learn a lesson in taste. Stage properties were few and simple, while
particular care was lavished on the music. The female parts were
played by women. The plays very rarely have long monologues, even the
inevitable prologue being divided between two speakers, but a Hindu
audience was tolerant of lyrical digression.

It may be said, though the statement needs qualification in both
directions, that the Indian dramas have less action and less
individuality in the characters, but more poetical charm than the
dramas of modern Europe.

On the whole, Kalidasa was remarkably faithful to the ingenious but
somewhat over-elaborate conventions of Indian dramaturgy. His first
play, the _Malavika and Agnimitra_, is entirely conventional in plot.
The _Shakuntala_ is transfigured by the character of the heroine. The
_Urvashi_, in spite of detail beauty, marks a distinct decline.

_The Dynasty of Raghu_ and _The Birth of the War-god_ belong to a
species of composition which it is not easy to name accurately. The
Hindu name _kavya_ has been rendered by artificial epic, _épopée
savante, Kunstgedicht_. It is best perhaps to use the term epic, and
to qualify the term by explanation.

The _kavyas_ differ widely from the _Mahabharata_ and the _Ramayana_,
epics which resemble the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ less in outward form
than in their character as truly national poems. The _kavya_ is a
narrative poem written in a sophisticated age by a learned poet, who
possesses all the resources of an elaborate rhetoric and metric. The
subject is drawn from time-honoured mythology. The poem is divided
into cantos, written not in blank verse but in stanzas. Several