# Bibliography of the Sanskrit Drama/Introduction

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INTRODUCTORY SKETCH OF THE SANSKRIT DRAMA
It is now more than a hundred years since Sir William Jones gave the Western world its first knowledge of the dramatic literature of the Hindus by the publication, in 1789, of a translation of the Śakuntalā of Kālidāsa. From that time on, the labors of Sanskritists have gradually made accessible most of the chief works of the Sanskrit drama, and a large number of editions, translations, and commentaries are now available for the general student of literature.
The earliest manifestations of a dramatic idea in India are to be found in the hymns of the Rig Veda. Certain of these hymns Origin. are in the form of dialogues between various personages of the Vedic pantheon, such as Yama and Yamī, Saramā and the Paṇis, while the myth of King Purūravas and the nymph Urvaśī is the foundation for one of the plays of India's greatest dramatist. The lack of accurate data precludes our knowing much about the origin of the drama in India, but it is probable that it had its beginning in a combination of these hymns in dramatic form and in the religious dances, in which certain pantomimic features came to be conventionalized and stereotyped in later times until we get the classical Sanskrit drama. This theory is borne out by the fact that in Sanskrit the words for play (nāṭaka) and actor (naṭa) are from the root naṭ which is the Prākrit form of the Sanskrit nṛt 'to dance.' The native Hindu account of the origin of the drama was that it came down from heaven as a fully developed art invented by the divine sage Bharata. This theory, however satisfying to the Hindu mind, cannot be accepted by modern scholarship, and we are forced to presuppose a development from the religious to the dramatic, as outlined above, which is not essentially different from that found in Greece. The earlier stages, which were ​connected with religious festivals, and especially with the worship of Kṛṣṇa-Viṣṇu, were not unlike the early primitive Christian mystery-plays of the Middle Ages in Europe.
Whatever may have been its beginnings, it is certain that the drama flourished in India, and had a high development. The Character. earlier plays as we know them had considerable freedom of choice of subject and treatment and they can be described, for the most part, as melodramas or tragi-comedies. Primarily their elements are mixed: gravity and gaiety, despair and joy, terror and love—all are combined in the same play. Tragedy, in our sense of the term, there is none, for every drama must have a happy ending. As, according to the rules, death cannot be represented on the stage, it follows that one great source of inspiration for European tragedy is entirely eliminated. The usual subject for dramatic treatment is love, and according to the rank or social position of the hero and heroine the play is placed in one or another of the ten chief (rūpaka) or eighteen minor (uparūpaka) divisions of the drama recognized by the Hindu text-books. The trials and tribulations of the lovers, relieved by the rather clumsy attempts at wit of the vidūṣaka, or court jester, the plotting of the viṭa, or parasite, and the efforts of the rival wives to establish themselves in the favor of their lords and masters, with the incidents of every day life in the harem and court, constitute the plot of the play. The laments of the hero to his confidant, the jester, serve to introduce lyrical stanzas descriptive of the beauties of nature, the wiles and graces of woman, and the tender passion which fills the hero's heart for some fair maiden or celestial nymph. According to the Sanskrit treatises on dramatic art the subject of a nāṭaka is to be taken from some famous legend, and its hero must be high-minded and ​of noble birth, sprung from a race of gods or kings. The expression of all feelings is allowed, but preponderance is to be given to love and heroism. There must be not less than five, nor more than ten, acts of mingled prose and verse. The Sanskrit tongue itself, as the learned or court language, is spoken by gods, Brahmans, heroes, kings, and men of good birth and position in general. Women and the lower classes of men speak various dialects of the Prākrit language, the old vernacular tongue of India. Among the Prākrits the most important is the Śaurasenī, the form usually found in the dramas, the Mahārāṣṭrī being confined to the poetical stanzas. The rules for distinguishing the various individual kinds of characters are all carefully classified and divided; so far does this subdividing go that no less than three hundred and eighty-four types of heroine are given. In practice, of course, this is never carried out, but it must be acknowledged that the great defect of the Sanskrit drama is that in general it is too conventional, with the result that originality and life are sacrificed for a hackneyed arrangement and a stereotyped manipulation of threadbare sentiments and action.
