Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus: Translated from the Original Sanskrit [2 Volumes]
Horace Hayman Wilson, Select specimens of the theatre of the Hindus: Translated from the original Sanskrit, London: Parbury, Allen and Co., 1835, 2 Volumes
Volume I: [4], lxxi + 384 pages, half title
Volume II: [4], 415 pages
Rebound half leather bound with green leather title ticket pasted at the spine along with gilt text (each)
9 x 6 in (22.8 x 15.2 cm) (each)
Several major Sanskrit plays, including Shudraka's Mrcchakatika (The Toy Cart), Kalidasa's Vikramrvayam (Vikrama and Ursavi, or the Hero and the Nymph), and Bhavabhuti's Malamitmadhava (Málati and Mádhava, or the Stolen Marriage), can be found in their first English translations in Horace Hayman Wilson's two-volumes Select specimens of the theatre of the Hindus.
These plays were not all created at the same time and have little in common in terms of structure or substance. It is the equivalent of an Anglophone drama anthology featuring Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, and Samuel Beckett. It is the equivalent of such an anthology if we ignore Wilson's unmistakably imperialist desire to "to secure the Hindu Theatre a place in English literature" - as if Hindu Theatre, like India as a whole, were to be absorbed, amoeba-like, into the English world. The book even includes a dedication to King George as a "patron of oriental literature" (whatever that means) and the declared goal of "familiarising his British people with the habits and sentiments of their fellow subjects in the East." On the surface, this is a sincere attempt at understanding and empathy, but it has a darker undertone - to familiarise to gain control.
Nonetheless, Select Specimens offers an approachable introduction to a period of history that Western readers are still unfamiliar with. Wilson, the first Boden chair of Sanskrit at Oxford, gives extensive information on the composition and cultural context of each of the tragedies, which he translates with incredible nineteenth-century fluency, making wonderful use of every English term from "alas! to "zounds!". He even offers synopses of twenty-three more plays (some of which have still not been translated into English).
Of the three modalities of theatrical depiction in Sanskrit - Nátya, Nritya, and Nritta - Wilson’s specimens are, he tells us, all Nátya, “being defined to be gesticulation with language,” whereas the Nritya “is gesticulation without language, or pantomime; and the Nritta is simple dancing.”
Most Wilson's genre plays are love romances with convoluted narratives. The Toy Cart, a fifth-century comedy about a love triangle involving a poor young Brahmin, a courtesan, and the vulgar courtier who interferes with their affair, is full of outrageous humour and melodrama, inspiring several successful Western adaptations (including one by the French poet Gérard de Nerval). As the subtitle implies, the fourth century Vikrama and Ursavi, or the Hero and the Nymph, is similarly the narrative of a turbulent love affair — this time between the king Pururavas and the heavenly nymph Ursavi. (The Vikrama of the title, contrary to widespread belief, does not relate to a character, but to "valour."). Málati and Mádhava, or the Stolen Marriage, from the eighth century, has the most bizarre storyline, including both sorcery and human sacrifice.
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