D Vasudha Dalmia-Luderitz 8. All three concepts are depicted in their context in Raniero Gnoli, op. dt. 9. The tenth century philosopher Abhinavagupta likened the tasting of rasa (rasasvada) to the experience of the Absolute (brahmasvada). The difference lay primarily in the impermanence of the former. See Gnoli, op. dt.. Preface, and Gerow, op. dt., p. 268. 10. See S.K. De, Early History of the Vaisnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, K.L. Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta, 1961 and Edward C. Dimock Jr., The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in the Vaisnava-Sahajiya Cult of Bengal, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1966. 11. See G.H. Schokker, 'Kesavadeva's Method of Basing Braj-Krsna Lyrics on the Tradition of Literary Aesthetics', in M. Thiel-Horstmann (ed.), Bhakti in Current Research 1979-1982, Dietrich Reimber, Berlin, 1983. 71 12. The Legends of the Punjab. 3 vols., 1884-1901; reprint, Amo Press, New York, 1977. Temple's collection contains at least two tales, qissa, and three plays, smug, which could be regarded as predecessors of the present form. They are all composed in verse and the tales, aissas , are embryo plays, for within the narrative portions there are large stretches of dialogue, lively and well-developed, which are however not played but spoken by the story-teller. The play, the svang, conversely dispenses with the story-teller, though it contains narrative portions. These are incorporated by the players into their speeches. In short, the narrative and the play-acting are initially treated as mutually exclusive activities, to fuse again in a later form, where the narrator wins an independent role, as one of the players and is present on stage to sing and redte the narrative portions. 13. The sodal organisation of the troupe is documented by Ved Prakash Vatuk and Sylvia Vatuk, 'The Ethnography of Svang, A North Indian Folk Opera', m:Asian Folklore Studies. Vol. XXVI-1,1967, pp. 29-51. 14. They played besides some Shakespeare, me plays of Thomas Morton and George Coleman the Younger with their didactic treatment of themes such as gambling and repentance: The Mountaineers, The Heir-At'Law, The Poor Gentleman, John Bull, Speed the Plough, (all available in Mrs. Inchbald (ed.),British Theatre, 25 vols., London, pp.1808 ff.). 15. So called because it was managed and owned by the Parsis. 16. For the developments in European drama see Peter Szondi, Theorie des modemen Dramas 1880-1950, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1973. 17. Too numerous and scattered to be dted here individually. 18. In the framework of this paper it is not possible to offer a more concrete view of the svang. A general account of this and other forms of Indian folk theatre is available in Balwant Gargi, Folk Theatre of India. Seattle, London, 1966. For translations into English the inadequate, if pioneering, effort by Temple, op. dt., can be referred to. The following account is based on the survey of a number of such plays and a detailed analysis of one particular play as being spedally popular, having been selected for revival on the urban stage and also as the basis of a Hindi film: Amarsingh Rathor, by the prolific Natharam Sharma Gaur (1874-1947) of Hathras, credited with having composed 146 plays. These plays as well as many others are available as cheap reading-matter on the pavements of most north Indian dties. Interesting basis for comparison is supplied by the material analysed by Roger Chartier, 'Culture as Appropriation: Popular Cultural Uses in Early Modern France', in S.L. Kaplan (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture, Mouton.Berlin, New York, Amsterdam, 1984), pp. 229-253. 19. Useful in this context are the distinctions made by Darko Suvin between 'type' and 'character'. Prof. Suvin defines 'types' 'as dassified by sex-cum-age, by nationality, by profession, by social estate or class, by physiology and moral philosophy (...) often by what we could feel are combinations of the above categories (Diderofs conditions, e.g.. Father or Judge, seem to contaminate profession, dass, and social role), etc.' (p. 120). Further: 'What seems to me constitutive of any type is that it possesses a relatively small number of traits (I have not found more than half a dozen in any so far examined, but this remains a field to be investigated), which are all culturally congruent or compatible. This compatibility should in every particular historical case be explainable as the result of a feedback interaction between the sodal reality from which the traits are taken and the criteria of verisimilitude of the sodal addressees for whom the text is intended.' (p. 122) See 'On Fiction as Anthropology: Agential Analysis, Types, and the Classical Chinese Novel', in J. Hall, A. Abbas (eds.). Literature and Anthropology, Univ. Press, Hong Kong, 1986. 20. Gnoli, op. dt.. Preface, p. L. 21. GW. 16, pp. 688-690. Number 16