ABSTRACT
Scholars used to say that the first bits of recorded Indian history appear in documents created during the reign of the Persian emperor Darius. Darius' empire extended into the Indus river valley which runs from the Arabian Sea along the border of Pakistan and India up to China. Many accounts of the history of theatre in India suggest that the formal elements of dance and music came together in the distant, unrecorded historical past of India. Indian theatre then developed through various regional rituals which contained dramatic elements. Even if one ignores the evidence of dramatic elements in early ritual and dance and focuses instead on items that closely match the European definitions of drama, the history of Indian drama dates back to at least the third century bce, which makes it roughly contemporary with ancient Greek drama. Almost all varieties of Indian theatre have made use of pieces of ancient Hindu literature at some time or another.