In the invention of plots the dramatists show little fertility of imagination; on the other hand cleverness is certainly clearly Plots and Dramatis Personae. shown in the way in which the details of the plot are worked out and the development of the intrigue is presented. In the majority of cases the plot is somewhat as follows: the hero, who is usually a king or a prince and already has one or more wives, at the opening of the play suddenly becomes enamored of the charms of some girl or nymph. Although she is equally in love with him she is too bashful and modest to let her passion be observed. Hope and fear alternately cheer and dismay both hero and heroine. She confides in some girl friend, he in the jester, who is always a brahman, but a person of slow intelligence whose uncouth attempts at wit seem often lacking in every element of humor. The jester, ​moreover, is a glutton, greedy for money, and, as is to be expected, an inveterate gossip, always on the watch for some fresh bit of news. One of the most curious features of the Sanskrit drama, fostered as it was by the court society of India, which was almost always under the control of brahman priests, is that this figure of a degraded and besotted brahman should be allowed to appear as a typical stage-figure. In an article written some years ago I advanced the theory that such a seeming inconsistency might be due to the fact that the drama had its origin in the religious dances and ceremonies of the common people, who were of course largely non-brahmanic, and was therefore an outgrowth of the many popular religions of India rather than a development of pure brahmanism. In this way the conventional figures, having become in the course of time crystallized into permanent types, were retained when the folk-drama became popular at court, and thus even brahman authors did not hesitate to perpetuate the type, though really derogatory to their class. Other stock characters in the plays are the parasite (viṭa), ministers, Buddhist monks and nuns, servants of the harem, dwarfs, mutes, and the female attendants of the king.
For the technical divisions of a drama and the development of the plot there are carefully elaborated rules, but of the actual scenic arrangement of a play, the manner of producing it, and the Technical Divisions and Arrangement of a Play. assignment of the roles we know comparatively little. Plays seem to have been usually presented at the spring festival. A drama always opens with a nāndī, or benediction, usually addressed to Śiva, for the prosperity of the audience, by the sūtradhāra, or director. This director must have been very accomplished and versatile, for the rules say that among other things he must know music, technical treatises, dialects, the art of managing, works on poetry, rhetoric, acting, industrial arts, metre, astronomy, geography, history, and the genealogies of royal families. He was to have a good memory, and to be honest, intelligent, dignified, and ​noble. According to the text-books he had two associates: the sthāpaka and the pāripārśvika. It is probable that in the actual practice of the theatre the duties assigned by the treatises to the sthāpaka were all performed by the sūtradhāra. At the end of the nāndī there is a dialogue between the manager and some actor complimenting the audience on their critical ability and ending by introducing one of the characters of the play, after which the action goes on with regular divisions into acts and scenes. Scenes are marked by the exit of one person and the entrance of another, as on the Classical and the French stage, and the stage is never left empty until the end of the act. Between the acts a connecting scene called viṣkambhaka is often introduced, in which occurrences that have taken place since the preceding act are explained. The theory of the unity of time, place, and action, which played so important a part in the Greek drama, appears in rather a modified form in India. The time of the action is supposed to be the same as that occupied in the performance, or else to fall within twenty-four hours. But this rule is not always observed, and we find in the Uttararāmacarita of Bhavabhūti a lapse of twelve years between the first and second acts. Unity of place is not strictly observed, and journeys are often made, sometimes even through the air in celestial cars.
As to the stage-setting and decoration very little is yet known. Special buildings for the presentation of plays are described in the Theatre and Scenery. Nātyaśāstra but it is probable that dramas were usually given m a hall (saṃgīta-śālā 'concert-room') of the palace. Behind the stage, which occupied a quarter of the whole hall, was a curtain divided in the middle, and behind that again was the greenroom (nepathya) whence the actors came on the stage. The greenroom had an entrance from the outside 'separate from the entrance for the audience.' Scenery and ​decoration were apparently very simple and much was left to the imagination. Elaborate directions for gestures, pantomime, and clothing are given. Thrones, seats, chariots, weapons, and armor were employed, and some sort of mechanical contrivances were perhaps not unknown. We must infer, however, from the frequent use of the word nāṭayitvā, 'having gesticulated,' nāṭayati, 'mimics, acts as if doing,' as a stage direction, that pantomime and gesticulation were largely resorted to for filling out the deficiencies of the staging.
