Though composite in origin and in no sense a transcript from life, the

merits of the Mṛcchakaṭikā are great and most amply justify what else

would have been an inexcusable plagiarism. The hints given in the

Cārudatta here appear in full and harmonious development aided and

heightened by the introduction of the intrigue, which combines the

private affairs of the hero with the fate of the city and kingdom.

Cārudatta’s character is attractive in the extreme; considerate to his

friend the Vidūṣaka, honouring and respecting his wife, deeply devoted

to his little son, Rohasena, he loves Vasantasenā with an affection

free from all mere passion; he has realized her nobility of character,

her generosity, and the depth and truth of her love. Yet his devotion

is only a part of his life; aware of the vanity of all human things, he

does not value life over-highly; his condemnation affects him most

because it strikes at his honour that he should have murdered a woman,

and he leaves thus to his child a heritage of shame. Not less

attractive is Vasantasenā, bound, despite herself, to a profession

which has brought her great wealth but which offends her heart; the

judge and all the others believe her merely carried away by sensual

passion; Cārudatta and his wife alone recognize her nobility of soul,

and realize how much it means for her to be made eligible for marriage

to her beloved. There is an admirable contrast with the hero in the

Çakāra Saṁsthānaka, who is described vividly and realistically. His

position as brother-in-law of the king and his wealth make him believe

that he is entitled to whatever he wants; Vasantasenā’s repulse of him

outrages his sense of his own importance more than anything else;

brutal, ignorant [274] despite his association with courtiers of

breeding and refinement, and cowardly, he has only skill in perfidy and

deceit, and is mean enough to beg piteously for the life he has

forfeited, but which Cārudatta magnanimously spares. The Viṭa is an

excellent foil to him in his culture, good taste, and high breeding;

despite his dependence on his patron, he checks his violence to

Vasantasenā, strives to prevent his effort to murder her, and when he

fails in this takes his life into his own hands and passes over to

Āryaka’s side. The Vidūṣaka may be fond of food and comfortable living,

but he remains faithful in adversity to his master, is prepared to die

for him, and consents to live only to care for his son.

The minor characters among the twenty-seven in all who appear have each

an individuality rare in Indian drama. Çarvilaka, once a Brahmin, now a

professional thief, performs his new functions with all the precision

appropriate to the performance of religious rites according to the

text-books. The shampooer, turned Buddhist monk, has far too much

worldly knowledge to seek any temporal preferment from the favour of

Āryaka. Māthura, the master gambler, is a hardened sinner without

bowels of compassion, but the two headsmen are sympathetic souls who

perform reluctantly their painful duty. The wife of Cārudatta is a

noble and gentle lady worthy of her husband, and one who in the best

Indian fashion does not grudge him a new love if worthy, while the

lively maid Madanikā deserves fully her freedom and marriage with

Çarvilaka. Even characters which play so small an actual part as Āryaka

are effectively indicated. The good taste of the author is strikingly

revealed by the alteration made in the last scene by a certain

Nīlakaṇṭha, [275] who holds that the omission to bring upon the stage

Cārudatta’s wife, his son, and the Vidūṣaka was due to the risk of

making the time occupied by the representation of the play too great.

He supplies the lacuna by representing all three as determined to

commit suicide when Cārudatta rescues them; the author himself would

never have consented to introduce the first wife at the moment when a

second is about to be taken.

The author is not merely admirable in characterization; he is master of

pathos, as in the parting of Cārudatta from his son who asks the

headsman to kill him and let his father go, and above all he abounds in

humour and wit; even in the last act Goha, the headman, relieves the

tension by the tale of his father who advised him on his death-bed not

to slay too quickly the criminal on the off-chance that there might be

a revolution or something to save the wretch’s life, and, when after

deliverance comes the noble Cārudatta forbids the slaying with steel of

the grovelling Saṁsthānaka, Çarvilaka cheerfully remarks that is all

right: he will be eaten alive by the dogs instead.

These merits and the wealth of incident of the drama more than

compensate for the overluxuriance of the double intrigue, and the lack

of unity, which is unquestionable. A demerit in the eyes of the writers

on poetics is the absence of elaborate descriptions, but the simple and

clear diction of the play adds greatly to its liveliness and dramatic

effect, and the poet has perfect command of the power of pithy and

forcible expression. The Viṭa effectually rebukes the arrogance and

pride of family of Saṁsthānaka:

kiṁ kulenopadiṣṭena çīlam evātra kāraṇam

bhavanti sutarāṁ sphītāḥ sukṣetre kaṇṭakidrumāḥ.

‘Why talk of birth? Character alone counts. In rich soil the thorn

trees grow fastest.’ Cārudatta on the point of death asserts his

fearlessness:

na bhīto marāṇād asmi kevalaṁ dūṣitaṁ yaçaḥ

viçuddhasya hi me mṛtyuḥ putrajanmasamo bhavet.

‘I fear not death, but my honour is sullied; were that stain removed,

death would be as dear as the birth of a son.’ Admirable is his

expression of belief in Vasantasenā who may be dead:

prabhavati yadi dharmo dūṣitasyāpi me ’dya: prabalapuruṣavākyair

bhāgyadoṣāt kathaṁcit

surapatibhavanasthā yatra tatra sthitā vā: vyapanayatu kalan̄kaṁ

svasvabhāvena saiva.

‘If righteousness prevails, though to-day I am undone by the slanderous

words of one in power through my unhappy fate, may she, dwelling with

the gods above or wherever she be, by her true nature wipe out the blot

upon me.’ Sadly he apostrophizes his child deemed to be at play:

hā Rohasena na hi paçyasi me vipattim: mithyaiva nandasi

paravyasanena nityam.

‘Ah! Rohasena, since thou dost not know my plight, ever dost thou

rejoice in thy play falsely, for sorrow is in store.’

The character of Cārudatta is effectively portrayed by the Vidūṣaka:

[276]

dīnānāṁ kalpavṛkṣaḥ svaguṇaphalanataḥ sajjanānāṁ kuṭumbī

ādarçaḥ çikṣitānāṁ sucaritanikaṣaḥ çīlavelāsamudraḥ

satkartā nāvamantā puruṣaguṇanidhir dakṣiṇodārasattvo hy

ekaḥ çlāghyaḥ sa jīvaty adhikaguṇatayā cocchvasanti cānye.

‘A tree of bounty to the poor, bent down by its fruits, his virtues; a

support for all good men; a mirror of the learned, a touchstone of

virtue, an ocean that never violates its boundaries of virtue;

righteous, free from pride, a store-house of human merit, the essence

of courtesy and nobility; he gives meaning to life by the goodness

which we extol; other men merely breathe.’

The evils of poverty are forcibly depicted by Cārudatta himself: [277]

çūnyair gṛhaiḥ khalu samāḥ puruṣāḥ daridrāḥ

kūpaiç ca toyarahitais tarubhiç ca çīrṇaiḥ

yad dṛṣṭapūrvajanasaṁgamavismṛtānām

evam bhavanti viphalāḥ paritoṣakālāḥ.

‘Like empty houses, in truth, are poor men, or wells without water or

blasted trees; for fruitless are their hours of relaxation, since their

former friends forget them.’ The same idea is again expressed by the

hero: [278]

satyaṁ na me vibhavanāçakṛtāsti cintā: bhāgyakrameṇa hi dhanāni

bhavanti yānti

etat tu māṁ dahati naṣṭadhanāçrayasya: yat sauhṛdād api janāḥ

çithilībhavanti.

‘My dejection, assuredly, is not born of the mere loss of my wealth,

for with the turn of fortune’s wheel riches come and go. Nay, what

pains me is that men fail in friendship to him whose sometime wealth

has taken flight.’ The repetition of the idea becomes, indeed,

wearisome, but the ingenuity and fancy of the author are undoubted.

Love is also effectively described. The Viṭa is an admirer of

Vasantasenā and thus addresses the fleeting lady: [279]

kiṁ tvaṁ padair mama padāni viçeṣayantī

vyālīva yāsi patagendrabhayābhibhūtā?

vegād aham praviçṛtaḥ pavanaṁ nirundhyām

tvannigrahe tu varagātri na me prayatnaḥ.

‘Why, surpassing my speed with thine own, dost thou flee like a snake,

filled with fear of the lord of birds? Were I to use my speed I could

outstrip the wind itself, but I would make no effort to seize thee, O

fair-limbed one.’ Cārudatta praises the rain: [280]

dhanyāni teṣāṁ khalu jīvitāni: ye kāminīnāṁ gṛham āgatānām

ārdrāṇi meghodakaçītalāni: gātrāṇi gātreṣu pariṣvajanti.

‘Happy the life of those whose limbs embrace the limbs of their loved

ones, come to their home, dripping wet and cold with the water of the

clouds.’

Moreover, while to later Indian critics the descriptive stanzas of the

poet are lacking in that elaboration and cleverness which are admitted

by developed taste, to us much of the poetic value of the drama depends

on the power of the poet to describe with point and feeling in simple

terms which require no effort to appreciate. The whole scene of the

storm gains by the stanzas in which its beauties are described, once we

consent, as we must do in appreciating any Sanskrit play, to ignore the

inappropriateness of these lyric effusions in the actual circumstances.

In real life a lady seeking eagerly an interview with her beloved, in

resplendent attire, would have no time to display her command of

Sanskrit poetry in description, when counsels of prudence urged her to

her destination with the least possible delay: [281]

mūḍhe nirantarapayodharayā mayaiva: kāntaḥ sahābhiramate kiṁ

tavātra?

māṁ garjitair iti muhur vinivārayantī: mārgaṁ ruṇaddhi kupiteva

niçā sapatnī.

