances ? How is the Sanskrit text related to the immense expansion and exegesis that the actors generate ? What is the effect —cognitive, affective, aesthetic, sensual— upon the spectator of a performance that runs for 130 hours ? What is the aim of the actor as ritualist ?

Persuasion and myth in the origins of Sanskrit drama. Apropos of Nāṭyaśāstra's first book

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On the virtuality of translation in Orientalism

The relationship between translation and Orientalism is usually reduced to a binary distinction in which the Orient is either domesticated or foreignized in translation. In fact, translation in the context of Orientalism entails a more complex problem of representation that involves the positioning of agency and the reversal of power between Orientalists and local scholars. In order to offer an explanation of such a relationship, this article borrows from Edward W. Said the notions of the inside/outside paradox and “sufficiency” in Orientalist representation. Accordingly, translation in Orientalism is seen as the process of virtualization – it seeks to produce a version that is endowed with sufficient “virtue” to represent, or even replace, the original. The term “virtual” used in this article combines three senses derived from its etymology – power, virtue and potentiality. These three senses are seen as joining forces at work in the Orientalist translation. Virtuality also accounts for the manipulation that occurs when local scholars “translate back”, by pointing out the paradox they encounter when facing the challenge of representing themselves through translation. The translation of the Sanskrit drama Śakuntalā in nineteenth-century Europe will be discussed as a case of the virtualization process in Orientalist translation.

Tracking a devil in a textual maze

Viśākhadatta’s Mudrārākṣasa is somewhat unique among Sanskrit dramas in that its plot is concerned with political intrigue. Though the occurrence of certain stanzas of the Mudrārākṣasa in other (non-fiction) works has been noted even by early editors of the play, no attempt has yet been made to fully explore the textual interconnections of the play. The present paper attempts to sketch a map of the appearance of Mudrārākṣasa stanzas in anthologies of Sanskrit poetry. Such anthologies containing hundreds of well-phrased (subhāṣita) stanzas — collected from classical literature, but detached from their context and usually arranged in thematic chapters — made their appearance on the literary stage at the end of the 11th century and remain popular to the present day. Out of the total 175 stanzas of poetry in the Mudrārākṣasa, 18 occur in one or more major subhāṣita anthologies and other literary works. While 12 of these are probably indeed Viśākhadatta’s own compositions according to the testimony of the anth...

Playing Around with Śakuntalā: Translating Sanskrit Drama for Performance

This paper presents an argument for a particular approach to translating Sanskrit drama for an audience unfamiliar with the conventions of classical Indian theatre, such as rasa theory. It illustrates the approach through an analysis of a well-known verse in Act Four of Kālidāsa’s The Recognition of Śakuntalā.

John D. Mitchell

John Mitchell of the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Theatre Arts used his position in New York to draw awareness to theatres of style including jingju , Sanskrit drama, and kabuki. He invited masters of Asian traditional theatre to work with American artists, hoping to inculcate full appreciation of the power of stylized approaches to performance.

Like Father, Like Son: Poetic Strategies in "The Middle Brother" (Madhyama-vyāyoga) Attributed to Bhāsa

AbstractThe one-act Sanskrit drama Madhyama-vyāyoga or "The Middle Brother" attributed to Bhāsa describes an oedipal encounter between the Pāndava hero Bhīmasena and his half-demon son Ghatotkaca. The author utilizes subtle techniques of word choice and strategic repetition of key words, particularly sadrśa 'like, similar,' to hint at the underlying similarity of the superficially unlike pair. This keyword technique, which is found only sporadically in Sanskrit, is compared to similar techniques in other literatures, particularly the Leitwortstil characteristic of Biblical Hebrew.

