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CHAPTER - I

INTRODUCTION

(The Evolution of Drama in English)

As an expression of our national genius, Indian drama, with its long

history of 2000 years, is a unique phenomenon in the literary world. But in

reality, the bifurcation of the evolution of Indian Drama in English and

Sanskrit makes us to understand that Indian Drama in English has a history

as old as literature in English. It is pertinent to observe that Indian Sanskrit

Drama inspite of its long history cannot be a part of Indian Drama in

English. Though Indian Literary critics and analysts try their best in

establishing corroboration between Sanskrit Drama and the so called

Classical Greek Dramas, Indian Drama in English has completely evolved

in the light of 20th Century National consciousness, modernism and other

literary influences.

Sanskrit Drama is the evolution from the Rig Veda, imitation from

Yajur Veda, melody from Sama Veda and aesthetic flavour from Atharva

Veda. Indian drama came into being as subtle means of communicating

the truth of things. It was rightly hailed as „pancham Vedam‟ and the

culmination of „natakam Ramyam‟. Having thus came into existence as

the „Fifth Veda‟ Indian Sanskrit Drama was meant to promote the

fulfillment of all the four “purusharthas” (aims of life – „dharma‟ (the

good), „artha‟ (the useful), „kama‟ (the beautiful), and „moksha‟ (the truth).

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In the words of K.R.Srinivas Iyengar Indian Sanskrit drama was expected

to: “comprehend whole arc of life, ranging from the material the spiritual,

the phenomenal to the transcendent, and provide at once relaxation and

entertainment, instruction and illumination.” (Drama in Modern India. 1)

However, as a genre, Sanskrit drama is essentially romantic in its

impulsion and expression. And, with its predilection for comedy, it

generally concludes on a note of peace and quietude. The emotional

impact of the play on the audience normally settles down into a condition

of aesthetic delectation and purposive repose. It is not concerned with

mere realism in incident and character, nor preoccupied with the outer

forms of appearance. It geared to strive through shadow, symbol and

gesture to reach at the truth behind the appearance. Thus, “a long

discipline, a world of symbolism, a whole crowd of conversations

interpreting and enveloping them, and a philosophy of life and art gave this

ancient drama an individuality and beauty and power all its own” (Drama

in Modern India. 2).

It is with this intellectual and emotional background that we must

trace the evolution of Indian drama – its origin, growth and development

through the ages. As indicated the origin of Indian drama can be traced

back to the Vedic period. The dramatic tradition of the ancient Hindus

may be said to have been fully formed even before Greek dramas came to

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their knowledge. It is clear that the Hindus of over 2000 years ago had

their own theory of drama and that their dramatic practice avoided both the

severe austerity of Greek tragedy and the opulent extravagance of the

ancient Chinese drama.

Bharata‟s Natyashastra in Sanskrit elaborately discusses the ancient

stagecraft. All aspects of the drama – stage-setting, music, plot

construction, characterization, dialogue and acting have borne the close

critical scrutiny of the author, and a set of rules to guide the conduct of the

stage has been elaborately laid down. Bharata felt that poetic justice where

good always triumphs over evil would implant a message of hope and

optimism in the spectator and make his faith in ethics deepened. He

further held that the total impression left on the mind of the spectators of a

play should be one of peace and not merely a source of entertainment, but

a vehicle of instruction and illumination.

The works of Bhasa, Shudraka, Kalidasa, Harsha, Bhavabhuti and

Vishakahadatta are the products of vigorous creative energy as well as

sustained technical excellence. The golden age of Sanskrit drama could

give equal impetus to social comedies like the Mricchakatika and

melodramas like the Malathimadhhava, romantic tragic comedies like

Shakuntala and heroic plays like Venisamhara, historical plays like

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Mudrarakshasa and romantic comedies like Ratnavali, allegorical plays

like Prabhodachandrodaya and satirical farces like Mattavilasaprahasana.