‘“If, foolish one, my beloved has joy clasped in my bosom’s embrace,

what is that to thee?” Thus night with her thunders, seeking to stay

me, blocks my path, like an angry rival.’

meghā varṣantu garjantu muñcantv açanim eva vā

gaṇayanti na çītoṣṇaṁ ramaṇābhimukhāḥ striyaḥ.

‘Let the clouds rain, thunder, or cast down the levin bolt; women who

speed to their loved ones reckon nothing of heat or cold.’ [282]

gatā nāçaṁ tārā upakṛtam asādhāv iva jane

viyuktāḥ kāntena striya iva na rājanti kakubhaḥ

prakāmāntastaptaṁ tridaçapatiçastrasya çikhinā

dravībhūtam manye patati jalarūpeṇa gaganam.

‘The stars disappear, like a favour bestowed on a worthless man; the

quarters lose their radiance, like women severed from their beloved;

molten by the fierce fire of Indra’s bolt, the sky, I ween, is poured

down upon us in rain.’ [283]

unnamati namati varṣati garjati meghaḥ karoti timiraugham

prathamaçrīr iva puruṣaḥ karoti rūpāṇy anekāni.

‘The cloud rises aloft, bows down, pours rain, sends thunder and the

dark; every show it makes of its wealth like the man newly rich.’ [284]

Last we may cite the rebuke of Vasantasenā to the lightning:

yadi garjati vāridharo garjatu tannāma niṣṭhurāḥ puruṣāḥ

ayi vidyut pramadānāṃ tvam api ca duḥkhaṁ na jānāsi?

‘If the cloud must thunder, then let him thunder; cruel were men ever;

but, O lightning, can it be that thou too dost not know the pangs of a

maiden’s love?’ [285]

The merits of the play are sufficient to enable its author to dispense

with praise not deserved. For Çūdraka, regarded as the author, has been

credited [286] with the distinction of being a cosmopolitan; however

great the difference between Kālidāsa, ‘the grace of poetry’ [287] and

Bhavabhūti, ‘the master of eloquence,’ [288] these two authors, it is

said, are far more allied in spirit than is either of them with the

author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā; the Çakuntalā and the Uttararāmacarita

could have been produced nowhere save in India, Çakuntalā is a Hindu

maid, Mādhava a Hindu hero, while Saṁsthānaka, Maitreya, and Madanikā

are citizens of the world. This claim, however, can hardly be admitted;

the Mṛcchakaṭikā as a whole is a drama redolent of Indian thought and

life, and none of the three characters adduced have any special claim

to be more cosmopolitan than some of the creations of Kālidāsa. The

variety of the characters of the play is unquestionably laudable, but

the praise in part is due to Bhāsa, and not to his successor. To the

same source also must be attributed the comparative simplicity of the

style, which certainly contrasts with the degree of elaboration found

even in Kālidāsa, and carried much further in Bhavabhūti. The variety

of incident is foreshadowed in Bhāsa, but the development of the drama

must be attributed to the author, and frankly it cannot be said to be

wholly artistic; that the drama is unnecessarily complex must be

conceded, nor can the action be said to proceed with complete ease and

conviction. The humour of the play is undoubted, but here again to

Bhāsa must honour be given. Bhāsa again is the prototype for the

neglect of the rule of the dramaturgy which demands the presence of the

hero on the stage in each act; the naming of the play, in defiance of

convention, from a minor incident may justly be ascribed to the author

himself.

The real Indian character of the drama reveals itself in the demand for

the conventional happy ending, which shows us every person in a

condition of happiness, with the solitary exception of the evil king.

Cārudatta is restored to affluence and power from the depths of infamy

and misery; Vasantasenā’s virtue and fidelity are rewarded by the

signal honour of restoration to the rank of one whom the hero may

marry; the monk, who refuses worldly gain, has the pleasure of becoming

charged with spiritual oversight, with its attendant amenities—not

inconsiderable to judge from our knowledge of the wealth of Buddhist

monasteries. Even Saṁsthānaka is spared, to save us, we may assume, the

pain of seeing anything so unpleasant as a real, even if well deserved,

death on the stage, for the king perishes at a distance from the scene.

If, as Cārudatta asserts at the end of the play, fate plays with men

like buckets at the well, one rising as another falls, Çūdraka is not

inclined to seek realism sufficiently to permit of his introducing even

a tinge of sorrow into the close of his drama.

4. THE PRĀKRITS

No extant play exhibits anything like the variety of Prākrits found in

the Mṛcchakaṭikā, which seems almost as if intended to illustrate the

precepts of the Nāṭyaçāstra in this regard. [289] The commentator

obligingly provides us with the names of the dialects represented and

those who speak them. Çaurasenī is spoken by the director after his

Sanskrit exordium, the comedienne, Vasantasenā, Madanikā, her servant,

Karṇapūraka, her slave, her mother, the wife of Cārudatta, the Çreṣṭhin

or guildsman, and the officer of the court, and Radanikā, Cārudatta’s

servant. Avantikā is attributed to the two policemen Vīraka and

Candanaka. The Vidūṣaka speaks Prācyā. The shampooer who turns monk,

Sthāvaraka, servant of the Çakāra Saṁsthānaka, Kumbhīlaka, servant of

Vasantasenā, Vardhamānaka, servant of Cārudatta, and the little

Rohasena speak Māgadhī. The Çakāra speaks Çākārī, the Caṇḍālas who act

as headsmen Cāṇḍālī, and the chief gambler Ḍhakkī. Sanskrit, on the

other hand, is spoken by the hero, the Viṭa, the royal claimant Āryaka,

and the Brahmin thief Çarvilaka. This distribution of Prākrits agrees

with that of the Nāṭyaçāstra as we have it in one important aspect; it

ignores the Māhārāṣṭrī, though for some not obvious reason Konow claims

that this was introduced into the drama by Çūdraka. On the other hand,

it does not assign to slaves, Rājputs, or guildsmen the Ardha-Māgadhī

of the Nāṭyaçāstra. In the case of Rohasena the Māgadhī ascribed to him

has been largely converted into Çaurasenī in the manuscripts. The

Çāstra ascribes Āvantī to Dhūrtas, which is interpreted as meaning

gamblers; the distinction between it and Çaurasenī is minimal; it is

said to have s and r and be rich in proverbs by Pṛthvīdhara, and this

accords adequately with the actual speeches of the officers. But the

second, Candanaka, expressly gives himself out as a southerner, and we

can hardly avoid the conclusion that the dialect is Dākṣiṇātyā which

the Çāstra ascribes to warriors, police officers, and gamblers. The

Prācyā of the Vidūṣaka is nothing more or less than Çaurasenī, though

it is given separately in the Çāstra also; it may have been an eastern

dialect of the main language. The Ḍhakkī ascribed to the gamblers

should probably [290] be named Ṭakkī, or Ṭākkī, an easy error because

of the confusion of the letters in manuscripts. Pischel regarded it as

an eastern dialect which had l, and preserved two sibilants ç and s in

which ṣ was merged; Sir G. Grierson finds in it a western dialect,

which seems more probable. The Çākārī of Saṁsthānaka is nothing more or

less than Māgadhī, which is given as the language of that person by the

Nāṭyaçāstra, and the Cāṇḍālī is merely another variety of that Prākrit.

Thus the rich variety reduces itself in effect to Çaurasenī [291] and

Māgadhī with Ṭakkī, of which we have too little to say precisely what

it was.

5. THE METRES

The author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā shows considerable skill in metrical

handling; his favourite metre is naturally enough the Çloka, which

suits his rapid style and is adapted to further the progress of the

dialogue. It occurs 83 times, while the next favourite, the pretty

Vasantatilaka, appears 39 times, and the Çārdūlavikrīḍita 32 times. The

only other important metres are the Indravajrā (26), with the Vaṅçasthā

(9), and the Upajāti combination of both (5). But there occur also the

Puṣpitāgrā, Praharṣiṇī, Mālinī, Vidyunmālā, [292] Vaiçvadevī,

Çikhariṇī, Sragdharā, and Hariṇī, and one irregular stanza. Of the Āryā

there are 21 cases, including one Gīti, with 30 morae in each half

stanza, and there are two instances of the Aupacchandasika. The Prākrit

metres show considerable variety; of the Āryā type there are 53 as

against 44 of other types. [293]

VI

KĀLIDĀSA

1. THE DATE OF KĀLIDĀSA

It is unfortunate, though as in the case of Shakespeare not surprising,

that we know practically nothing of the life and age of Kālidāsa save

what we can infer from his works and from the general history of

Sanskrit literature. There are indeed stories [294] of his ignorance in

youth, until he was given poetic power by the grace of Kālī, whence his

strange style of Kālidāsa, slave of Kālī, which is not one prima facie

to be expected in the case of a poet who shows throughout his work the

finest flower of Brahmanical culture. But these tales are late and

worthless, and equally without value is the fiction that he was a

contemporary of King Bhoja of Dhārā in the first half of the eleventh

century A.D. As little value, however, attaches to a tale which has

been deemed of greater value, the alleged death of Kālidāsa in Ceylon

when on a visit there by the hand of a courtesan, and the discovery of

his murder by his friend Kumāradāsa, identified with the king of that

name of the early part of the sixth century A.D. The tradition, as I

showed in 1901, is very late, unsupported by the earliest evidence, and

totally without value. [295]

