...

and run by the Government. Immediately the efficiency of the service fell. . . . The decrease in efficiency in consequence of Government ownership is found elsewhere. I visited Australia some years ago; and the telephone system, which was in the hands of the Government, could not be compared to ours in America. I am afraid that the comparatively low state of efficiency in this country as compared with our system in the United States must be attributed to Government ownership.'

Dr Bell is not a business man but a man of science, who retired from active participation in the American telephone company many years ago. His condemnation of Government management is therefore not caused by personal reasons. He is, as regards the Bell System, merely a distinguished outsider.

An efficient telephone is indispensable in modern business life. The facts, figures, and opinions given in this article show that America is far ahead of Great Britain with regard to that important invention because the Republic has not allowed its telephone system to be first strangled and then to be managed by the bureaucracy. It seems hopeless to expect that a Government Department will be able to give to this country the telephone which it needs. The only way to create a cheap and efficient service lies, apparently, in handing it over to private management. The Government should merely reserve to itself the minimum of supervision. Then, and then only, will England obtain an up-to-date service. That is the lesson of the American telephone.

J. ELLIS BARKER,

Art. 7.-THE ORIGIN OF HINDU SERIOUS DRAMA.

1. Le Théâtre Indien. By Sylvain Lévi. Paris: Bouillon, 1890.

2. The Castes and Tribes of Southern India. By Edgar Thurston. Seven vols. Government Press, Madras, 1909. 3. Hindu Holidays and Ceremonials. Second edition. By B. A. Gupte. Calcutta: Thacker, 1919.

4. Some Milestones in the History of Tamil Literature. By A. P. Sundaram Pillai. Madras: Addison, 1895.

5. Historical Sketches of Ancient Dekkan. By K. V. Subrahmanya Aiyar. Madras: Modern Printing Works,

1917.

And other works.

THE evidence set forth already in my 'Dramas and Dramatic Dances of Non-European Races' (Indian Section), derived from medieval and modern dramatic performances, led to the conclusion that in Hindustan the serious drama, historical and tragic, did not arise merely in the worship of Krishna, whether regarded as a deity from all time, or as a vegetation abstraction, as held by Prof. A. Berriedale Keith, but as in other regions-Burma, China, Japan, and Greece-from the worship and propitiation of the dead. That the vast majority of all those whom the Hindus adore as gods were once human beings and, in not a few instances, very important historical personages, has been proved long since by Sir Alfred Lyall, while Hindu tradition emphatically declares that such was certainly the case with Rama, Krishna, and many other well-known deities. The evidence which has since come to hand (for which I am mainly indebted to my friends Dr L. D. Barnett, Keeper of Oriental Printed Books and MSS, British Museum, and to the late Dr J. D. Anderson, Lecturer in Bengali at Cambridge, and through him to Pandit Dinesh Chandra Sen, the chief native authority on the history of Bengali literature) will demonstrate how little regard has been paid by Sanskrit scholars to crucial facts in ancient literature and the monuments existing in Indian temples, while it will be seen that practically no account has been taken by European students of the actual dances and dramatic performances carried

on at this hour in hundreds of Hindu shrines throughout the Peninsula.

In 1892 M. Sylvain Lévi✶ suggested that the cult of Krishna formed the chief element in Hindu drama; and since that time the overthrow by Krishna of his uncle Kansa, mentioned in Mahabhashya (a work not earlier than B.C. 160), has been cited as the earliest evidence for Hindu dramatic performances. Yet there is a whole treatise devoted to the drama, the date of which is certainly not later than that of the Mahabhashya, while possibly it is even earlier, since scholars agree in placing it in the second century B.C. Mr Haraprased † has given an account of this work, known as Bharata-natya-sastra (Bharata's Treatise on Drama), and the origin of the drama there set forth. In the second age of Vaivasvata Manu, men became miserable, so Indra and other gods prayed to Brahma for something to benefit all. He summoned together the Four Vedas and by their aid, a Fifth Veda (Drama) came into existence. A renowned sage, by name Bharata, asked Brahma to let him and his sons perform the new Veda. Brahma replied: 'The ceremony of raising the flagstaff of Indra is at hand; show your skill in the ceremony.' The sage and his sons accordingly performed a drama representing the incidents of the great battle in which Indra defeated the Asuras or Demons. Strange as it may seem, Krishna is not even mentioned in this first dramatic performance, and is not even among the gods who are enumerated at considerable length as being associated with the building of the first theatre.

