[2]
This theory, which is technically known as the 'Akhyana' theory (as it
derived its starting point from the discussion of the Suparnakhyana
text), won considerable support, but was contested by M. Sylvain Levi,
who asserted that, in these hymns, we had the remains of the earliest,
and oldest, Indian dramatic creations, the beginning of the Indian
Drama; and that the fragments could only be satisfactorily interpreted
from the point of view that they were intended to be spoken, not by a
solitary reciter, but by two or more dramatis personae.[3]
J. Hertel (Der Ursprung des Indischen Dramas und Epos) went still
further, and while accepting, and demonstrating, the justice of this
interpretation of the 'Dialogue' poems, suggested a similar origin for
certain 'Monologues' found in the same collection.[4]
Professor Leopold von Schroeder, in his extremely interesting volume,
Mysterium und Mimus im Rig-Veda,[5] has given a popular and practical
form to the results of these researches, by translating and
publishing, with an explanatory study, a selection of these early
'Culture' Dramas, explaining the speeches, and placing them in the
mouth of the respective actors to whom they were, presumably,
assigned. Professor von Schroeder holds the entire group to be linked
together by one common intention, viz.
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