The most prevalent tradition makes Kālidāsa a contemporary of

Vikramāditya, and treats him as one of the nine jewels of that

monarch’s entourage. Doubtless the king meant by the tradition, which

is late and of uncertain provenance, is the Vikramāditya whose name is

associated with the era of 57 B.C. and who is credited with a victory

over the Çakas. Whatever truth there may be in the legend, and in this

regard we have nothing but conjecture, [296] there is not the slightest

reason to accept so early a date for Kālidāsa, and it has now no

serious supporter outside India. But, based on Fergusson’s suggestion

[297] that the era of 57 B.C. was based on a real victory over Hūṇas in

A.D. 544, the reckoning being antedated 600 years, Max Müller [298]

adopted the view that Kālidāsa flourished about that period, a

suggestion which was supported by the fact that Varāhamihira, also a

jewel, certainly belongs to that century, and others of the jewels

might without great difficulty be assigned to the same period. The

theory in so far as it rested on Fergusson’s hypothesis has been

definitely demolished by conclusive proof of the existence of the era,

as that of the Mālavas, before A.D. 544, but the date has been

supported on other grounds. Thus Dr. Hoernle [299] found it most

probable that the victor who was meant by Vikramāditya in tradition was

the king Yaçodharman, conqueror of the Hūṇas, and the same view was at

one time supported by Professor Pathak, [300] who laid stress on the

fact that Kālidāsa in his account of the Digvijaya, or tour of conquest

of the earth, of the ancient prince Raghu in the Raghuvaṅça [301]

refers to the Hūṇas, and apparently locates them in Kashmir, because he

mentions the saffron which grows only in Kashmir.

An earlier date, to bring Kālidāsa under the Guptas, has been favoured

by other authorities, who have found that the reference to a conquest

of the Hūṇas must be held to be allusion to a contemporary event. This

date is attained on second thoughts by Professor Pathak, [302] who

places the Hūṇas on the Oxus on this view, and holds that Kālidāsa

wrote his poem shortly after A.D. 450, the date of the first

establishment of their empire in the Oxus valley, but before their

first defeat by Skandagupta, which took place before A.D. 455, when

they were still in the Oxus valley and were considered the most

invincible warriors of the age. On the other hand, Monmohan

Chakravarti, [303] who converted Professor Pathak to belief in the

contemporaneity of Kālidāsa with the Guptas, places the date at between

A.D. 480 and 490, on the theory that the Hūṇas were in Kālidāsa’s time

in Kashmir. The whole argument, however, appears fallacious; Raghu is

represented as conquering the Persians, and there is no contemporary

ground for this allegation; manifestly we have no serious historical

reminiscences, but, as is natural in a Brahmanical poet, a reference of

the type of the epic which knows perfectly well the Hūṇas. The exact

identity of the Hūṇas of the epic is immaterial; as the name had

penetrated to the western world by the second century A.D. if not

earlier, there is no conceivable reason for assuming that it could not

have reached India long before the fifth or sixth centuries A.D. [304]

Other evidence is scanty. Mallinātha, as is notorious, finds in verse

14 of the Meghadūta a reference to a poet Nicula, a friend of Kālidāsa,

and an enemy Dignāga; the latter would be the famous Buddhist logician,

and, assuming that his date is the fifth century A.D., we have an

argument for placing Kālidāsa in the fifth or sixth century A.D. But

the difficulties of this argument are insurmountable. In the first

place, it is extremely difficult to accept the alleged reference to

Nicula, who is otherwise a mere name, and to Dignāga; why a Buddhist

logician should have attacked a poet does not appear, especially as

every other record of the conflict is lost. Nor is the double entendre

at all in Kālidāsa’s manner; [305] such efforts are little in harmony

with Kālidāsa’s age, while later they are precisely what is admitted,

and are naturally seen by the commentators where not really intended.

It is significant that the allusion is not noted by Vallabhadeva, and

that it first occurs in Dakṣināvarta Nātha (c. A.D. 1200) and

Mallinātha (fourteenth century), many centuries after the latest date

assignable to Kālidāsa. Even, however, if the reference were real, the

date of Dignāga can no longer be placed confidently in the fifth

century A.D., or with other authorities in the sixth century. On the

contrary, there is a good deal of evidence which suggests that A.D. 400

is as late as he can properly be placed. [306]

As little can any conclusion be derived from the allusion in Vāmana to

a son of Candragupta in connexion with Vasubandhu, which has led to

varied efforts at identification, based largely on the fifth century as

the date of Vasubandhu. But it is far more probable that Vasubandhu

dates from the early part of the fourth century, and nothing can be

derived hence to aid in determining the period of Kālidāsa. [307]

More solid evidence must be sought in the astronomical or astrological

data which are found in Kālidāsa. Professor Jacobi has seen in the

equalization of the midday with the sixth Kāla in the Vikramorvaçī a

proof of Kālidāsa’s having lived in the period immediately subsequent

to the introduction from the west of the system of reckoning for

ordinary purposes the day by 12 Horās, Kāla being evidently used as

Horā. The passage has been interpreted by Huth as referring to a

sixteenfold division, and the argument to be derived from it is not

established, but Huth, on the other hand, manifestly errs by making

Kālidāsa posterior to Āryabhaṭa (A.D. 499) on the score that in the

Raghuvaṅça he refers to eclipses as caused by the shadow of the earth,

the reference being plainly to the old doctrine of the spots on the

moon. It is, however, probable that Kālidāsa in the Vikramorvaçī refers

to the figure of the lion in the zodiac, borrowed from the west, and it

is certain that he was familiar with the system of judicial astrology,

which India owes to the west, for he alludes both in the Raghuvaṅça and

the Kumārasambhava to the influence of the planets, and above all uses

technical terms like ucca and even jāmitra, borrowed from Greece. A

date not probably prior to A.D. 350 is indicated by such passages.

[308]

Similar evidence can be derived from Kālidāsa’s Prākrit, which is

plainly more advanced than that of Bhāsa, while his Māhārāṣṭrī can be

placed with reasonable assurance after that of the earlier Māhārāṣṭrī

lyric, which may have flourished in the third and fourth centuries A.D.

He is also earlier than the Aihole inscription of A.D. 634, where he is

celebrated, than Bāṇa (A.D. 620), and above all than Vatsabhaṭṭi’s

Mandasor Praçasti of A.D. 473. It is, therefore, most probable that he

flourished under Candragupta II of Ujjayinī, who ruled up to about A.D.

413 with the style of Vikramāditya, which is perhaps alluded to in the

name Vikramorvaçī, while the Kumārasambhava’s title may well hint a

compliment on the birth of young Kumāragupta, his son and successor.

[309] The Mālavikāgnimitra with its marked insistence on the horse

sacrifice of the drama seems to suggest a period in Kālidāsa’s early

activity when the memory of the first horse sacrifice for long

performed by an Indian king, that of Samudragupta, was fresh in men’s

minds. Moreover the poems of Kālidāsa are essentially those of the

Gupta period, when the Brahmanical and Indian tendencies of the dynasty

were in full strength and the menace of foreign attack was for the time

evanescent.

2. THE THREE DRAMAS OF KĀLIDĀSA

The Mālavikāgnimitra [310] is unquestionably the first dramatic work

[311] of Kālidāsa; he seeks in the prologue to excuse his presumption

of presenting a new play when tried favourites such as Bhāsa, Saumilla,

and the Kaviputras exist, and in the Vikramorvaçī also he shows some

diffidence, which has disappeared in the Çakuntalā. The great merits of

the poet are far less clearly exhibited here than in his other plays,

but the identity of authorship is unquestionable, and was long ago

proved by Weber against the doubts of Wilson.

The play, performed at a spring festival, probably at Ujjayinī, is a

Nāṭaka in five Acts, and depicts a love drama of the type seen already

in Bhāsa’s plays on the theme of Udayana. The heroine Mālavikā is a

Vidarbha princess, who is destined as the bride of Agnimitra; her

brother, Mādhavasena, however, is captured by his cousin Yajñasena; she

escapes and seeks Agnimitra, but en route to his capital in Vidiçā her

escort is attacked by foresters, perhaps by order of the rival Vidarbha

prince; she escapes again, however, and reaches Vidiçā, where she finds

refuge in the home of the queen Dhāriṇī, who has her trained in the art

of dancing. The king happens to see a picture in which she is depicted,

and falls in love with her. To arrange an interview is not easy, but

Gautama, his Vidūṣaka, provokes a quarrel between two masters of the

dance, who have recourse to the king to decide the issue of

superiority. He in turn refers the matter to the nun Kauçikī, who is in

reality a partisan of Mālavikā, who had been in her charge and that of

her brother, who was killed when the escort was dispersed. She bids the

masters produce each his best pupil; Gaṇadāsa brings out Mālavikā,

whose singing and dancing delight all, while her beauty ravishes the

king more than ever. She is victorious. In Act III the scene changes to

the park, whither comes Mālavikā at the bidding of Dhāriṇī to make the

Açoka blossom, according to the ancient belief, by the touch of her

foot. The king hidden with the Vidūṣaka behind a thicket watches her,

but so also does Irāvatī, the younger of Agnimitra’s queens, who is

suspicious and jealous of any rival in the king’s love. The king

overhears Mālavikā’s conversation with her friend, and realizes that

his love is shared; he comes forth and embraces her, but Irāvatī

springs out of her hiding-place and insults the king. Dhāriṇī has

Mālavikā confined to prevent any further development of the intrigue.

