Nāṭyaśāstra (NS) of Bharatamuni is one of the most voluminous and comprehensive texts on the art of theatre, drama and dramaturgy compiled around the 2nd century BC. There is hardly any author in the galaxy of classical Sanskrit playwrights who has not been influenced in some way or other by overpowering impact of this magnum opus; mostly the playwrights in Sanskrit eagerly confirm to the dicta of the NS. Bhāsa, however, is an exception.

Śiva is a unique deity in Hindu pantheon. He is imbued with a variety of opposite qualities, he terrific and re-assuring, repulsive and beautiful, wrathful and easy to please, a celibate and an epicure. He is an ascetic and fell under the charm of Pārvatī – the mountain girl. He is ubiquitous and he lives in the burial grounds. He burnt Kāma – the god of love and also he remains ever united with his beloved Umā in the form of Ardhanārīśvara. The Wonderful thing about Śiva is that he loves human beings like a father. He laughs at their follies. An arrogant Rāvaṇa raised the Kailāsa Mountain to challenge him. The mountain started shaking and the terrified Umā, Śiva’s consort, hugged Him out of fear. This pleased Śiva. But when the mountain was actual raised by the defiant Rāvaṇa above the ground and its shakings became rather inconvenient, Śiva just pressed it with his thumb and the Rāvaṇa was crushed under its pressure. But then Śiva was pleased with his shrieks and became his mentor.

Panditā Kşamā Devi Rao (1890-1954) is one of the most celebrated authors of Sanskrit in 20th century. Her father Shankar Pandurang Pundit had been a renowned Sanskrit scholar. Kşamā Rao inherited the love for Sanskrit from her legendary father, and she was drawn to modernity and Europe through her husband, Raghavendra Rao, who was not only one of the most flourishing medical practitioners in Mumbai at that time, he was the first Indian doctor to have earned the degrees of M.D. and D.Sc. from London.

In this paper I propose to investigate upon the concept and performance of Līlā as evinced through the Nāṭyṥāstra (NS) of Bharatamuni and the interrealtionships of Rāmalīlā with Sanskrit theatre. The Nāṭyaṥāstra presents three views of Līlā, viz.: – (i) a cosmic creative process recurring through anukṛti on theatre which correlates to Līlā as a form of theatre. (ii) Līlā as a fundamental aesthetic concept out of which various categories of performance in correspondance to the actual practice of Līlā evolved; (iii) a typical genre of performance described in the NS which formed the basis for līlā theatre.

Sanskrit is one of the great repositories Indian traditions. Sanskrit literature not only records the ideas of ancient Indian philosophers and historians on the concepts of time and space, it is also an invaluable source for history. The earliest elaboration of Time (Kāla) as an ontological category occurs in the Atharvaveda. The concept of time is elaborated upon in two of hymns in this Veda (Atharvaveda, IXX.54 and IXX.55). At the very out set of the first hymn, the seer views Time as a Mighty Horse running with immense speed, with seven reigns and seven wheels. Time here is viewed as an Ultimate with the eternal flow, in which everything is finally subsumed. ‘He is the Horse but He is the Rider’ the seer says- ‘only poets (kavayaḥ) and scholars (vipaścitaḥ) can ride over Him.’ All the worlds (bhuvanāni/ viśvā) are His wheels. He is the substratum and the substrata. The worlds are his off-shoots, and then he is an off-shoot of these worlds. Therefore, He is the father and the son as well. He pervades all phenomenons and yet he also transcends it and stands out of it.

Abhirāmamaṇi, a play on Rāmāyaṇa– theme, is one of the lost treasures of Sanskrit literature. The author of this play, Sundaramiśra, flourished in sixteenth-seventeenth century. Besides the Abhirāmamaṇi, he had also written Nāṭyapradīpa, a text on dramaturgy. Sundaramiśra must have composed his play before he started writing his dramaturgical work, as he profusely refers to the play in it. Dr. V. Raghavan in his "Some Lost Rama Plays" does not refer to this lost Rāma-play.