The age of the Sanskrit drama may roughly be given as extending from 400 to 1100 A.D. This period does not, of Age of the Drama of India. course, include the earliest efforts at dramatic composition, nor take in a large number of late and inferior plays. Very little is known of the earliest dramatists before Kālidāsa, and none of their compositions excepting scattered verses are extant. For example, the poets Bhāsa, Rāmila, Somila (or Saumillaka), and the Kaviputras were well known and popular playwrights among the Hindus of Kālidāsa's time, but our knowledge of them is practically confined to their names.
Most students of the Sanskrit drama are of the opinion that the Mṛcchakaṭikā, or 'Clay Cart,' of Śūdraka is the oldest extant Śūdraka's Mṛcchakaṭikā. Sanskrit play. The arguments in favor of this view are based upon the state of civilization shown in the play, the general style of the drama and the richness and diversity of the Prākrit dialects employed in its composition. Some scholars, however, whose researches in the Hindu drama entitle them to speak with great authority upon this subject, believe that the play is not earlier than the sixth century of our era, or approximately of the same period as Kālidāsa's dramas. I must confess, nevertheless, that I find myself among the number of those that are inclined to consider it of much earlier date. The question of the authorship of the Mṛcchakaṭikā is also still under discussion. In the prologue the play is stated ​to be the production of King Śūdraka, but not all kings are authors, and it is thought that in this case, as probably in others, the real author, like a wise courtier, may have attributed his work to his royal master in order to gain favor. Many of the rulers of ancient India delighted in playing the part of patrons of art and literature; Śūdraka may well have been one of these. Professor Pischel, after a careful study of the material, thinks that the real author was a poet named Daṇḍin. However that may be, there is no question that the Mṛcchakaṭikā is in many respects the most human of all the Sanskrit plays. There is something strikingly Shaksperian in the skilful drawing of the characters, the energy and life of the large number of personages in the play, and in the directness and clearness of the plot itself It is a ten-act prakaraṇa, or comedy of middle-class life, and the scene is laid in the city of Ujjain. The subject of the plot is the love and marriage of Carudatta, a brahman merchant reduced to poverty by his generosity, and Vasantasenā, a rich courtesan. In the third act there is a long and humorous account of a burglary in which stealing is treated as an art or science provided with rules and conventional procedure. The chief value of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, aside from its interest as a drama, lies in the graphic picture it presents of a very interesting phase of everyday life in ancient India. The elaborate description of the heroine's palace in the fourth act gives us a glimpse of what was considered luxury in those days. The name 'Clay Cart' is taken from an episode in the sixth act, which leads to the finding of the heroine's jewels in the terra cotta cart of the hero's little son and to their use as circumstantial evidence in a trial. This complicates the plot until all is resolved in the dénouement.
The greatest name in Sanskrit literature is that of Kālidāsa who lived at the court of Ujjain, probably about the first half of Kālidāsa. the sixth century of our era, although his date is not settled and the question is still a mooted one. He is the author of three plays, Śakuntalā, Vikramorvaśī, and Mālavikāgnimitra. The first two of these compositions reach the highest level attained by the Hindu dramatists and ​win for their author a place among the greater poets of the world. Their richness of fancy and appreciation of nature, added to the beauty of poetic technique and choice of language, have never been equaled in India, and bear favorable comparison with the dramas of any nation.
The play of Śakuntalā has been known in Europe since its translation by Sir William Jones in 1789, by which work that great Orientalist really introduced Sanskrit poetry to the West and started the study of Hindu literature. The play is a nāṭaka, or heroic comedy, of seven acts, and its plot is drawn from the first book of the Mahābhārata. The subject of the drama is the love of King Duṣyanta for Śakuntalā, their separation by accident, and their ultimate reunion in the presence of their son after the lapse of some years. The importance of this play lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect Sanskrit drama extant, but also in the fact that its great literary merit, as was evident from Sir William's translation, aroused a widespread interest in the literature of India throughout Europe. It was enthusiastically received by the followers of the Romantic School and exercised a genuine influence upon them. Jones's English version was soon rendered into other languages, and independent translations from the original Sanskrit have since been made into almost all the tongues of Europe, so that I am able to record versions and adaptations of the play in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, and Bohemian.
