The history of Mysore is relevant to a study of these playwrights because many of their works reveal a great reverence for the maharaja of Mysore. In many of their plays one maharaja or the other appears as a character with all virtues bestowed on him. One also notices a certain softening of attitude towards the British in these writers, in terms of a fascination for the modem values and modem thoughts the British were ushering into the country. This phenomenon was not new amongst the Indian intelligentsia. For example, the Bengali new intelligentsia represented by people like Rajaram Mohan Roy showed a similiar tendency and their attitude towards the sepoy mutiny for example, is now a part of well-documented modern history. The Kannada writers under consideration differed from their Bengali counterparts in one major sense : they had very little to do with any militant social reformist movement as such, and most of them were quite apolitical. They were basically liberal minded good writers. Old Mysore had a representative assembly long before democracy formally came into this country. Whatever may have been the limitations of this representative assembly (limitations there were many: everybody could not vote — only the rich peasants and government bureaucrats could either vote or be part of the assembly), it still had a liberalizing effect on the social structure of old Mysore. The upper class, upper caste, non-brahmin sections of society became conscious of their rights, and the 'shudra' movement and the Justice Party got underway. The land revenue and tax collection system developed by Tipu Sultan was generally retained by the British, in spite of pressures building up from within to change it. Hence, unlike in Bengal and other parts of the country, British rule did not result in the further consolidation of the zamindari system. The land distribution pattern of old Mysore remained at a tolerable level of discrepancy, and as a result the region saw a smaller number of peasant revolts than the rest of the country. The government employed intelligent brahmin bureaucrats but in a subtle way also encouraged the non-brahmin movement. The government did enact, though half-heartedly, certain legislations regarding untouchability, women's right to property, etc. It is in this overall background that these writers were born. Of the three playwrights the one who showed an almost hysterical loyalty to the throne by writing practically every play on the theme of the glory of the Mysore dynasty was Samsa. His was an outright commitment to the old order. Samsa suffered from a persecution mania and committed sucide quite early in his life. He wrote twenty-three plays, most of which were destroyed by the author himself in a mad frenzy. Only six plays are available, and they are all about the rulers of Mysore. Another interesting aspect about his plays is that they are all based on the lives and adventures of kings prior to Hyder Ali. Hyder Ali, a Muslim, took over when the Wodeyar dynasty practically collapsed under its own weight. He had risen from the ranks of an ordinary solider, and Tipu Sultan was his son. This fact needs special mention because it is this phase that really Journal of Arts & Ideas 117