Bhasa is the oldest known dramatist who might have flourished

some time between 500 BC and 50 BC, a period certainly earlier than that

of the celebrated grammarian, Panini. Of the thirty-five plays he is said to

have written; only thirteen have come to light. Later playwrights like

Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti distinctly bear the imprint of Bhasa‟s dramatic

style. The supreme achievement of Indian drama is undoubtedly in

Kalidasa who is often called the Shakespeare of India. Though he does not

have the range and variety of Shakespeare, he has given the world a

profound spiritual vision of life. His magnum opus, Abhijnana

Shakuntala, is said to be the richest and most completely satisfying

romantic drama. Bhavabhuti turned out dramatic poems rather than stage

lays. His Mahaviracharita, Malatimadhava and Uaramacharita, reveal

the “Poet‟s maturity of mind, a sense of workmanship, and acute

understanding of human mind, and some of the deep values of life.”(3)

The Sanskrit drama flourished in its glory under the patronage of the

court and the aristocracy till the 12th

century when the Mohammedan

intrusion shifted the Sanskrit stage. The glory of Sanskrit drama became a

thing of the past when it was divorced from the stage. Instead of poets,

„pandits‟ took to playwright and produced works on the stock epic themes

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in a conventional way. The decadent drama distanced itself from life in its

sophisticated setting, stereotyped characters and artificial diction.

Vidyanatha‟s play, Prataparudrakalyana, provides a patent example of the

virtual death of the ancient Indian drama.

After the Sanskrit drama ceased to be acted and was read only as

literature, the theatre of the people flourished for many centuries and

catered to the Indian masses. The old splendor and fullness of drama was

gone, but people still needed relaxation and entertainment. As a result,

music, dance and drama survived in varying forms in different parts of

India – Bengal, Kerala, Tamilnadu, Andhra, Karnataka, Gujarat as also in

North India. The „jatras‟ of Bengal, the folk plays of Tamilnadu like

Satharam and Nallathangal, the „yakshaganas‟ of Andhra and Karnataka,

the „Kathakali of Kerala, the „Kirtaniya‟ of Mithila, the „Bhavani‟ of

Gujarat and the Ramila plays of North India took place instilling their

meaning into the sub-conscious of the race, and penetrating to the very

backbone of the people‟s art and morality. These variegated forms of

entertainment had but little merit as literature, but they conveyed to the

people the essentials of Indian culture. Above all, as K.S.Ramaswamy

Sastri observes: “they formed a transition from the classical Sanskrit drama

to the modern Indian drama and had some influence on the evolution of the

latter. ”(4)

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It was only after British set up their regime in India that the crippled

Indian drama received new strength and witnessed a revival. As Krishna

Kriplani points out, the modern Indian drama: “owed its first flowering to

foreign grafting” (Literature if Modern India. 40) with the impact of

Western civilization on Indian life, a new renaissance dawned on Indian

arts including drama. Furthermore, English education gave an impetus and

a momentum to the critical Indian drama. English and Italian dramatic

troupes toured India and performed many English plays, mainly

Shakespeare‟s, in cities like Bombay and Madras.

The newly awakened creative efforts first took the form of

translations and adaptations from Sanskrit and English drama. Kalidasa‟s

Shakuntala was translated into quite a few regional languages.

Mrichchakatika was translated into Maithili by Ishanatha Jha and

Ratnavali into sindhi by Dewan Kauromal. Shakespeare was naturally the

most sought after, and among his plays the frequently translated or adopted

were Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Othello and

Cymbeline. To cite but a few examples Viresalingam Pantulu‟s rendering

of All is well That Ends Well came out in 1897, a Tamil adaptation of

Cymbeline in 1898, and a Bengali edition of Shakespeare‟s plays in four

volumes was issued between 1896 and 1902. K.S.Ramaswami Sastri

translated A Midsummer Night‟s Dream into Sanskrit. Apart from

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Shakespeare‟s plays, Goldsmith‟s She Stoops to Conquer was a favourite

play among Indian translators.

