incurably loath to believe that the Asiatic genius can be original or vigorously creative outside the sphere of religion.
In obedience to this3 [incomplete]Sri Aurobindo
Early Cultural Writings
(1890 — 1910)
Part Two. On Literature
The Poetry of Kalidasa
Hindu Drama [1]
The origin of the Sanscrit drama, like the origin of all Hindu arts and sciences, is lost in the silence of antiquity; and there one might be content to leave it. But European scholarship abhors a vacuum, even where Nature allows it; confronted with a void in its knowledge, it is always ready to fill it up with a conjecture and this habit of mind while it has led to many interesting discoveries, has also fostered a spirit of fantasy and dogmatism in fantasy, which is prejudicial to sane and sober thinking. Especially in the field of Sanscrit learning this spirit has found an exceptionally favourable arena for the exercise of its ingenuity; for here there is no great body of general culture and well-informed lay opinion to check the extravagances to which a specialised knowledge is always prone. Undaunted therefore by the utter silence of history on the question, European scholars have set about filling up the void with theories which we are asked or rather bidden to accept not as ingenious scholastic playthings, but as serious solutions based upon logical and scientific deduction from convincing internal evidence. It is necessary for reasons I shall presently touch on to cast a cursory glance at the most important of these attempts.
The first thought that would naturally suggest itself to an average European mind in search of an origin for Hindu drama is a Greek parentage.
The one great body of original drama prior to the Hindu is the Greek; from Greece Europe derives the beginnings of her civilization in almost all its parts; and especially in poetry, art and philosophy.
And there was the alluring fact that Alexander of Macedon had entered India and the Bactrians established a kingdom on the banks of the Indus before the time of the earliest extant Hindu play.
To the European mind the temptation to build upon this1 coincidence a2 theory was irresistible, more especially as it has always been incurably loath to believe that the Asiatic genius can be original or vigorously creative outside the sphere of religion.
In obedience to this3 [incomplete]
Earlier edition of this work: Archives and Research: A biannual journal.- Volume 2, No1 (1978, April)
1 A&R, 1978 No1: to weave this
2 A&R, 1978 No1: into a
3 This last incomlete sentence is absent in the A&R, 1978 No1