As the Jarjara or Flagstaff of Indra had been used hy that god with signal effect upon the Asuras in the great battle, it became henceforth the emblem of the stage. It might be of any kind of wood, but was usually of bamboo covered with cloths of different colours. This pole, by its connexion both with a god and with drama, recalls that called by the Chinese Gohei (Imperial Presence), and by the Japanese Mitegura (Lordly Clothseat), which represents the tree planted over the dead with the offerings of cloth and other

* Le Théâtre Indien,' pp. 237 sqq.

'Journ. Beng. As. Soc.,' vol. v (1909–10), pp. 351 sqq.

objects hung on its branches. One of these stands before the shrine of each Japanese god; it is supposed to attract the spirit and is regarded as the seat of the god and even as the god himself.* In the great epic of the Mahabharata (Adp. 63), we learn that King Vasu was told to set up a bamboo pole adorned with garments and with it to perform the worship of Indra, while the same poem states that this worship is for the material welfare of the people; and this is still the belief. Poles of this kind are still often erected at Hindu festivals. Mr J. J. Meyer says that the worship is performed on the 11th day of the bright fortnight of the month (ie. when there is a moon) to ensure good crops and general prosperity; and he cites from an ancient Jain source a vivid account of such a ceremony:

'Then amid loud and auspicious cries of joy the standard of Indra was raised, flagged with white banners, adorned with a great multitude of rattles and little bells, covered with suspended beautiful wreaths and garlands, decorated with a string of jewels, decked with a pendant mass of various fruits. Then the Nautch girls danced; poetic compositions by good poets were sung; the multitude of men danced; juggler's tricks that bewildered the eyes were seen, and betel and other things were given to the juggler; a great deal of camphor, saffron, and water was thrown. Great gifts were given, drums and other instruments were sounded.'

It will be noted that this is very like the modern Holi festival, of which an excellent description is given by J. C. Oman.‡ But what is more important for our purpose is the connexion of the pole with dramatic performances, as is proved by the Bharata-natya-sastra, and is closely paralleled in Burma and Japan.

That the vast majority of Hindu deities were once human beings there can be no doubt. A passage in the Rig-Veda (x, 129) is probably the earliest evidence for this, while it is fully confirmed by a passage in the Satapatha Brahmana,§ which recounts the method by

* Ridgeway, 'The Dramas and Dramatic Dances,' pp. 211, 297-8, 393.

+ Hindu Tales,' p. 143 (London, Luzac & Co., 1909).

Brahmans, Theists, and Muslims of India'; see also the same writer's 'Indian Life,' pp. 73 sqq.

§ 'Sacred Books of the East,' vol. XLIII, p. 336. Cf. Manu (Sacred Books of the East,' vol. xxv, p. 112, sect. 201): From the sages sprang

which the 'gods' obtained immortality, thus plainly showing that originally they had been mere mortals.

It has been shown in my 'Dramas and Dramatic Dances' that the ceremonials practised at the sowing season in order to ensure good crops are regularly directed to ancestral spirits, and that those after the ingathering of the crops consist of offerings of firstfruits to the spirits in gratitude for the harvest and to propitiate them for the coming year. Thus in China * all the four great seasonal sacrifices were and are offered to the ancestors, those of spring and harvest being the most important. So, too, in ancient Greece the great spring festival at Athens, the Anthesteria, was mainly concerned with offerings to the dead in connexion with the sowing, while the Eleusinia, held in September, was simply a great Harvest Thanksgiving, when the firstfruits of corn, or victims purchased with the first-fruits, were offered to Demeter, Persephone, Triptolemus, Eubulus and Athena, and other dead.

As might be expected, India yields a good example of similar practices. The great Holi festival at the spring equinox is connected with the wheat harvest in Western India, and is celebrated by the masses with all sorts of orgies. Tradition ascribes its origin to a giantess slain by Krishna, who when dying asked to have a festival called by her name. As this tradition implies, it is undoubtedly bound up with death ceremonies, since some of its chief features, such as the lighting of the bonfire before the house and the sound produced by beating the mouth with the back of the hand, form part of the cremation ceremony all over India.† Most significant is it that at this festival among the Marathas proper the vir, i.e. the warriors who died on the battlefield, are danced' by their descendants, who go round the fire with drawn swords until they get into a frenzy or believe themselves to be inspired by the spirits of the heroes. No one lights a bonfire until the Rajah lights that at the palace. Then the festivities begin. The prescriptive right of lighting the chief bonfire of the

the manes, from the manes the gods and the Danavas, but from the gods the whole world, both the movable and the immovable in due order.' * Ridgeway, 'Quarterly Review,' April 1919.

† Gupte, 'Hindu Holidays and Ceremonials,' pp. 88-9 (edit. 2).