The Western impact also quickened the drying roots of Indian native

tradition with the sap of a new life, thereby opening the exciting chapter of

modern Indian drama written originally in vernaculars, and at times,

translated into English. By the end of 19th century there were pioneering

efforts boldly employing the mother tongue for creative dramatic

expression. The earlier dramatists from different regions of the country

tried their hand at different forms-romance, opera, comedy, farce, tragedy,

melodrama and historical play. As a result, the modern Indian drama was

product and blend of many models and forces. When old puranic themes

were handled, various approaches – the reformist, the revivalist, the

idealistic, the iconoclastic, the frivolous and the allegorical – were tried.

To mention the most representative plays written in regional languages, we

have Khadilkar‟s mythological play Keechala Vadha in Marathi,

Lakshminath Bezbarua and Gohain Barua‟s historical play Jaymati in

Assamese, Amant‟s opera Inder sabha in Hindi, Ram Shankar Ray‟s

Kanchi-Kaveri in Oriya, Gurajada Apparao‟s social play Kanyasulkam in

Telugu, T.P.Kailasam‟s Tollu-gatti in Kannada, Sundaram Pillai‟s Poetic

drama Manonmaniyam in Tamil and Tagore‟s symbolic poetic plays like

Chitra, Sacrifice, Mukta Dhara, Red Oleanders, and The Post Office in

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Bengali now quite familiar to us in English Rendering. Though most of

these plays convey the renaissance of Drama in the regional languages of

India, they were subjected to the tremendous influence of Marxism,

psychoanalysis, and the symbolist and surrealist movements which is a

common factor across the world.

While the theatre movement in the Indian languages had already

gathered momentum under the influence mainly of British drama, Indian

Drama in English could not flourish on expected lines. Though the first

Indian play in English, Is this civilization?, was written by Michael

Madhusudan Dutt as early as in 1871 it was not followed up by any

sustainable creative effort for almost a decade. There are plausible reasons

for the arrested growth of Indian English drama. Unlike poetry and novel,

drama is a composite art that involves the playwright, the actor and the

audience in a commonly shared artistic experience. This calls for total

commitment of the persons concerned to create a lasting impact.

Moreover, since the normal medium of conversation in India is the mother

tongue, it is difficult to make a dialogue between Indians in English sound

natural and convincing. This difficulty, however, has been overcome to a

considerable degree by some talented Indian English dramatists by

carefully choosing the situations and language that appealed to every

section of the society.

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Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, T.P.Kailasam, A.S.P.Ayyar,

Lobo-Prabhu, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya and Bharathi Sarabhai have

contributed substantially to the evolution and development of Indian

English drama during the pre independent times. Rabindranath Tagore

was the first major playwright who invested Indian drama in English with

lyrical excellence, symbolic overtones and allegorical significance. His

best known plays are Sacrifice, Chitra, Mukta Dhara, The Post Office, The

King of the Dark Chamber and Red Oleanders. They have displayed a

unique blend of simplicity, complexity conventionality and modernity.

Though his plays are great variety and richness, they tend to be too

suggestive and symbolic thereby lacking in dramatic action. In the words

of Edward Thompson they are “vehicles of thought rather than expressions

of action.” (Rabindranath Tagore Poet & Dramatist. 51) However,

Tagore‟s plays though rendered into English, often by the author himself,

belong properly to Bengali drama.

Sri Aurobindo inherited and carried forward the tradition of

Elizabethan poetic drama of Marlowe and Shakespeare revived by Robert

Bridges and Stephen Philips in the Victorian era. His dramatic genius is

amply revealed in his five complete plays: Pursues, Vasavadutta,

Rodogune, the Viziers of Bassara and Eric. All these plays were

completely written originally in English. Eric is a comedy of love and

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adventure showing various stages of love. The play has established man‟s

kinship with his fellow human beings and universe at large. Eric is Sri

Aurobindo‟s nearest approach to the classical form of drama and it has

subscribed to the Classical rules of Drama to the complete extent. A study

of the five plays of Sri Aurobindo reveals that he is a highly competent

dramatist and an accomplished craftsman in verse. They are stepped in

rich poetry and romance bringing the reminiscences of the spirit and

flavour some of the distinctive Sanskrit Dramas, All the same, they are

often labeled as „closed drama‟ designed for reading in the study.