Shakuntala: A Play by Kalidasa (review)

Reviewed by: Shakuntala: A Play by Kalidasa David Mason Shakuntala: A Play by Kalidasa. Directed by Betty Bernhard, Kailash Pandya, and Sasidharan Nair. Insight Media, 2004. DVD, $159. The latest Insight Media catalogue of non-Western drama identifies this program as an "Indian play produced in classic Natyshastra [sic] style," including "authentic music, dance, costumes, makeup, and mudras." Nowadays, scholars automatically chafe at the use of the word "authentic." Here, of course, the word is merely marketing-speak. There is no reason, therefore, to expect this program to fulfill the promise. However, the program itself affirms the assertion that this demonstrates classic Natyashastra staging, and this is a position subject to complications, which are not acknowledged. As an archival record of a college endeavor, the program fills its function, and it could be used by researchers to study and document the use of Asian techniques in Western theatre training, as we do learn of one project of intercultural theatre training and follow its choices of how Indian materials are adapted into a college-based theatre arts program. But, as a pedagogical resource that gives precise insight into the debate around Sankrit drama, the program lacks depth and clarity, and this limits its usability. This is not to impugn the artists involved in this adaptation project and the performance itself. My concern here is with the weaknesses of the video reproduction and presentation of the artists' work. The artistic value of the production, not to mention the efforts and accomplishments of the performers, is poorly represented by this package. This two-disk program includes both a record of the ninety-minute production of Shakuntala at Pomona College and a thirty-minute "Production [End Page 536] Casebook" that combines comments from the directors and designers with brief glimpses of actor training and rehearsals. This casebook provides an effective overview of the many basic things necessary to bring a play to the stage: design ideas, set construction, directorial collaboration, long rehearsals, and so on. The casebook also offers a sense of the unique things college productions often require: guest artists, ad hoc actor training, intercultural investigations, and patient audiences. Such a casebook, however, may have been equally valuable concerning nearly any such production. It is on the representation of scholarly concerns that this introductory material is weak. The casebook does not tell us what the Natyashastra is, what its (possible) relationship is with the play Shakuntala, what interpretive method the directors have adopted in order to use the Natyashastra for this production, nor, indeed, what performance style from India provides the frame of reference for the production. The casebook's scenes of training and rehearsal seem to privilege kathakali performance, but the casebook fails to identify kathakali, asserting only that the production was concerned with, as Pandya states it, "Natyashastra style." Neglecting to distinguish between the Natyashastra and kathakali—the former a text from around 400 ce, and the latter a performance practice continuing from the eighteenth century—fails to teach something substantive about the content of the Natyashastra, its relationship to the play in question, and its role in theatrical practice today. Consequently, the usefulness of this video program as a tool to study the Natyashastra or how it operated in the play Shakuntala is limited. The directors' comments included in the casebook could have provided clarification of these issues. However, the program's editing limits these comments to a few sentences at a time, intercut with scenes of rehearsals and training, thus undermining any sustained continuity of thought. As a result, even for an introductory module, the program fails to provide a substantive explanation of the play in question and of these performers' methods. Betty Bernhard concedes that the company found it very hard to "figure out . . . [Shakuntala's] movement vocabulary," but the editing does not permit her to explain that it is not at all clear that the composition of Shakuntala subscribed to the elaborate movement theory of the Natyashastra—a point essential to the rationale for staging Shakuntala in a Sanskrit drama style. Although the program's titles introduce one short segment as "The Nine Rasa," only eight distinct ideas are, in fact, demonstrated by Sasidharan Nair in the...

In the Eyes of the Beholder: ‘Seeing More’ into the Erotic Vision of Romeo & Julian

Male erotic video (gay pornography), an influential cultural practice in the US, reflects White queer society's strategy of curtailing Asian American sexual subjectivity by positioning us as invisible on one hand, and as exotic sex objects on the other. Romeo & Julian, an all-White video by Desi (South Asian American) director Sam Abdul, demonstrates how a Desi queer male subjectivity might be enabled in ways that look beyond visibility, by expressing a Desi sensibility instead. I persuasively read this video ‘against the grain’ in light of Hindi film conventions and their origins in Sanskrit drama, in order to display its continuity with South Asian traditions of performance and same-sex love. The covert nature of Abdul's Desi address allows the video to circumvent the marginalisation or racialised objectification that an overtly Desi video would have been subjected to.

