Ancient India has bequeathed to us a vast treasury of texts which represent the intellectual and literary activities of more than two thousand years and cover a wide fields. The earliest literary work, the Samhita of the Rigveda, is at least three thousand years old and may be even considerably older.
A continuous stream of literature flowing since that remote age, widening in course of centuries and embracing almost all fields of human endeavour excepting political activity throws a light on the civilization of India such as we do not meet with in cases of other ancient cultures. This mass of literature deal with philosophy and religion, including ethics, ritual and ceremonial; cosmogony, cosmology,geography, astronomy and the allied sciences; political and economic doctrines and practices;and in a minor way, with almost all branches of secular life.
It includes, besides a mass of religious texts, purely literary works such as epics, lyrics, kavyas (poems), dramas and prose romances, as well as biographies and folk tales.This literature is as bulky in volume as it isvaried in its contents. Although it does not helpus very much in reconstructing the political history of ancient India, it throws a flood oflight on an enables us to trace the various stages in the development of culture and civilization in ancient India, such as is not possible in the case of ancient Egypt, Western Asia and China and even Greece and Rome.
The most popular themes of ancient Indiandramas are based on the Ramayana,Mahabharata, courtly love and folk tales.Which of the following dramas, considered to be written by Bhasa, has taken its plot from the Ramayana?