Nevertheless, the plays reveal Aurobindo‟s exquisite skill in the portrayal

of characters. S.S.Kulkarni in The Plays of Sri Aurobindo: Perspectives on

Indian Drama in English has observed that Aurobindo has created “an

extremely interesting men and women by developing psychological

element which endows his plays with inexhaustible human interest and

significance.” (7).

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya added a new dimension to Indian

English drama with his leftist leaning and revolutionary deal. If his

devotional plays – Raidas, Chokha Mela, Pundalik, Saku Bai, Jayadeva

and Tukaram – deal with the lives of saints in his own characteristic way,

his social plays 1937, The Window, The parrot, The Coffin, The Evening

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Lamp and The Sentry‟s Lantern – reveal the playwright‟s acute awareness

of social problems and his innate sympathies for the suffering masses.

Bharati Sarabhai is the first most distinguished woman dramatist,

who gave a Gandhian touch to Indian English drama. Her first play The

Well of the People (1949) upholds Gandhi‟s well-known doctrine „Daridra

Narayana‟ (worship of the poor as God). An old widow, the protagonist of

the play, who fails to go on a pilgrimage to Haridwar, decides to build a

well with her savings for the untouchables of her village. S.Mokeshi

Punekar has appreciated the lyrical play as the representation of the

problems of the age: “probably the only articulate work of literary art

giving complete expression to the Gandhian age… flawlessly executed

with the fullest awareness of all the problems.” (Perspectives on Indian

Drama in English 129) Sarabhai‟s second play Two Women (1952)

dramatizes the conflict between tradition and modernity, the material and

the spiritual, driving home the point that God is within.

Quite a few contemporary playwrights have made a significant

contribution to the development of Indian English drama. The foremost

among them is Nissim Ezekiel, a well-established Indian English poet who

has also enriched Indian English drama. His Three Plays (1969) Nalini,

The Sleep-Walkers and Song of Deprivation, have exposed the hollowness

of the urban middle-class life, fickleness of modern lovers, greedy

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fascination for American life and the hypocrisy and inhibitive nature of

contemporary Indian society respectively. They reveal his sharp

observation of the oddities in human life and behaviour, providing

glimpses of a cross-section of contemporary society. Though they do not

meet the full requirements of the stage, they “make pleasant reading” and

are known for their “stage-worthiness”. Chetan Karnani in his work

Nissim Ezekiel says: “in his satire of current fashion, in his exposure of

pose and pretence, Ezekiel comes very close to the spirit of some English

social satirists in the theatre.” (5)

Contemporary Indian drama in English translation has made bold

innovations and fruitful experiments in terms of both thematic concerns

and technical virtuosities. It has been increasingly turning to history,

legend, myth and folklore, tapping their springs of vitality and vocal cords

of popularity with splendid results. Mohan Rakesh, Badal Sircar, Vijay

Tendulkar and Girish Karnad have become the best representatives of the

contemporary Indian drama not only in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and

Kannada respectively but also on the pan-Indian level.

Greatly influenced by Marxism, Mohan Rakesh waged a relentless

fight against the traditional stranglehold of Hindi drama, and always

endeavored to project something new and challenging. As Nirad

Chaudhauri points out, “with Mohan Rakesh Hindi drama makes a

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departure from pseudo-modernism and traditional symbolism to the drama

of „non-communication‟ – the modern man‟s failure to understand himself

or to understand the other person their mutual failure to understand each

other, which is the real tragedy of modern life” (Changing Language of

Theatre at the Present Time. 25-26). His plays dramatize the sufferings of

men and women who fall victims to socio-economic hierarchy and cultural

hegemony. Particularly, in his plays like One day in Ashadha and The

Great Swans of the Waves, Mohan Rakesh makes use of history and legend

to throw light on the contemporary problems. His dialogues have a smooth

flow, a meaningful depth, and elemental naturalness suitable to his

characters. Rakesh uses historical characters to project the breakdown of

communication in contemporary life.