The Vidūṣaka, however, proves equal to the occasion with the aid of

Kauçikī; he declares himself bitten by a snake; the only remedy proves

to require the use of a stone in the queen’s ring, which is accorded

for that purpose, but employed for the more useful end of securing the

release of Mālavikā, and the meeting of the lovers, which Irāvatī, who

has excellent grounds for her vigilance, again disturbs. The king’s

embarrassment is fortunately mitigated by the necessity of his going to

the rescue of the little princess Vasulakṣmī, whom a monkey has

frightened. Act V cuts the knot by the advent of two unexpected pieces

of news; envoys come bearing the report of victory over the prince of

Vidarbha and conveying captives; two young girls introduced before the

queen as singers recognize both Kauçikī and their princess Mālavikā

among the queen’s attendants, and Kauçikī explains her silence on the

princess’s identity by obedience to a prophecy. Further, Puṣyamitra,

Agnimitra’s father, sends tidings of victory from the north; the son of

Dhāriṇī, Vasumitra, has defeated the Yavanas on the bank of the Indus,

while guarding the sacrificial horse, which by ancient law is let loose

to roam for a year unfettered before a king can perform rightfully the

horse sacrifice, which marks him as emperor. Dhāriṇī already owes

Mālavikā a guerdon for her service in causing the Açoka plant to

blossom; delighted by the news of her son’s success, she gladly gives

Agnimitra authority to marry Mālavikā, Irāvatī begs her pardon, and all

ends in happiness.

Puṣyamitra, Agnimitra, and Vasumitra are clearly taken from the dynasty

of the Çun̄gas, formed by the first through the deposition of the last

Maurya in 178 B.C. [312] Contact with Yavanas in his time is recorded

and the horse sacrifice is doubtless traditional, but equally it may

reflect the sacrifice of Samudragupta, the most striking event of the

early Gupta history, since it asserted the imperial sway of the family.

The rest of the play is based on the normal model.

The Vikramorvaçī, [313] by many reckoned as the last work [314] in

drama of Kālidāsa, seems rather to fall in the interval between the

youthful Mālavikāgnimitra and the mature perfection of the Çakuntalā.

The theme is that of the love of Purūravas, a king, and Urvaçī, an

Apsaras, or heavenly nymph. The prologue, which has been unjustly

suspected of being proof of the incompleteness and therefore later date

of the drama, is followed by screams of the nymphs from whom Urvaçī on

her return from Kailāsa has been torn away by a demon; the king hastens

to her aid, recovers her, and restores her first to her friends, and

then to the Gandharva king, but not before both have fallen desperately

in love. In the entr’acte a servant of the queen extracts cleverly from

the Vidūṣaka the secret of the change which has come over the king, his

love for Urvaçī. The king himself then appears; in conversation with

the Vidūṣaka he declares his love, to meet with scant sympathy; Urvaçī

and a friend appear in the air, and Urvaçī drops a letter written on

birch bark breathing her love; the king reads it and gives it to the

Vidūṣaka; Urvaçī’s friend appears, and finally Urvaçī herself, but

after a brief exchange of love passages Urvaçī is recalled to play a

part in heaven in a drama produced by Bharata. The message, unluckily,

falls into the queen’s hands, and she refuses to be appeased by

Purūravas’s attempts to soothe her. In the entr’acte before Act II we

learn from a conversation between two pupils of Bharata that Urvaçī was

so deeply in love that she played badly her part in the piece on

Lakṣmī’s wedding; asked whom she loved, she answered Purūravas instead

of Puruṣottama, Viṣṇu’s name, and Bharata cursed her; but Indra

intervened and gave her leave to dwell on earth with her love until he

had seen the face of her child. The Act that follows shows the king,

anxious to please the queen, engaged with her in celebrating the

festival of the moon’s union with Rohiṇī; Urvaçī and her friend, in

disguise and unseen by the king in a fairy mist, watch his courtesy

which fills the nymph with anguish, though her friend assures her that

it is mere courtesy. To her joy she finds that the queen has decided to

be reconciled, and to permit the king the enjoyment of his beloved;

pressed to stay with the king, she refuses, and Urvaçī joins Purūravas,

her friend leaving her, bidding Purūravas to care for her so that she

may not miss her friends in the sky.

The prelude to Act IV tells us of misfortune; the nymphs who mourn by

the sea her absence learn that, angry at her husband for some trivial

cause, she had entered the grove of Kumāra, forbidden to women, and

been turned into a creeper. In distraction [315] the king seeks for

her; he deems the cloud a demon which has stolen her away, demands of

the peacock, the cuckoo, the flamingo, the bee, the elephant, the boar,

the antelope what has become of her; he deems her transformed into the

stream, whose waves are the movements of her eyebrows while the rows of

birds in its waters are her girdle; he dances, sings, cries, faints in

his madness, or deems the echo to be answering him, until a voice from

heaven tells him of a magic stone, armed with which he grasps a creeper

which in his embrace turns into Urvaçī.

From this lyric height the drama declines in Act V. The king and his

beloved are back in his capital; the moon festival is being celebrated,

but the magic stone is stolen by a vulture, which, however, falls

pierced by the arrow of a youthful archer; the arrow bears the

inscription, ‘the arrow of Āyus, son of Urvaçī and Purūravas’. The king

had known nothing of the child, but, while he is amazed, a woman comes

from a hermitage with a gallant boy, who, educated in the duties of his

warrior caste, has by his slaying the bird violated the rule of the

hermitage and is now returned to his mother. Urvaçī, summoned, admits

her parentage, but, while Purūravas is glad, she weeps to think of

their severance, now inevitable, since he has seen his son. But, while

Purūravas is ready to abandon the realm to the boy and retire to the

forest in grief, Nārada comes with a message of good tidings; a battle

is raging between the gods and the demons; Purūravas’s arms will be

necessary, and in reward he may have Urvaçī’s society for his life.

The play has come down in two recensions, one preserved in Bengālī and

Devanāgarī manuscripts and commented on by Ran̄ganātha in A.D. 1656, and

the other in South Indian manuscripts, commented on by Kāṭayavema,

minister of the Reḍḍi prince, Kumāragiri of Koṇḍavīḍu about A.D. 1400.

The most important among many differences is the fact that in Act IV

the northern manuscripts give a series of Apabhraṅça verses, with

directions as to the mode of singing and accompanying them, which are

ignored in the southern manuscripts. The northern text calls the play a

Troṭaka, apparently from the dance which accompanied the verses, the

southern a Nāṭaka which it in essentials is. The arguments against the

authenticity of the verses are partly the silence of the theorists, the

fact that the existence in Kālidāsa’s time of Apabhraṅça of the type

found is more than dubious, [316] that there is sometimes a degree of

discrepancy between the verses and the prose of the drama, and that in

the many imitations of the scene (Mālatīmādhava, Act IX, Bālarāmāyaṇa,

Act V, Prasannarāghava, Act VI, and Mahānāṭaka, Act IV) there are no

similar verses. These reasons are on the whole conclusive, and the

problematic fact that the Prākrit of the northern recension is better

is not of importance.

The Çakuntalā [317] certainly represents the perfection of Kālidāsa’s

art, and may justly be assumed to belong to his latest period of work.

The prologue with his usual skill leads us up to the picture of the

king in swift pursuit of an antelope entering the outskirts of the

hermitage; warned of the sacred character of the spot, the king alights

from his chariot and decides to pay his respects to the holy man whose

hermitage it is; he is absent, but Çakuntalā, his foster-daughter, is

there with her friends; pursued by a bee she calls for help; they reply

that Duḥṣanta the king should aid as the hermitage is under his

protection, and the king gallantly comes forward to help. From the

maidens he elicits the tale of Çakuntalā’s birth; she is daughter of

Viçvāmitra and Menakā, and is being reared not for the religious life

but for marriage to some worthy one. The king loves and the maiden

begins to reciprocate his affection, when the news that a wild elephant

is menacing the hermitage takes him away. Act II reveals his Vidūṣaka

groaning over the toils of the king’s hunting. But the king gives order

for the hunt to end, not to please the Vidūṣaka but for Çakuntalā’s

sake, and, while he recounts his feelings to his unsympathetic friend,

receives with keen satisfaction the request of the young hermits to

protect the hermitage against the attacks of demons. The Vidūṣaka he

gets rid of by sending him back to the capital to take part in a

festival there, assuring him, in order to prevent domestic trouble,

that his remarks about Çakuntalā were not serious. In the entr’acte

before Act III a young Brahmin praises the deeds of Duḥṣanta, and we

learn that Çakuntalā is unwell, and her maidens are troubled regarding

her state, as she is the very life breath of Kaṇva. The Act itself

depicts Çakuntalā with her maidens; she is deeply in love and writes a

letter at their suggestion: the king who has overheard all comes on the

scene and a dialogue follows, in which both the king and the maiden

express their feelings; the scene is ended by the arrival of the nun

Gautamī to fetch away her charge. The entr’acte that follows tells us

from the conversation of Priyaṁvadā and Anasūyā, Çakuntalā’s dear

friends, that the king after his marriage with Çakuntalā has departed

and seems to have forgotten her; while Kaṇva is about to return and

knows nothing of the affair. A loud cry interrupts them; Çakuntalā in

her love-sickness has failed to pay due respect to the harsh ascetic

Durvāsas, who has come to visit the hermitage: he curses her, and all

the entreaties of her friends succeed in no more than mitigating the

harshness of his curse; she will be forgotten by her husband, not

indeed for ever, but until she presents to him the ring he gave her in

token of their union. The curse is essential; the whole action of the

play depends on it. The Act itself tells us that the difficulty

regarding Kaṇva has been solved; a voice from the sky has informed him

at the moment of his return of the marriage and Çakuntalā’s approaching

maternity. He has decided to send her under escort to the king. Then

follows a scene of intense pathos; the aged hermit unwillingly parts

with his beloved foster-daughter, with words of advice for her future

life, and Çakuntalā is desolated to leave him, her friends, and all

that she has loved at the hermitage.