Kālidāsa's other important play is the Vikramorvaśī. It was first translated into English into 1827 by Horace Hayman Wilson, a scholar who devoted a great part of his life to the study of the Sanskrit drama, and whose 'Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus' is a standard work even to-day. Later investigations have rendered some of his views antiquated, but his book remained for years the only work upon the Sanskrit drama as a whole, until the appearance, in 1890, of Sylvain Lévi's admirable and scholarly treatise, Le Théâtre indien, a work indispensable to students. The plot of the Vikramorvaśī is briefly as ​follows: King Purūravas rescues the nymph Urvaśī, who has been carried away by the demons, and his heroism wins her love. The lovers become separated by accident, but after various vicissitudes are reunited in the presence of their son when the latter is about twelve years old.
The third play of Kālidāsa, entitled Mālavikāgnimitra, or 'King Agnimitra's Love for Mālavikā,' is a conventional drama of harem intrigue at the court, and is decidedly inferior to the author's other two plays. So marked is this inferiority that some scholars have even gone so far as to question its right to bear Kālidāsa's name.
We now come to an interesting group of three plays ascribed to Harṣadeva, king of northern India, which have been the object Harṣadeva. of much discussion. As in the case of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, it is probable that they were the work of some poet who, to curry favor, ascribed their authorship to that famous patron of art and literature, Harṣadeva. These three plays are Ratnāvalī, Priyadarśikā, and Nāgānanda. The first two are dramas of harem intrigue and court life, composed, it is true, upon conventional lines, but showing some ingenuity in the manipulation of plot and the invention of incident. In the Ratnāvalī, or 'Jewel Necklace,' the subject is the story of the loves of Vatsa, or Udayana, king of Kauśāmbī, and Sāgarikā, an attendant of his wife, queen Vāsavadattā, who ultimately is discovered, by a necklace she wears, to be Ratnāvalī, princess of Ceylon, who had been shipwrecked and had found her way to Vatsa's court. The characters are clearly defined and not mere puppets, as in the case of some dramas. The poetical part is rather conventional, but there are several pretty lines descriptive of natural scenery, moonrise, and the like. The drama Priyadarśikā, named after its heroine, is much the same sort of play, but not so good. The lack of a good critical edition and English translation of this play has made it difficult for students, but this lack is soon to be overcome, and a translation by G. K. S. Nariman, with an introductory memoir from the pen of Professor Jackson, will soon be ready. The third play, Nāgānanda, 'Joy of the Serpents,' is in some respects quite unique. It is a highly-colored melodrama with a ​pronounced Buddhistic tendency, as Buddha is invoked in the nāndī, and the hero himself is a Buddhist. In this respect the Nāgānanda stands alone among the extant Sanskrit plays, although we know that there were other Buddhist dramas which have not been preserved. Such was the Lokānanda of Candragomin, of which there is a Tibetan translation. The Nāgarāja and Śānticarita are, perhaps, imitations of the Nāgānanda or even identical with it. In the Avadānaśataka (75) there is a record of the representation of a Buddhist drama, according to Oldenburg. Several Jain plays are also known.
The dramatist Bhavabhūti, who lived during the first half of the eighth century, was a native of Vidarbha, the Province of Bhavabhūti. Berar, in south-central India, and he wrote under the protection of king Yaśovarman of Kanauj. He is the author of three plays, the Mālatīmādhava, Mahāvīracarita, and Uttararāmacarita, which are distinguished by great poetic beauty and feeling, exquisite verse, polished style, but little humor or wit (the jester being absent from all), and only moderate dramatic power. They are, perhaps, dramatic poems rather than dramas. Bhavabhūti's home in the mountain regions of south-central India doubtless gave him a love of the grand and titanic aspects of nature instead of the mild and gentle phases described by the other Hindu authors. His characters have much grace and tenderness and also possess energy and life. His most popular play is the ten act prakaraṇa, or melodrama, Mālatī-mādhava, the scene of which is laid in Ujjain. It is the story of the love of Mālatī, daughter of a cabinet minister, and Mādhava, a young student. This charming play is often called the Romeo and Juliet of India, but it has a happy ending, as all Sanskrit plays must have. The whole drama is a succession of contrasted situations, first of love and then of the weird incantations of the terrible priestess of Durgā, scenes which are used to heighten the dramatic effect as well as to contribute to ​the plot. In the fifth act the scene is laid in the field where the bodies of the dead are burned. The two other plays of Bhavabhūti form a history of the deeds of the hero Rama, and are based on the epic poem Rāmāyaṇa. I shall omit a detailed description of these.