Badal Sircar is another significant Dramatist who uses contemporary

situations to project the existential attitude of modern life. Popularly

known as a „barefoot playwright‟, Badal Sircar stands in the forefront of a

new theatrical movement in India. He has created a genuine people‟s

theatre, known as Third Theatre, a theatre supported and created by the

people and not merely performed by the people. Transcending the limits

and limitations of the traditional and folk theatres, the Third Theatre is “a

composite of a four way flow of influences – actor to actor, audience to

actor, actor to audience and audience to audience.” It is essentially a

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flexible, portable and inexpensive Theatre aiming at enlightening the

people on socio-economic and political problems and leading them to

constructive action with a view to bringing about a social change.

Leading the vanguard of the avant-grade Marathi Theatre, Vijay

Tendulkar symbolizes the new awareness and attempts of Indian

dramatists. He depicts the agonies, hypocrisy in the traditional Indian

Society. In his latest plays, To Hell with Destiny and The Tour, Tendulkar

highlights the typical middle-class mentality and value system. In all his

plays, Tendulkar economizes on the number and range of characters

situations and episodes, giving wider scope to deeper interpretations and

meaningful corollaries.

The league of contemporary Indian Dramatists is strengthened by

Girish Karnad who has made a distinctive mark in contributing to the

historical development of Indian English Drama. His acquaintance with

western thought and western theatre has exterted unavoidable influence on

his dramatic art. Born in Bombay, Girish Karnad has grown to become the

Rhodes Scholar at Oxford during 1960-63 and Bhabha Fellow during

1970-72. The Western Education and Research expose has made him to

become one of the finest dramatists in India. He has extensively used

Indian mythology to suit the contemporary times of India. Between 1961

and 1998 he has written significant plays that catapulted him into the

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celestial heights. His plays are: Yayati (1961), Tughluq (1964),

Hayavadana (1971), Anjumallige (1977), Hittina Hunja (1980), Naga

Mandala (1988), Tale Danda (1990), Agni Mattu Male (1995), the Dreams

of Tipu Sultan (1998). Most of his plays were translated into English and

have received wide critical acclaim and reception.

His first Play Yayati (1961) narrated the theme of responsibility in

the light of Indian mythology. It is considered as self conscious

existentialist Drama. Picking the story line in the myth found in

Mahabharata, Karnad gives a contemporary twist to the tale. The

interpretation of old myth on the exchange of ages between father and son

baffled and angered many conventional critics. Basing his unheroic hero

Puru Karnad ventures into making the hero recognize the horror of his own

life. The hero‟s awareness shifts from intellectuality to spirituality. The

play endorses the belief that „myths express certain archetypal and social

relationships.

His second play Tughlaq has further consolidated his dramatic

excellence. The play, considered as a landmark in the history of Kannada

literature, has made use of historical material in the way Shakespeare and

Brecht had used. Recognizing the dramatic potential of the character of

Tughluq, Karnad has made the play as the critique of Nehru and Post

Nehru‟s political scenario. The play has succeeded in realizing the

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psychological depth of Tippu Sultan‟s character. Taking the cue from the

Parsi theatre, Karnad succeeds in creating the parallel story of Aziz that

reflected the other side of Tughluq‟s personality.

Encouraged by the huge success of the first play Karnad has written

unforgettable Hayavadana (1970) which fetched him Natya Sangh award.

Based on the collection of Sanskrit stories Kathasarithasagara and

Thomas Mann‟s Transposed Heads, the play ridicules the mechanical

conception of life. The play examines the problem of human identity in a

world of tangled relationships. Using the conventional motives of folk

tales, folk theatre, Karnad introduces two characters Devadatta and Kapila

who bring in the reminiscences of Rama and Laxmana. He introduces

Hayavadana who has a man‟s body but horse‟s head. Hayavadana is

allowed to narrate the story of his birth. Karnad wanted to convey that the

world is of incomplete individuals and the world is indifferent to the

desires, joys and sorrows of human beings. The play has revealed the

dramatic potential of Native traditions, folk arts and the strong presence

and influence of Indian aesthetics.