Act V shows us the king in his court, overwhelmed with the duties of

office, for Kālidāsa takes care to show us Duḥṣanta as the great and

good monarch. News is brought that hermits with women desire an

interview, while a song is heard in which the queen Haṅsavatī laments

the king’s faithlessness to her; the king dispatches the Vidūṣaka to

solace her, and receives in state the hermits. They bring him his wife,

but, under the malign influence of the curse, he does not recognize her

and cannot receive her. The hermits reprove him, and insist on leaving

her, refusing her the right to go with them, since her duty is by her

husband’s side. The king’s priest is willing to give her the safety of

his house till the babe be born, but a figure of light in female shape

appears and bears Çakuntalā away, leaving the king still unrecognizing,

but filled with wonder. In the entr’acte which follows a vital element

is contributed; policemen mishandle a fisherman accused of theft of a

royal ring found in a fish which he has caught; it is Duḥṣanta’s ring

which Çakuntalā had dropped while bathing. The Act that follows tells

us of the recognition by the king of the wrong unwittingly done and his

grief at the loss of his wife; he seeks to console himself with her

portrait, when he is interrupted by a lady of the harem, and then by

the minister, who obtains from him the decision of a law case involving

the right of succession; the episode reminds the king of his

childlessness. From his despair the king is awakened by the screams of

the Vidūṣaka who has been roughly handled by Mātali, Indra’s

charioteer, as an effective means of bringing the king back to the

realization that there are duties superior to private feeling. The gods

need his aid for battle. In Act VII Duḥṣanta is revealed victorious,

and travelling with Mātali in a divine car high through the air to

Hemakūṭa, where dwells in the place of supreme bliss the seer Mārīca

and his wife. Here the king sees a gallant boy playfully pulling about

a young lion to the terror of two maidens who accompany him in the

dress of the hermitage; they ask the king to intervene with the child

in the cub’s interest, and the king feels a pang as he thinks of his

sonlessness. To his amazement he learns that this is no hermit’s son,

but his own; Çakuntalā is revealed to him in the dress of an ascetic,

and Mārīca crowns their happiness by making it clear to Çakuntalā that

her husband was guiltless of the sorrow inflicted upon her.

A drama so popular has naturally enough failed to come down to us in a

single recension. [318] Four are normally distinguished, Bengālī,

Devanāgarī, Kāçmīrī, and South Indian, while a fifth may also be

traced. There are, however, in reality, two main recensions, the

Bengālī, with 221 stanzas, as fixed by the commentators Çan̄kara and

Candraçekhara, and the Devanāgarī, with 194 stanzas, of Rāghavabhaṭṭa;

the Kāçmīrī, which supplies an entr’acte to Act VII, is in the main an

eclectic combination of these two representatives of North Indian

texts, and the South Indian is closely akin to the Devanāgarī; Abhirāma

and Kāṭayavema among others have commented on it. The evidence of

superior merit is conflicting; Pischel [319] laid stress on the more

correct Prākrit of the Bengālī and the fact that some readings in the

Devanāgarī are best explained as glosses on the Bengālī text, while

Lévi [320] proved that Harṣa and Rājaçekhara knew the Bengālī recension

in some shape. On the other hand, Weber [321] contended for the

priority of the Devanāgarī; certainly some readings there are better,

and some of the Bengālī stanzas are mere repetitions of others found in

both texts. Unless we adopt the not very plausible view of Bollensen

that the Devanāgarī version is the acting edition of the play revised

for representation, we must hold that neither recension is of

conclusive value: the argument from the Prākrit is not conclusive, for

it may merely rest on the superior knowledge of the copyists from whom

the Bengālī original ultimately issued. [322]

3. KĀLIDĀSA’S DRAMATIC ART

The order of plays here adopted is in precise harmony with the

development in a harmonious manner of Kālidāsa’s dramatic art. The

Mālavikāgnimitra is essentially a work of youthful promise and some

achievement; [323] the theme is one less banal probably in Kālidāsa’s

time than it became later when every Nāṭikā was based on an analogous

plot, and there is some skill in the manner in which the events are

interlaced; the Vidūṣaka’s stratagems to secure his master the sight of

his beloved are amusing, and, though Agnimitra appears mainly as a

love-sick hero, the reports of battles and victories reminds us

adequately of his kingly functions and high importance. The most

effective characterization, however, is reserved for the two queens,

Dhāriṇī and Irāvatī: the grace and dignity, and finally the magnanimity

of the former, despite just cause for anger, are set off effectively

against the passionate impetuosity of the latter, which leads her to

constant eavesdropping, and to an outbreak against the king, forgetful

of his rank and rights. The heroine is herself but faintly presented,

but her friend Kauçikī, who has been driven by a series of misfortunes

to enter the religious life, is a noble figure; she comforts and

distracts the mind of Dhāriṇī; she is an authority on the dance and on

the cure for snake bite, and alone among the women she speaks Sanskrit.

The Vidūṣaka is an essential element in the drama, and he plays rather

the part of a friend and confidant of the king than his jester; without

his skilled aid Agnimitra would have languished in vain for his

inamorata. But on the other hand he contributes comparatively little to

the comic side of the drama.

In the Vikramorvaçī Kālidāsa shows a marked advance in imagination. We

have no precise information of the source he followed; the story is

old, it occurs in an obscure form in the Ṛgveda, and is degraded to

sacrificial application in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa; it is also found in

a number of Purāṇas, and in the Matsya [324] there is a fairly close

parallel to Kālidāsa’s version, for the motif of the nymph’s

transformation into a creeper, instead of a swan, is already present,

Purūravas’s mad search for her is known as well as his rescue of her

from a demon. The passionate and undisciplined love of Urvaçī is

happily displayed, but it is somewhat too far removed from normal life

to charm; her magic power to watch her lover unseen and to overhear his

conversation is as unnatural as the singular lack of maternal affection

which induces her to abandon forthwith her child rather than lose her

husband; her love is selfish; she forgets her duty of respect to the

gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is the direct outcome

of a fit of insane jealousy. The hero sinks to a diminutive stature

beside her, and, effective in the extreme as is his passionate despair

in Act IV, his lack of self-restraint and manliness is obvious and

distasteful. The minor characters are handled with comparative lack of

success; the incident of the boy Āyus is forced, and the ending of the

drama ineffective and flat. The Vidūṣaka, however, introduces an

element of comedy in the stupidity by which he allows himself to be

cheated out of the name of Urvaçī, and the clumsiness which permits the

nymph’s letter to fall into the hands of the queen. The latter,

Auçīnarī, is a dignified and more attractive figure than the nymph;

like Agnimitra in his scene with Irāvatī, Purūravas cuts a sorry figure

beside her, seeing how just cause she had to be vexed at his lack of

faith and candour towards her.

In the Çakuntalā Kālidāsa handles again with far more perfect art many

of the incidents found in his earlier drama. He does not hesitate to

repeat himself; we have in the first and third Acts the pretty idea of

the king in concealment hearing the confidential talk of the heroine

and her friends; the same motif is found in Act III of the

Mālavikāgnimitra. Like Urvaçī, Çakuntalā, when she leaves the king,

makes a pretext—her foot pricked by a thorn and her tunic caught by a

branch—to delay her going; in the same way both express their love by

letters; the snatching by a bird of the magic stone in the Vikramorvaçī

is paralleled by Mātali’s seizure of the Vidūṣaka in Act VI; Āyus has a

peacock to play with, as the little Bharata a lion, but in each case

the comparison is all to the good of the Çakuntalā. The same maturity

is seen in the changes made in the narrative of the Mahābhārata [325]

which the poet had before him. The story there is plain and simple; the

king arrives at the hermitage; the maiden recounts to him her ancestry

without false shame; he proposes marriage; she argues, and, on being

satisfied of the legality of a secret union, agrees on the

understanding that her son shall be made heir apparent. The king goes

away; the child grows up, until at the due season the mother,

accompanied by hermits, takes him to court; the hermits leave her, but

she is undaunted when the king out of policy refuses to recognize her;

she threatens him with death and taunts him with her higher birth;

finally, a divine voice bids the king consecrate the child, and he

explains that his action was due solely in order to have it made plain

that the child was the rightful prince. This simple tale is

transformed; the shy heroine would not dream of telling her birth; her

maidens even are too modest to do more than hint, and leave the

experienced king to guess the rest. Çakuntalā’s dawning love is

depicted with perfect skill; her marriage and its sequel alluded to

with delicate touches. The king’s absurd conduct is now explained; a

curse produces it, and for that curse Çakuntalā was not without

responsibility, for she allowed her love to make her forgetful of the

essential duty of hospitality and reverence to the stranger and saint.