The next dramatist, Rājaśekhara, who lived about the year 900 A. D., is the author of four plays which have come down to us. Rājaśekhara. Two of them are much like the comedies of Harṣadeva in construction and subject. These two are the Viddhaśālabhañjikā, or 'The Lady of the Statue' and the Karpūramañjarī, or 'Camphor Cluster.' They are both dramas of harem and court life. The chief interest of the Karpūramañjarī, which has been admirably edited in the Harvard Oriental Series by Dr. Sten Konow with a translation by Professor Lanman, consists in the fact that it renders accessible the only extant example of the kind of drama called saṭṭaka. The saṭṭaka is nearly the same as the nāṭikā, or minor heroic comedy, except that it is composed entirely in Prākrit. Of the Viddhaśālabhañjikā I had hoped to publish a translation, upon which I was engaged, but the pressure of other duties has prevented me, and the work has now been done by my friend and fellow-student, Dr. Louis H. Gray.
One of the few historic plays of India is the Mudrārākṣasa by Viśākhadatta. The scene of this elaborate drama is laid in the Viśākhadatta. city of Pāṭaliputra during the reign of Candragupta, or shortly after the invasion of India by Alexander. The time of composition of the play, however, is probably to be placed about the year 1000 A. D. The plot deals with the story of the founding of a new dynasty by Candragupta who had deposed the former ruler. The latter's minister Rākṣasa refuses to recognize the new monarch. Candragupta's minister tries to win Rākṣasa over to his own political plans, which are well conceived, and he at last succeeds. The drama gives us a remarkable picture of the political conditions of the time in which the author has placed its action, centuries before his own.
​The Veṇīsaṃhāra, or 'Binding of the Braid,' by the playwright Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa, is a six-act drama based on the incident of the Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa. Mahābhārata in which the Pāṇḍu wife Draupadī is dragged by the hair into the assembly and outrageously exposed before the Kurus. The play is written in exact accordance with the rules of text-books and largely for that reason it has always been a favorite in India.
An admirable but less known drama is the Caṇḍakauśika by Kṣemīśvara, whose date is uncertain. This play presents a Kṣemīśvara. vivid picture of the workings of a curse uttered by the angry priest Kauśika against an upright king who had innocently offended him. The king forfeits his realm and loses his wife and child, the latter by death and his consort by her being sold into slavery. Though tried to the utmost, the Job-like patience of the righteous monarch never fails, and in the end he has his wife, his son, and his kingdom restored to him by divine intervention, so that all ends in happiness.
In the eleventh century was composed a dramatic monstrosity, the huge Mahānāṭaka, ascribed to Hanuman, the monkey-king. The Mahānāṭaka. It has fourteen acts in one recension and ten in the other, and thus violates the rule which requires that no drama shall exceed ten acts in length. It is quite without interest to students of literature except as a curiosity.
The tenth and eleventh centuries in India witnessed a renewed interest in the dramatic art, and to that time belong many other plays which must be omitted here on account of Kṛṣṇamiśra. lack of space. One, however, which must be mentioned is the Prabodhacandrodaya, or 'Rise of the Moon of Intellect,' an allegorical drama by the poet Kṛṣṇamiśra. The characters in this play, as in the old English Moralities, are symbolical figures and personified abstract ideas, and it is indeed remarkable that with such subject matter the author should have succeeded in producing a drama of so much real merit. The plot is as follows: The wicked King Error is the ruler of the city of Benares. He is surrounded by his followers, the Follies and Vices, while the good King Reason and his followers, Religion ​and the Virtues, have been sent into exile. In accordance with a prophecy, Reason will at some time marry Revelation, and the fruit of that union will be True Knowledge, who will overthrow the power of King Error. The plot recounts the vicissitudes of the struggle and the final triumph of good.
The Saṃkalpasūryodaya of Veṅkaṭanātha and the Caitanyacandrodaya of Kavikarṇapūra who wrote about the middle of the sixteenth century are obvious imitations of the Prabodhacandrodaya and have as dramatis personae almost the same characters.
Of the later history of the Sanskrit drama it is not necessary to write at length. It has had a continuous existence from the Later Plays. period of the greatest works down to the present time. The later plays, although written in exact accordance with the rules of Hindu dramaturgy, are for the most part lacking in interest and action.
