Greek Influence on Sanskrit Drama 67 but this and other minor points such as can be adduced are of no value as proofs of historical connexion. 1 Windisch admitted that in regard to the theatrical buildings there was no possibility of comparison, as the Indian theatre was not permanent, but Bloch ¹ has endeavoured to show that the Sītābenga cave theatre has marked affinities to the Greek. The attempt, however, is clearly a failure; the construction of the whole is merely that of a small amphitheatre cut out in the rock for a small audience without any special similarity to the Greek theatre of any period. More recently the tendency of those who seek to find Greek influence in the making of the Sanskrit drama has turned to the mime as the form of art which exercised influence on India, and the older arguments of Windisch have been given a new shape and in part strengthened in this regard.2 The mime was per- formed without masks and buskins, as was the Indian drama. Moreover the mime, at any rate in Roman hands, had a curtain (siparium), which may be compared with the curtain of India. There was also no scene painting in the mime; different dialects were used, and the number of actors was considerable. Further, some of the standing types of the mime may be paralleled in the Indian drama; the zelotypos has some similarity to the Çakāra, the mokos to the Vidūṣaka. Some of the arguments adduced against this theory of Reich's are admittedly untenable. It is impossible to argue as does Professor Konow that the use of the Mṛcchakatika as a work of early date is a mistake, since the oldest dramas preserved are of quite another type and have no similarity with Greek works. True, the Mṛcchakaṭikā is not as old as it was thought, but the Carudatta can be substituted in lieu, and there are no dramas older than it, save those of the same author and some fragments of Buddhist drama. Nor have we any very satisfactory evidence of a mime in India at an early date, for a mime means a great deal more than the mere work of a Nata. But there are adequate grounds for disregarding the theory. The similarity of types is not at all convincing; the borrowing of the idea of using 1 Arch. Survey of India Report, 1903-4, pp. 123 ff., rashly followed by Lüders, ZDMG, lviii. 868. See Hillebrandt, AID. pp. 23 f.; GIL. iii. 175, n. 1. 2 Der Mimus, i. 694 ff.; DLZ. 1915, pp. 589 ff.; E. Müller-Hess, Die Entstehung des indischen Dramas (1916), pp. 17 ff.; Lindenau, Festschrift Windisch. p. 41. E 2