Before the king she utters no threat but behaves with perfect dignity,

stunned as she is by his repudiation of their love. The king is a

worthy hero, whose devotion to his public duties and heroism are

insisted on, and who deserves by reason of his unselfishness to be

reunited with his wife. His love for his son is charmingly depicted,

and, accepting as an Indian must do the validity of the curse, [326]

his conduct is irreproachable; it is not that he despises the lovely

maiden that he repulses her, but as a pattern of virtue and morality he

cannot accept as his wife one of whom he knows nothing. Çakuntalā’s own

love for him is purified by her suffering, and, when she is finally

united to him, she is no longer a mere loving girl, but one who has

suffered tribulation of spirit and gained in depth and beauty of

nature.

The other characters are models of skilful presentation. Kālidāsa here

shakes himself free from the error of presenting any other woman in

competition with Çakuntalā; Duḥṣanta is much married, but though

Haṅsavatī deplores his faithlessness he does not meet her, and, when

Vasumatī enters in Act VI, the effect is saved by the entry of the

minister to ask the king to decide a point of law. The Vidūṣaka, who

would have ruined the love idyll, is cleverly dismissed on other

business in Act II, while he serves the more useful end of introducing

comic relief; Mātali playfully terrifies him to rouse the king from his

own sorrows. Kaṇva is a delightful figure, the ascetic, without child,

who lavishes on his adopted daughter all the wealth of his deep

affection, and who sends her to her husband with words of tender

advice; he is brilliantly contrasted with the fierce pride and anger of

Durvāsas who curses Çakuntalā for what is no more than a girlish fault,

and the solemn majesty of Mārīca, who, though married, has abandoned

all earthly thoughts and enjoys the happiness of release, while yet

contemplating the affairs of the world and intervening to set them in

order with purely disinterested zeal The companions of the heroine are

painted with delicate taste; both are devoted body and soul to their

mistress, but Anasūyā is serious and sensible; Priyaṁvadā talkative and

gay. There is a contrast between the two hermits who take Çakuntalā to

the court; Çārn̄garava shows the pride and hauteur of his calling, and

severely rebukes the king; Çāradvata is calm and restrained and

admonishes him in lieu. Equally successful is the delineation of the

police officers, whose unjust and overbearing conduct to the fisherman

represents the spirit of Indian police from the first appearance in

history. The supernatural, which is in excess in the Vikramorvaçī, is

reduced to modest dimensions, and intervenes hardly at all in the play,

until we come to the last Act, where the theory permits and even

demands that the marvellous should be introduced, and the celestial

hermitage is a fit place for the reunion of two lovers severed by so

hard a fate. The episode of the ring whose loss prevents the immediate

recognition of the heroine is effectively conceived and woven into the

plot.

Kālidāsa excels in depicting the emotions of love, from the first

suggestion in an innocent mind to the perfection of passion; he is

hardly less expert in pathos; the fourth Act of the Çakuntalā is a

model of tender sorrow, and the loving kindness with which even the

trees take farewell of their beloved one contrasts with the immediate

harsh reception which awaits her at the royal court. Kālidāsa here, as

in the fourth Act of the Vikramorvaçī and in the garden scenes of the

Mālavikāgnimitra, displays admirably his love for nature and his power

of description of all the stock elements of Indian scenery, the mango,

the Bimba fruit, the Açoka, the lotus, and his delicate appreciation of

the animal world of India. In the last Act of the Çakuntalā also we

have the graceful picture of the appearance of the earth viewed in

perspective from the celestial car of Mātali.

The humour of the Vidūṣaka is never coarse; his fondness for food is

admitted; cakes and sugar suggest themselves to him when the hero

admires the moon or is sick of love; heroics he despises: the king is

summarily compared to a thief in his dislike for discovery; if caught,

he should imitate the latter who explains that he was learning the art

of wall breaking. Or again, he is in his contempt for the ladies of his

harem like one sated of sweet dates and desiring the bitter tamarind.

Mālavikā is summarily treated; she is like a cuckoo caught by a cat

when Dhāriṇī places her in confinement, but he is no more respectful of

himself, for, seized by Mātali, he treats himself as a mouse in mortal

fear of a cat. Best of all is his description in Act II of the miseries

brought on him by Duḥṣanta’s hunting; the Brahmins were no admirers of

the sport, though they had to acquiesce in it in kings, and the

Vidūṣaka’s picture is vivid in the extreme.

The range of Kālidāsa’s technical knowledge is apparent in his skilled

use of the dance and song to set off his dramas; the Mālavikāgnimitra

contains an interesting exposition by the dancing master of the theory

of the art and its importance; not only is Mālavikā a dancer, but

Çakuntalā shows her skill in movement in Act I. The songs of the trees

and of Haṅsavatī in the same play enable him to add a fresh interest to

the drama, and in the Vikramorvaçī spectacular effects seem to have

been aimed at, while in the Bengālī recension song is prominently

introduced in Act IV of the Vikramorvaçī.

Admirable as is Kālidāsa’s work, it would be unjust to ignore the fact

that in his dramas as in his epics he shows no interest in the great

problems of life and destiny. The admiration of Goethe and the style of

the Shakespeare of India accorded by Sir William Jones, [327] the first

to translate the Çakuntalā, are deserved, but must not blind us to the

narrow range imposed on Kālidāsa’s interests by his unfeigned devotion

to the Brahmanical creed of his time. Assured, as he was, that all was

governed by a just fate which man makes for himself by his own deeds,

he was incapable of viewing the world as a tragic scene, of feeling any

sympathy for the hard lot of the majority of men, or appreciating the

reign of injustice in the world. It was impossible for him to go beyond

his narrow range; we may be grateful that, confined as he was, he

accomplished a work of such enduring merit and universal appeal as

Çakuntalā, which even in the ineffective guise of translations has won

general recognition as a masterpiece.

4. THE STYLE

Kālidāsa represents the highest pitch of elegance attained in Sanskrit

style of the elevated Kāvya character; he is master of the Vaidarbha

style, the essentials of which are the absence of compounds or the rare

use of them, and harmony of sound as well as clearness, elevation, and

force allied to beauty, such as is conveyed to language by the use of

figures of speech and thought. He is simple, as are Bhāsa and the

author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, but with an elegance and refinement which

are not found in these two writers; Açvaghoṣa, we may be sure,

influenced his style, but the chief cause of its perfection must have

been natural taste and constant reworking of what he had written, a

fact which may easily explain the discrepancies between the recensions

of his work. But his skill in the Çakuntalā never leads him into the

defect of taste which betrayed his successors into exhibiting their

skill in the wrong place; skilled as he is in description, and ready as

he is to exhibit his power, in the fifth Act he refrains from inserting

any of these ornamental stanzas which add nothing to the action,

however much honour they may do to the skill of the poet. His language

has also the merit of suggestiveness; what Bhavabhūti, the greatest of

his successors, expresses at length, he is content to indicate by a

touch. He is admirably clear, and the propriety of his style is no less

admirable; the language of the policeman and the fisher is as

delicately nuanced as that of the domestic priest who argues at once in

the best style of the philosophical Sūtras. The Prākrit which he

ascribes to the maidens of his play has the supreme merit that it

utterly eschews elaborate constructions and long compounds, such as

Bhavabhūti places without thought of the utter incongruity in the

mouths of simple girls.

The rhetoricians [328] extol the merits of Kālidāsa in metaphor, and

they repeatedly cite his skill in the use of figures of speech, sound

and thought, which they divide and subdivide in endless variety. He

excels in vivid description (svabhāvokti) as when he depicts the flight

of the antelope which Duḥṣanta pursues to the hermitage:

grīvābhan̄gābhirāmam muhur anupatati syandane baddhadṛṣṭiḥ

paçcārdhena praviṣṭaḥ çarapatanabhayād bhūyasā pūrvakāyam

darbhair ardhāvalīḍhaiḥ çramavivṛtamukhabhraṅçibhiḥ kīrṇavartmā

paçyodagraplutatvād viyati bahutaraṁ stokam urvyāṁ prayāti.

‘His glance fixed on the chariot, ever and anon he leaps up, gracefully

bending his neck; through fear of the arrow’s fall he draws ever his

hinder part into the front of his body; he strews his path with the

grass, half chewed, which drops from his mouth opened in weariness; so

much aloft he bounds that he runs rather in the air than on earth.’

Inferential knowledge is illustrated by a brilliant stanza: [329]

çāntam idam āçramapadaṁ sphurati ca bāhuḥ phalam ihāsya

atha vā bhavitavyānāṁ dvārāṇi bhavanti sarvatra.

‘This is the hermitage where all desires are stilled; yet my arm

throbs; how can here be found the fruit of such a presage? Nay, the

doors of fate are ever open.’ The rôle of conscience in human action is

finely portrayed: [330]

asaṁçayaṁ kṣatraparigrahakṣamā: yad āryam asyām abhilāṣi me manaḥ

satāṁ hi saṁdehapadeṣu vastuṣu: pramāṇam antaḥkaraṇapravṛttayaḥ.

‘Assuredly the maiden is meet for marriage to a warrior, since my noble

mind is set upon her; for with the good in matters of doubt the final

authority is the dictate of conscience.’ Of the departing Çakuntalā

after her rejection the king says: [331]

itaḥ pratyādeçāt svajanam anugantuṁ vyavasitā

muhus tiṣṭhety uccair vadati guruçiṣye gurusame

punar dṛṣṭiṁ bāṣpaprasarakaluṣām arpitavatī

mayi krūre yat tat saviṣam iva çalyaṁ dahati mām.

