Charition mime
The Charition mime is a
The play alludes to earlier texts such as Iphigenia in Tauris and Odyssey. Charition (Χαριτίων), the protagonist, is a Greek girl held captive at a temple in India (like Iphigenia), and her brother comes to her rescue. The Greeks escape by getting the Indian king drunk, an element possibly borrowed from Odyssey.[3] The introduction of humorous elements suggest that it may originally have been written as a spoof.[4] The play's character makes it almost a burlesque, representing a type of drama which was prior to the play's discovery not known in antiquity. The manuscript contains signs at various points which are almost certainly instructions to play percussion instruments and, possibly, the aulos, a Greek double-piped reed instrument, which suggests that the use of music in Greek mime was much more extensive than was earlier thought.[5]
Plot
Chariton, a beautiful Greek girl, is captured by (or sold to) the king of a coastal kingdom in India. The king keeps her at the temple of the moon goddess (as a temple girl or a priestess). A Greek search party, including her brother and a jester, arrives to rescue her, after crossing the Indian Ocean. As Chariton, her brother and the fool are discussing their escape, a group of Indian women returning from a hunt encounter them. The jester defends the Greeks with his farts. He asks Chariton to steal items from the temple, but she refuses arguing that robbery would make the gods angry. On the brother's suggestion, the Greeks serve wine to the Indian king and his subjects, intoxicating them. The characters, including the king, then perform a dance for the moon goddess. The Greeks then discuss tying up the king, who has tripped over (as suggested by loud drums at the end of the music). The end of the play is lost, but the Greeks escape to their ship.[2]
Indian language dialogues
One of the most interesting features of the skit is the appearance of a number of characters who speak dialogues in an unknown language. This language may partly or wholly represent
Shortly after the papyrus' modern publication, Dr.
- Kannada
- Apart from Kannada.[10] The subsequent discovery of the Halmidi inscription, which contains a form of Kannada much earlier than the forms known at the time Hultzsch wrote his article, confirms many of his theories on the evolution of the language and might therefore add support to his readings.
- Tulu
- According to the Indian scholars Shivaprasad Rai[11] (1985) and U. Padmanabha Upadhyaya[12] (1996), the Indian language used in the play is Tulu. Manohar Laxman Varadpande identified the kingdom mentioned in the play with Malpe (which lies in the Tulu Nadu region).[13]
References
- ISBN 9780521138185.
- ^ ISBN 9780674031920.
- ISBN 9781107038240.
- ISBN 2-213-01254-7.
- ISBN 0-521-65140-9. Page 5.
- ^ Now perhaps it is clear that the Indian languages used are Sanskrit (79 words - of which 21 Sanskrit words are found both in the Charition drama and the Bhagavad Gita); 25 Malayalam words; 7 Greek words of Kerala and Indian significance; 29 Greek words used in Indian dialogues; and 12 Aramaic (old Syriac)/Hebrew words.Cf. Prof. Menachery's comments based on the researches of Thattunkal Z. Mani
- ^ D.L. Page. Greek literary papyri. London Heinemann. p. 337.
- ^ Hultzsch, E. (1904), "Remarks on a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1904: 399-405.
- ^ JSTOR 603404.
- ISBN 978-81-7017-221-5.
- ISBN 978-0-19-539289-0.
- ISBN 9788186668061.
- ^ Manohar Laxman Varadpande (2014). Ancient Indian and Indo-Greek Theatre. Abhinav. p. 98.