After Hayavadana Karnad has written two unsuccessful plays

Anjumallige (1977), and Hittana Hunja (1980). Anjumallige as the only

play set out of India represented the impact of Naturalism on Indian

Dramatists. As a naturalistic play, the play is set in England and could not

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envisage a pattern to express naturalistic speech. The tragic incestuous

love of a woman for her brother and the émigré experience of Indians in

England are the important themes in the play. Hittina Hunja is taken from

a Jain myth. The play has emphasized that intended violence and adultery

committed in the mind are equivalent and serious offences.

Karnad has returned to the rich traditions of folk theatres with

Nagamandala (1988). This play has exploited the devices from the works

of Boccacio, Chaucer and the ancient Sanskrit. The original story tells of

young man‟s difficulty to trust women and experience love. Karnad has

shifted the focus to dwell on the women‟s experience and presented her

growth selfhood and maturity. A particular female context is prepared as

women and female flames. The play has exposed the double standards of

Indian patriarchy. It has exposed the way women are judged with sundry

and retrogressive ideas.

Tale-Danda (1990) is extremely successful play. It is translated into

many Indian languages. Karnad has drawn the theme from the historical

movement. Karnad has used the assemblage of poets, mytics, social

revolutionaries and philosophers by Basavanna which upheld the equality

of sexes and condemned the caste discrimination, as a spring board for the

theme of the play. The play has offered a brilliant analysis of Hindu

society and its social deformity. It has succeeded in portraying the

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difficulties encountered by the people who challenged the conventions and

traditions. The opposition of the sharanas by the orthodox sections of the

society and the divisions that existed within the sharanas are elucidated in

a theatrical performance. Karnad has proved that the ugly reality of the

caste system though abolished from the officialdom cannot be erased from

the minds of the people. Karnad has reposed his faith in the relevance of

the play and opined that the horror of the events of „Mandir‟ & „Mandal‟

proved the failure of Indian social fabric.

Agni Mattu Male (1995) translated as The Fire and The Rain is the

most complex play by Karnad. Based on the myth of Yavakrita, it

exhausted thirty seven years of Karnad to come into the realization. In

creating the characters, Karnad has observed some modifications.

Characters like Nittilai, Visakha are drawn from the periphery to the

centrality. In Karnad‟s perception „Yajna‟ is a favourite metaphor of

theatre activity. It involves human performance, precise gestures, speech

and an action that leads to predetermined denounment. The play within the

play brings the reminiscences of some of the Shakespeare‟s plays.

Transiting the two layers of myth in the capacity of the performer the play

foregrounds the philosophical preoccupations.

Karnad‟s recent play The Dreams of Tippu Sultan (1998) is written

to commemorate the fifty years of Indian Independence. Tippu Sultan is

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chosen by Karnad for his uncompromising nature with the British. Karnad

has used the recorded dreams of Sultan to convey the dramatic actions of

Tippu Sultan.

A close analysis of the plays of Karnad makes us to understand that

he has carefully moulded and sculpted the nuances of the past to suit the

contemporaneity. His well made plots, interesting characters, authentic

dialogues and visual impacts have ushered in a new era of dramatic

consciousness in Indian English literature. Though his „contemporary

sensibility‟ is challenged by the critics that Karnad fails to invent his own

plots, his plays belong to the generation of confrontations. Little traditions

of myths, poetry, history, legends folklore etc., are internalized for

authorial conveyance. From a different perception Karnad is understood to

have acquired the temperament of T.S.Eliot as a modern Dramatist. His

approach is considered to be modern. Though Karnad borrowed from the

well known epics and myths, he stressed on the living texture of myths,

history and legends. A scrupulous reading of Karnad‟s plays evinces a

variety of influences. The obvious quality of his Dramas is the

amalgamation of Karnataka Yakshagana and Indian classical drama. The

significant notable influences of the west are Shakespeare, Bertoolt Brecht

& Samuel Beckett.