‘When I rejected her she sought to regain her companions, but the

disciple, in his master’s stead, loudly bade her stay; then she turned

on cruel me a glance dimmed by her falling tears, and that now burns me

like a poisoned arrow.’ At his son’s touch he says: [332]

anena kasyāpi kulān̄kureṇa: spṛṣṭasya gātreṣu sukhaṁ mamaivam

kāṁ nirvṛttiṁ cetasi tasya kuryād: yasyāyam an̄gāt kṛtinaḥ

prarūḍhaḥ?

‘When such joy is mine in the touch on my limbs of a scion of some

other house, what gladness must not be his, from whose loins, happy

man, this child is sprung?’ The punishment of the king for his

disloyalty is severe: [333]

prajāgarāt khilībhūtas tasyāḥ svapne samāgamaḥ

bāṣpas tu na dadāty enāṁ draṣṭuṁ citragatām api.

‘My sleeplessness forbids the sight of her even in a dream; my tears

deny me her pictured form.’ On reunion the picture is very different:

[334]

çāpād asi pratihatā smṛtirodharūkṣe: bhartary apetatamasi prabhutā

tavaiva

chāyā na mūrchati malopahataprasāde: çuddhe tu darpaṇatale

sulabhāvakāçā.

‘Thou wert rejected by thy husband, cruel through the curse that robbed

him of memory; now thy dominion is complete over him whose darkness is

dispelled; on the tarnished mirror no image forms; let it be cleaned

and it easily appears.’

There is pathos in Purūravas’s reproach to Urvaçī: [335]

tvayi nibaddharateḥ priyavādinaḥ: praṇayabhan̄gaparān̄mukhacetasaḥ

kam aparādhalavam mama paçyasi: tyajasi mānini dāsajanaṁ yataḥ?

‘My delight was ever in thee, my words ever of love; what suspicion of

fault dost thou see in me that, O angry one, thou dost abandon thy

slave?’ The metrical effect is here, as usual, extremely well planned.

His vain efforts to attain his beloved are depicted forcibly: [336]

samarthaye yat prathamam priyām prati: kṣaṇena tan me parivartate

‘nyathā

ato vinidre sahasā vilocane: karomi na sparçavibhāvitapriyaḥ.

‘Whatever I deem to be my beloved in a moment assumes another aspect. I

will force my eyes to be sleepless, since I have failed to touch her

whom I adore.’ There are no limits to the strength of his love: [337]

idaṁ tvayā rathakṣobhād an̄genān̄gaṁ nipīḍitam

ekaṁ kṛti çarīre ’smiñ çeṣam an̄gam bhuvo bharaḥ.

‘In this body no member has value save that which, thanks to the

movement of the chariot, she has touched; all else is a mere burden to

the earth.’ Hyperbole [338] is permissible:

sāmantamaulimaṇirañjitapādapīṭham: ekātapatram avaner na tathā

prabhutvam

asyāḥ sakhe caraṇayor aham adya kāntam: ājñākaratvam adhigamya

yathā kṛtārthaḥ.

‘Despite the radiance shed on my footstool by the jewelled diadems of

vassal princes, despite the subjection of the whole earth to my sway,

not so much joy did I gain from attaining kingship as the satisfaction

won from paying homage to the feet of that lady, O my friend.’ The

recovery of the nymph from her faint caused by the savage onslaught

upon her is described in a happy series of similes: [339]

āvirbhūte çaçini tamasā ricyamāneva rātrir

naiçasyārcir hutabhuja iva cchinnabhūyiṣṭhadhūmā

mohenāntar varatanur iyaṁ lakṣyate mucyamānā

gan̄gā rodhaḥpatanakaluṣā gacchatīva prasādam.

‘As the night, freed from the darkness when the moon has appeared, as

the light of a fire in the evening when the smoke has nearly all gone,

so appears this lady fair, recovering from her faint, and winning back

her calmness, like the Ganges after her stream has been troubled by the

falling of her banks.’

The Mālavikāgnimitra, it is true, has far fewer beauties of diction

than the other two dramas, but it contains many verses which are

unmistakably the work of Kālidāsa, though they present much less than

the maturity of his later style. The figure of discrepancy (viṣama) is

illustrated by the description of the god of love whose bow, so

innocent in seeming, can yet work such ill: [340]

kva rujā hṛdayapramāthinī: kva ca te viçvasanīyam āyudham

mṛdutīkṣṇataraṁ yad ucyate: tad idam manmatha dṛçyate tvayi.

‘How strange the difference between this pain that wrings the heart,

and thy bow to all seeming so harmless. That which is most sweet and

most bitter at once is assuredly found in thee, O God of Love.’

Agnimitra is ready enough with a pun, when Mālavikā, on being bidden to

show fearlessly her love towards him, slyly reminds him that she has

seen him as terrified as herself of the queen: [341]

dākṣiṇyaṁ nāma bimboṣṭhi baimbikānāṁ kulavratam

tan me dīrghākṣi ye prāṇās te tvadāçānibandhanāḥ.

‘Politeness, O Bimba-lipped one, is the family tradition of the

descendants of Bimbaka; nevertheless, what life I have depends entirely

on the hope of thy favour.’ The excellent Kauçikī consoles and comforts

Dhāriṇī with her approval of her acts: [342]

pratipakṣeṇāpi patiṁ sevante bhartṛvatsalāḥ sādhvyaḥ

anyasaritām api jalaṁ samudragāḥ prāpayanty udadhim.

‘Even to the extent of admitting a rival, noble ladies, who love their

spouses, honour their husbands; the great rivers bear to the ocean the

waters of many a tributary stream.’ There is an amusing directness and

homeliness in the king’s utterance on learning of the true quality of

Mālavikā: [343]

preṣyabhāvena nāmeyaṁ devīçabdakṣamā satī

snānīyavastrakriyayā patrorṇaṁ vopayujyate.

‘This lady, fit to bear the title of queen, has been treated as a

maid-servant, even as one might use a garment of woven silk for a

bathing cloth.’ But Kālidāsa shows himself equal to the expression of

more manly sentiments as well; the nun thus tells of her brother’s fall

in the effort to save Mālavikā when the foresters attack them: [344]

imām parīpsur durjāte parābhibhavakātarām

bhartṛpriyaḥ priyair bhartur ānṛṇyam asubhir gataḥ.

‘Eager in this misfortune to protect her, terrified by the enemy’s

onslaught, he paid with his dear life his debt of affection to the lord

whom he loved.’ The king’s reply is manly: bhagavati tanutyajām īdṛçī

lokayātrā: na çocyaṁ tatrabhavān saphalīkṛtabhartṛpiṇḍaḥ. ‘O lady, such

is the fate of brave men; thou must not mourn for him who showed

himself thus worthy of his master’s salt.’

5. THE LANGUAGE AND THE METRES

In Kālidāsa we find the normal state of the Prākrits in the later

drama, Çaurasenī for the prose speeches, and Māhārāṣṭrī for the verses.

[345] The police officers and the fisher in the Çakuntalā use Māgadhī,

but the king’s brother-in-law, who is in charge of the police and is a

faint echo of the Çakāra, speaks, as we have the drama, neither Çākārī

nor Māgadhī nor Dākṣiṇātyā but simply Çaurasenī. By this time, of

course, we may assume that Prākrit for the drama had been stereotyped

by the authority of Vararuci’s Prākrit grammar, and that it differed

considerably from the spoken dialect; there would be clear proof if the

Apabhraṅça verses of the Vikramorvaçī could safely be ascribed to

Kālidāsa. The Māhārāṣṭrī unquestionably owes its vogue to the outburst

of lyric in that dialect, which has left its traces in the anthology of

Hāla and later texts, and which about the period of Kālidāsa invaded

the epic. [346]

Kālidāsa’s Sanskrit is classical; here and there deviations from the

norm are found, but in most instances the expressions are capable of

defence on some rule or other, while in others we may remember the fact

of the epic tradition which is strong in Bhāsa.

The metres of Kālidāsa show in the Mālavikāgnimitra a restricted

variety; the Āryā (35) and the Çloka (17) are the only metres often

occurring. In the Vikramorvaçī the Āryā (29) and the Çloka (30) are

almost in equal favour, while the Vasantatilaka (12) and the

Çārdūlavikrīḍita (11) make a distinct advance in importance. In the

Çakuntalā the Āryā (38) and Çloka (36) preserve their relative

positions, while the Vasantatilaka (30) and Çārdūlavikrīḍita (22)

advance in frequency of use, a striking proof of Kālidāsa’s growing

power of using elaborate metrical forms. The Upajāti types increase to

16. The other metres used in the drama are none of frequent occurrence;

common to all the dramas are Aparavaktra, [347] Aupacchandasika, [348]

and Vaitālīya, Drutavilambita, Puṣpitāgrā, Pṛthvī, Mandākrāntā, Mālinī,

Vaṅçasthā, Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Çikhariṇī, and Hariṇī; the

Mālavikāgnimitra and the Çakuntalā share also Praharṣiṇī, Rucirā, [349]

Çālinī, and Sragdharā; the latter adds the Rathoddhatā, [350] the

Vikramorvaçī a Mañjubhāṣiṇī. [351] The earliest play has one irregular

Prākrit verse, the second two Āryās, and 29 of varied form of the types

measured by feet or morae, and the last seven Āryās and two Vaitālīyas.

The predominance of the Āryā is interesting, for it is essentially a

Prākrit metre, whence it seems to have secured admission into Sanskrit

verse.

