Asvaghosa and the Natyasastra

Manomohan Ghosh’s brief note ‘Asvaghosa and the Natyaśastra’ addresses a philological question arising from his translation of the Natyaśastra. In his introduction, Ghosh had dated the dramaturgical treatise to around the second century A.D., arguing that it was known to writers such as Bhasa and Kalidasa. However, some scholars contend that the Prakrit of the dhruva songs in the Natyaśastra is orthographically more developed than that found in fragments of Asvaghosa’s dramas; they suggest that such development implies a later date for the treatise. Ghosh responds by clarifying that he did not include a detailed discussion of Asvaghosa’s Prakrit in his introduction and therefore his dating might be misunderstood. He notes that Asvaghosa’s Prakrit belongs to the first century A.D. and differs from the dhruva Prakrit mainly in not softening intervocalic hard stops. This difference alone does not require dating the dhruva examples later than 200 A.D., he argues, because we do not know how the consonants were pronounced; they might have been voiced in recitation. He further points out that Prakrit orthography was fluid: successive generations of scribes often altered Prakrit texts to reflect contemporary speech. Consequently, the apparently more developed dhruva orthography may result from scribal updating rather than a later composition. Ghosh even suggests that Asvaghosa himself may have employed an archaic dialect for poetic effect. The note concludes that the differences in Prakrit orthography do not contradict his original dating of the Natyaśastra to the early centuries A.D., but caution is needed when using Prakrit forms to establish chronology.

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