On the use of rasa in studies of Sanskrit drama

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Dramatic Concepts, Greek and Indian: A Study of the Poetics and the Nāṭyaśāstra by Bharat Gupt

Reviews Bharat Gupt. Dramatic Concepts, Greek and Indian: A Study of the Poetics and the Nätyasästra. New Delhi: D. K Print World, 1994. Pp. xvii + 295. $28.00 (U.S. Distributor: South Asia Books). Although it is rare to find a comparative treatment of Greek and Sanskrit drama as thoughtful and passionate as this one, students of classical Indian theater will recognize a familiar topic in the title. It is natural to want to see how two great ancient cultures that produced both a body of dramatic theory and a limited number of extant plays can shed light on each other. When the comparative study comes from the Indian side, or from a cultural fellow-traveler (such as myself), there is often an additional motivation. When colonial administrators introduced the British literature curriculum into Indian schools and universities in the last century, the plays and dramatic theory of ancient Greece became central to the project of establishing the superiority of European civilization , not to mention the modes of justice, democracy, and tragic selfawareness that have supposedly descended from the Greeks to form the modem state and the free individuals who populate it. Goethe's rapturous praise of Kälidäsa's Säkuntala notwithstanding, British critics even into the years between the two World Wars (of course, the era of most vigorous agitation for independence) could not bring themselves to appreciate the beauties of Sanskrit drama without reminding readers that deeply rooted patterns of religion and political culture prevented those plays from reaching the profundity of Western tragedy. Indians (mostly Sanskrit-knowing brahmins) educated abroad or in Englishmedium Indian universities found themselves defending the value of their own classical heritage and its expression in the "national character" through different readings of the same texts characterized by British critics as void of true conflict and cosmic testing. Even after Independence, with the departure of the British and the new attention to vernacular and non-Sanskrit literatures, the "question of tragedy" has not disappeared. But more broadly there has remained a sense of mission among certain Indian artists and intellectuals, a yearning to explain and promote the brilliant and complex dramatic theories in Sanskrit and the frustratingly few specimens of the plays themselves. But whereas the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles and the ideas of Aristotle are known even to many outside the field of literature, the dramas of Kälidäsa and Bhavabhüti and the dramatic theory of Bharatamuni and Abhinavagupta are still exotic to some Western students even of comparative drama. And so a work of comparison must also be a work of explanation. Bharat Gupt, a Professor of English, an expert in Indian music, and a man of the theater (as his name proclaims), is well qualified to undertake this comparison. Those familiar with the texts under consideration will see that the author is indeed effective in the presentation of his material. 459 460 Comparative Drama In the introduction to Dramatic Concepts Greek and Indian, Gupt asserts that examining genres cross-culturally "can only lead to dead ends" because literary genres are culturally and historically unique; instead, "a comparison of performance modes is likely to be more illuminative ." In a way, then, Gupt is asking us to disjoin the performative aspects of the these theaters from their historical embeddedness, and this may be problematic for many. Gupt's fundamental notion about these two ancient theaters is that they constitute sacred action, which he has chosen to call "hieropraxis." The ritual impulse that brought them into being ensured they would develop with text, music, dance, and visual effects intertwined; thus our long tradition of approaching the works of these theaters as texts, Gupt maintains (and most would agree), is at least impoverished and perhaps misguided. Gupt returns repeatedly to the notion of the unsplintered channel of combined theatrical elements in a total theater which points toward sacred meaning. One of the book's strengths is the detailed comparative description of the ritual roots of theater in the Indo-European cultures of ancient Greece and India, though this description is often subjected to the torsion of Gupt's views, some of which are anachronistic: "For the Indians the...