The Problem One of the problems I encountered while teaching European literary genres such as ‘tragedy’, ‘comedy’, and ‘theatre of absurd’ to Indian students of English Literature was the tendency of these terms to transgress the boundaries of their specific cultural contexts. Like many signifiers, ‘tragedy’ too gets emboldened to signify much more than a theatrical genre with more or less an identifiable set of aributes. Surprisingly, I have often heard students calling Abhigyan Shakuntalam a tragedy. In this paper, I seek to distinguish two separate worldviews, one of which would necessitate the birth of tragedy and the other which would obviate its genesis. The Indian protagonist, this paper claims, as found in the classical Indian epics, mythological narratives, and theatrical genres up to the medieval period, is characteristically one without hamartia. The Indian narratives that would showcase the suffering of its principal characters would nonetheless end with the resolution of all entanglements, or at least with a sense of hope; therefore, they would be called sukhant natak or happy-ending plays. Let me begin by recounting the saga of Satyabadi Harishchandra, a famous episode from the Mahabharata, adapted to many theatrical renditions and film versions across multiple languages in India. For the study, I refer to an Odia version presented in a theatrical form called Pala 1 , which I had the good fortune of watching in my childhood. The glory of Harishchandra as a truthful and munificent king traverse the three realms. One day, the king sees a strange dream in which a sage, resplendent with a divine halo, begs for his kingdom as a donation. Without hesitation, Harishchandra uers, “So be it”. As he aends his court the following day, the sage, none other than Viswamitra, approaches the court and reproaches the king for not keeping true to his words. Harishchandra recollects the promise made in his dream and, realizing that he was the same sage, promptly renounces all his wealth and dominions in his favor and proceeds to leave along with his wife and son. However, Viswamitra reminds him that his donation (dan) is incomplete without a surplus gift (dakshina). Dispossessed of all his belongings in just a moment, Harishchandra has nothing more to offer to the implacable sage. Thus, he has no option but to sell himself, along with his wife Sabya and son Rohit to the highest bidders to obtain the sum for dakshina. Let’s flash forward several episodes in which his family undergoes a series of misfortune despite their adherence to the path of truth and virtue. Now, at the end of the play, the former king Harishchandra is seen as an apathetic but honest guard of a funeral ground encountering his long- estranged, destitute wife, Sabya. The meeting, however, is far from joyous, as the occasion of Sabya’s advent is to give a funeral to their son Rohit, who succumbed to an untimely death by a venomous snake bite. Even at this moment of abject misery, Harishchandra must stay loyal to his master and demand the requisite fee for the funeral service, in the absence of which the service would be denied. The melancholic mother tears a piece of her shabby cloth to cover the corpse of Rohit and, begging alms from strangers somehow manages to deposit the funeral fee. For me, this particular episode is a formidable touchstone of rendering the aesthetic experiences of pathos (karuna) and valour (vir) upon the stage in Indian theatrical tradition. A king fallen from grace, seing fire to the funeral pyre of his son, having exacted the price for this service from his wife, does paint a bleak picture. My eyes were moistened, and so were those of the spectators who encountered this scene, even though the tale was unfamiliar to none. Had the play ended The Untragic Indian Stories Dr Umesh Patra* * Umesh Patra, Assistant Professor (English), Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Motihari. Can be reached at umeshpatra@mgcub.ac.in