* ↑ Although the drama is so carefully subdivided by the rhetorical text-books, not all of these divisions are represented in the extant literature (see Appendix II). The precise character of many of the plays here recorded, however, could not be determined, as most manuscript cataloguers fail to distinguish the various varieties and use the word 'nāṭaka' in the general sense of 'drama.' It is to be hoped that future cataloguers will examine the plays with more care and so record them that we may get a better idea of the comparative popularity of the different forms of drama.
* ↑ NŚ. 19.117; SD. 277; DR. 3. 1, 34.
* ↑ See Pischel, Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen, §30; NS. 17.31–44; SD. 432; DR. 2. 59, 60.
* ↑ The origin of the Vidūṣaka and the employment of this character in the plays of Harṣadeva, in JAOS. 20 (1899), pp. 338–340.
* ↑ DR. 3. 3 ; SD. 283.
* ↑ But Lanman believes with Konow that the Karpūramañjarī of Rājaśekhara shows the sthāpaka in action. See the edition and translation of the play by Konow and Lanman, pp. 196, 223, note 8.
* ↑ NŚ. 2. 1 seq. See also Bloch, ZDMG. 58 (1904), pp. 455–457.
* ↑ NŚ. 2. 37.
* ↑ NŚ. 2. 85.
* ↑ See the prologue to Kālidāsa's Mālavikāgnimitra, and F. Hall in JASBe. 28 (1859), p. 28 seq., and in the introduction to his Vāsavadattā, pp. 14–15.
* ↑ In Zapiski Vostočnago Otděleniya Imp. Russkago Arkheologičeskago Obščestva, 4(1890), pp. 393–394.
* ↑ See Lévi p. 324.
* ↑ Wilson in 1827 gave the names of 60 Sanskrit plays, Lévi in 1890 was able to increase the number of titles known to 372, and the present bibliography lists over 500 separate productions.
ABBREVIATIONS
| A1, A2, A3. | = Aufrecht, T., Catalogus Catalogorum. Pts. 1, 2, 3. Leipzig, 1896–1903. |
| Cat. Mack. Coll. | = The Mackenzie Collection. A descriptive catalogue of the Oriental Manuscripts, by H. H. Wilson, 2° ed., Madras, 1882. |
| CBMMS. | = Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts in the British Museum, Cecil Bendall. London, 1902. |
| CS. | = Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Calcutta Sanskrit College, by Śāstrī and Gui, no. 18, Calcutta, 1903. |
| DR. | = Daśarūpa, edited by F. Hall, Calcutta, 1865. |
| Ep. Ind. | = Epigraphia Indica. |
| Garbe | = Verzeichniss der indischen Handschriften der königlichen Universität zu Tübingen, von Richard Garbe, Tübingen, 1899. |
| Hz. 3. | = Reports on Sanskrit Manuscripts in Southern India, by E. Hultzsch, no. 3, Madras, 1905. |
| IA. | = Indian Antiquary. |
| JA. | = Journal Asiatique. |
| JAOS. | = Journal of the American Oriental Society. |
| JASBe. | = Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. |
| JRAS. | = Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. |
| JRASBo. | = Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Bombay Branch. |
| L. | = Levi, Sylvain, Le Theatre indien, Paris, 1890. |
| NŚ. | = Natyasastra, edited by Sivadatta and Parab, Bombay, 1894. Cf also the edition of Grosset, Paris, 1898. |
| RS. | = Rasarnavasudhakara by Singabhupala. [A list of works mentioned in this is given in SRep. p. 10] ​ |
| SCBen. | = Sanskrit, Jain, and Hindi Manuscripts in the Sanskrit College, Benares. Allahabad, 1902. |
| SD. | = Sāhityadarpaṇa, edited and translated by Ballantyne and Mitra. Calcutta, 1875, 2 vols. [The references are to sections.] |
| SRep. | = Report on a Search for Sanskrit and Tamil Manuscripts for 1896–7, by M. S. Sastri. Madras, 1898. |
| TT. | = Catalogue of two collections of Sanskrit Manuscripts preserved in the India Office Library. Compiled by C. H. Tawney and F. W. Thomas. London, 1903. |
| Weber | = Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der königlichen Bibliothek, Bd. 1. Verzeichniss der Sanskrit-Handschriften, von A. Weber. Berlin, 1853. |
| Wilson | = Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus. London, 1871, 2 vols. |
| WZKM. | = Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes. |
| ZDMG. | = Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft. |