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Though the Indian Drama has been using myth ever since its

beginnings, it is not so much bound to the religion as its western

counterpart was The Indian aesthetes are developed in an extremely

original way and the Indian Drama never categorized as tragedies and

comedies. In his play the cycle of Seasons, Rabindranath Tagore observes

that his play in neither a tragedy nor a comedy, but it is what it is. Modern

Indian dramatist continued the tradition by going back to the roots of

Indian myth, tradition and culture and thus they have recreated a rich and

vibrant picture of Indian society, culture and people. Girish Karnad is

unique among the contemporary Indian dramatists as all his plays use myth

in a highly creative and individualities way.

Modern Indian Drama is formulated by the three important

influences the classical Indian theatre, the medieval folk theatre and the

modern western theatre. Myths are liberally used by the classical Indian

dramatists like Basa, Bhavabhuthi and Kalidasa. The folk theatre of the

medieval period used myths extensively and the way that they took

liberties with them made them highly flexible. Rabindranath Tagore is the

first dramatist who realized the importance of following the classical and

folk forms of the Indian theatre. He borrowed many themes from the

ancient Indian epic as well as from Buddisim and adopted them for the

contemporary issues. He observes,

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“Man must realize the wholeness of his existence, his place in

the infinite. He must know that hard as he may strive he can

never create the honey he needs with in the cells of his live,

for the perennial supply of his life-blood is outside their

walls-deprived of the background of the work, his poverty

losses its one great quality, which is simplicity and became

squalid and shameful, it gross nearly extravagant. We miss

the complete view of man if we forget the meaning of myth”

(Aspects of Indian Writing in English, ed. M.K.Naik,

Macmillan, 1979. 14).

But he conceived all his plays according to the conditions of the folk

theatre of Bengal, „the Jatra‟. Among the three major dramatists of the

contemporary period, Vijaya Tendulkar, Badal Sircar and Girish Karnad,

Karnad is the only dramatist who followed the method of Tagore with

spirit of imitation and emulation.

Karnad has made use of the story of Yayati of The Mahabharatha

for his very first play in which he dealt with the responsibilities and the

yearnings of a young man. He has borrowed the theme of Hayavadana

from Kathasarithsagar and his Nagamandala is based on the snake myth

of South India.

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He used the myth of Yavakri of The Mahabharatha for his The Fire

and the Rain and Bali: The Sacrifice is taken from a Kannada epic. By

choosing the historical personages live Tughlaq, Basavanna and Tipu

Sultan who have also become mythical characters by means of a number of

fictitious and imaginary tales associated with them, Karnad has given a

contemporary interpretation of history.

As a playwright who has firm belief in the Indian ethos and

aesthetics, Karnad always borrowed a myth to say something to the

contemporary society. He has firm belief in the power of myth. Jung, the

great psychologist also points out the same when he says,

the need for myth statements is satisfied when we frame a

view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of

human existence in the cosmos, a view which springs from

our psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between

conscious and unconscious. Meaningless ness inhibits

fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning

makes a great many things endurable – perhaps everything.

No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be

made out of any science. For it is not that „God‟ is a myth,

but that myth is the revelation of divine life in man”

(Memories, Dreams, Reflections. 1956).

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The history of the man shows that man in bond of retelling the old

stories to adopt himself to the new situations and unforeseen consequences.

These adoptions may become inaccurate as it is not easy to face the truth.

But a great writer rises above these weaknesses to face the truth and to

express it without any inhibitions. A humble attempt is made in the

following chapters to study the way that Karnad tackled various myths and

to estimate his achievement as a dramatist preoccupied with myth.

The primary contention of the study is the confine to the specific

critical evaluation of some of the plays of Girish Karnad to establish the

Post Modern, New Historicist, Post Colonial & Deconstructionist aspects

to the best possible extent which will be followed from the next chapter

elucidating the significance of myth, rituals, history & psychology

manifested in the plays of Karnard.

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