

278 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XIII, 



Kamsa's Luck out of the palace. The lord of Evil goes so far 

 in his rage as to kill a new-born girl, the daughter of Nandagopa, 

 who had been substituted for the baby Krishna. But out of 

 the child's blood rises in awful grandeur Kartyayani, the 

 goddess of Nemesis. Filling the sky with her terrible form, 

 surrounded by her powerful weapons, she pronounces the death 



sentence over Kamsa. 



The Western parallel to this drama are the mediaeval mys- 

 teries of Christ and His struggle with Satan. It would not 

 have entered the mind of those mediaeval poets to apply to 

 the divine figure of the Saviour the ordinary psychological 

 methods of the dramatist. No more can we expect an Indian 

 author to show us other sides of his divine hero than perfection 

 and omnipotence. It is therefore not surprising that we do not 

 find the intimate psychology of Vasavadatta, Duryodhana, 

 or even Kama. The struggle between Good and Evil that 

 goes on in the soul of man and forms the basis of all dramatic 

 psychology, has been lifted up in " Balacaritram " into the 

 realms of metaphysics and religion. The first two Acts give 

 us a grand exposition of the eternal antagonism between the 

 two moral forces that rule our actions. 



I have tried to point out and to illustrate with some ex- 

 amples several poetical qualities common to all the dramas 

 which are meanwhile ascribed to Bhasa. These features are 

 dramatic force, depth of psychology and simplicity of ex- 

 pression. In dramatic force he can be compared with Shakes- 

 peare or the Greek tragedians ; in psychological subtlety he is 

 almost modern; his simplicity of expression puts him distinctly 

 on a different plane than Kalidasa and his followers. It may 

 be that for the first two qualities he has been hailed with great 

 enthusiasm by Western scholars, whereas some Indian scholars 

 whose taste has been trained on the elegance and elaborateness 

 of the "Kavyas" seem to take amiss the simplicity of our 

 author's style and deem it unfinished and rather vulgar. 



Mr. Ganapati Sastri's discovery has put one more im- 

 portant problem before the historian of Indian literature. 

 The question, who is the author of these dramas and in which 

 period they were written, has not yet been solved. The few 

 attempts hitherto made to come nearer the solution of this 

 interesting problem have been based on a few quotations 

 taken from various sources and he longing to vastly different 

 periods. The same material has led to absolutely contradicting 

 results. This is only natural as quotations generally prove 

 everything and nothing. We might pe haps come a little 

 nearer the solution of our problem bv applying the ordinary 

 methods of literary history 



Each drama, or rather each group of dramas, will have to 

 he considered by itself as well as in connection with the remain- 

 ing ones ; thus an attempt should be made to solve the two 



