Across Space and Time: Commonalities in Natyashastra, The Republic, and Poetics

By the time Chandragupta Maurya established the Mauryan Empire in 322 B.C., Plato, the Greek philosopher had already envisaged an ideal commonwealth and had captured its principles in his The Republic, banishing all poets from his ideal state; and Aristotle, who started off as a student of Plato, had already presented to the world a clear rebuttal to Plato in his treatise, Poetics. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence to support the hypothesis that Bharata’s Natyasastra written sometime between 2nd century B.C. and 2nd century A.D. was influenced by Aristotle’s Poetics, or that, since the date of Natyasastra’s publication is so uncertain, Natyasastra in some way had an influence on Poetics. But this lack of evidence does not undermine the fact that in the Mauryan period (322 B.C. to 185 B.C.), there was an eager influx of Greek diplomats and explorers like Megasthenesin the subcontinent, who were not only political and economic emissaries, but also cultural ambassadors. Neither does this lack of evidence undermine the possibility of an influence, on either side of the theorists. But the case under consideration is not the existence of any physical evidence that could establish a connection, but rather that connection or no connection, Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Poetics and Bharata’s Natyasastra have a common thread. All the three works are in some way or other an exposition on the imitative art of poetry and drama, and inevitably, each is linked to the other, if in nothing else, then at least in terms of comparative analysis.