Not unnaturally, efforts [352] have been made on the score of metre to

ascertain the dates of the plays inter se, and in relation to the rest

of the acknowledged work of Kālidāsa. The result achieved by Dr. Huth

would place the works in the order Raghuvaṅça, Meghadūta,

Mālavikāgnimitra, Çakuntalā, Kumārasambhava, and Vikramorvaçī. But the

criteria are quite inadequate; the Meghadūta has but one metre, the

Mandākrāntā, which occurs so seldom in the other poems and plays that

any comparison is impossible, [353] and the points relied upon by Dr.

Huth are of minimal importance; they assume such doctrines as that the

poem which contains the fewest abnormal caesuras is the more metrically

perfect and therefore the later, while the poem which has the largest

number of abnormal forms of the Çloka metre is artistically the more

perfect and so later. A detailed investigation of the different forms

of abnormal caesuras reveals the most perplexing counter-indications of

relative date, and the essential impression produced by the

investigations is that Kālidāsa was a finished metrist, who did not

seriously alter his metrical forms at any period of his career as

revealed in his poems, and that there is no possibility of deducing any

satisfactory conclusions from metrical evidence. The fact that the

evidence would place the mature and meditative Raghuvaṅça, [354] which

bears within it unmistakable proofs of the author’s old age, before the

Meghadūta and long before the Kumārasambhava, both redolent of love and

youth, is sufficient to establish its total untrustworthiness.

VII

CANDRA, HARṢA, AND MAHENDRAVIKRAMAVARMAN

1. CANDRA OR CANDRAKA

Some mystery exists as to the identity and character of Candra as a

dramatist. [355] We have in a Tibetan version a Lokānanda, a Buddhist

drama telling of a certain Maṇicūḍa, who handed over his wife and

children to a Brahmin as a sign of supreme generosity, which is

ascribed to Candragomin, the grammarian, in whose Çiṣyalekhā is found a

verse ascribed to Candragopin in the Subhāṣitāvali. If this is the

dramatist Candaka or Candraka, who is placed by Kalhaṇa under Tuñjina

of Kashmir, and who rivalled the author of the Mahābhārata in a drama,

is wholly uncertain. The grammarian must have lived before A.D. 650, as

he is cited in the Kāçikā Vṛtti though not by name; a more precise date

it is impossible to give, for his reference to a victory of a Jarta

over the Hūṇas cannot be made precise until we know what Jāṭ prince is

referred to, though Yaçodharman has been suggested. The identification

by Lévi of Candra with a person of that name mentioned by I-Tsing as

living in his time is seemingly impossible, though I-Tsing ascribes to

him the verse found in the Çiṣyalekhā mentioned above; the verse is

lacking in the Tibetan version and I-Tsing may have made a slip. His

contemporary seems to have been a Candradāsa, and to have dramatized

the Viçvantara legend.

To Candaka is ascribed in the Subhāṣitāvali [356] a fine verse of

martial tone:

eṣā hi raṇagatasya dṛḍhā pratijñā: drakṣyanti yan na ripavo

jaghanaṁ hayānām

yuddheṣu bhāgyacapaleṣu na me pratijñā: daivaṁ yad icchati jayaṁ ca

parājayaṁ ca.

‘I go to battle, and I swear that my foes shall never see the backs of

my steeds; for the rest, fate directs the destiny of the wavering

fight; I promise nothing, but shall take defeat or victory as it

pleases destiny.’ A verse of love is: [357]

prasāde vartasva prakaṭaya mudaṁ saṁtyaja ruṣam

priye çuṣyanty an̄gāny amṛtam iva te siñcatu vacaḥ

nidhānaṁ saukhyānāṁ kṣaṇam abhimukhaṁ sthāpaya mukham

na mugdhe pratyetum bhavati gataḥ kālahariṇaḥ.

‘Be gentle; show a little joy; lay aside thy anger; beloved, my limbs

are dried up, let thy speech pour ambrosia upon them. Turn to me for a

moment thy face, the abode of happiness; foolish one, time is an

antelope which, gone, cannot be recalled.’ The other citations we have

show skill both in tragic and erotic sentiment.

Candraka was evidently admired by the authorities on poetics; we find

in the commentary on the Daçarūpa [358] a verse, elsewhere ascribed to

him, cited as an example where diverse sentiments blend but where one,

that of coming parting of lovers, is predominant:

ekenākṣṇā paritataruṣā vīkṣate vyomasaṁstham

bhānor bimbaṁ sajalalulitenāpareṇātmakāntam

ahnaç chede dayitavirahāçan̄kinī cakravākī

dvau saṁkīrṇau racayati rasau nartakīva pragalbhā.

‘With one angry eye she gazes on the orb of the sun as it tarries on

the horizon; with the other, dimmed by her tears, she looks on her

soul’s beloved; thus the mate of the Cakravāka, feeling the approach at

nightfall of separation from her dear one, expresses two emotions, even

as a clever actress.’

Curiously enough we have no less than four stanzas of benediction

ascribed to him, which illustrate a formal feature of the Sanskrit

drama, the introduction of each play with one or more stanzas involving

divine favour. The verses are interesting, not so much for the

intrinsic merits of their poetry, which frankly are not great, but

because of the curious manner in which Indian poetry treats its

deities; the greatest of gods nevertheless in his sportive moods is yet

made the prototype of the human lover: [359]

cyutām indor lekhāṁ ratikalahabhagnaṁ ca valayam

çanair ekīkṛtya hasitamukhī çailatanayā

avocad yam paçyety avatu sa çivaḥ sā ca girijā

sa ca krīḍācandro daçanakiraṇapūritatanuḥ.

‘Smiling, the daughter of the mountain wrought into one a digit fallen

from the moon and a bracelet broken in a love quarrel, and said to her

lord, “Behold my work”. May he, Çiva, protect you, and the lady of the

mountain, and that moon of dalliance all covered with bites and rays.’

mātar jīva kim etad añjalipuṭe tātena gopāyyate

vatsa svādu phalam prayacchati na me gatvā gṛhāṇa svayam

mātraivam prahite guhe vighaṭayaty ākṛṣya saṁdhyāñjalim

çambhor bhinnasamādhir uddharabhaso hāsodgāmaḥ pātu vaḥ.

‘O mother.—My life.—What is it that my father guards so carefully in

the palm of his hand?—Dear one, it is a sweet fruit.—He will not give

me it.—Go thyself and take it.—Thus urged by his mother, Guha seizes

the closed hands of his sire as he adores the Twilight and drags them

apart; Çiva, angry at the interruption of his devotion, stays his wrath

at sight of his son and laughs: may that laughter protect you.’ [360]

2. THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE DRAMAS ASCRIBED TO HARṢA

Three dramas, as well as some minor poetry, have come down to us under

the name of Harṣa, unquestionably the king of Sthāṇvīçvara and

Kanyakubja, who reigned from about A.D. 606 to 648, [361] the patron of

Bāṇa who celebrates him in the Harṣacarita and of the Chinese pilgrim

Hiuan-Tsang who is our most valuable source of information on his

reign. That the three plays are by one and the same hand is made

certain in part by the common ascription in a verse in the prologue

mentioning Harṣa as an accomplished poet, partly by the recurrence of

two verses in the Priyadarçikā and the Nāgānanda and of one in the

former play and the Ratnāvalī, and above all by the absolute similarity

of style and tone in the three works, which renders any effort to

dissociate them wholly impossible. The question of their actual

authorship was raised in antiquity; for, while Mammaṭa in his

Kāvyaprakāça [362] merely refers to the gift of gold to Bāṇa—or Dhāvaka

in some manuscripts—by Harṣa, the commentators explain this of the

Ratnāvalī, which was passed off in Harṣa’s name. This is, however, not

in any way borne out by early tradition; I-Tsing [363] clearly refers

to the dramatization of the subject of the Nāgānanda by Harṣa and its

performance, and in the Kuṭṭanīmata [364] of Dāmodaragupta, who lived

under Jayāpīḍa of Kashmir (A.D. 779–813), a performance of the

Ratnāvalī, ascribed to a king, is mentioned. The ascription to Bāṇa has

nothing even plausible in it, so disparate are the styles of the dramas

and the Harṣacarita, and we have the option of believing that Harṣa

wrote them himself with such aid as his Paṇḍits might give, or of

accepting them as the work of some unknown dramatist, who allowed the

king to claim the credit for them.

3. THE THREE DRAMAS

The Ratnāvalī and the Priyadarçikā are closely connected both in

subject-matter and form; they are Nāṭikās, each in four Acts; their

common hero is Udayana, whom Bhāsa already celebrated, and the common

theme one of his numerous amourettes. The Ratnāvalī, [365] in special,

has found favour in the text-books of the drama, and has served to

illustrate the technical rules.

The ubiquitous Yaugandharāyaṇa, insatiable in seeking his master’s

welfare, has planned marriage for him with the daughter of the king of

Ceylon, but to attain this end has been difficult; to avoid vexing the

queen Vāsavadattā, he has kept her in the dark, and has spread a rumour

which he has had conveyed by Bābhravya, the king’s chamberlain, of the

death of Vāsavadattā in a fire at Lāvāṇaka. The king of Ceylon then

yields the hand of his daughter, and dispatches her in the care of the

chamberlain and his minister Vasubhūti to Vatsa, but, wrecked at sea,

she is rescued by a merchant of Kauçāmbī, taken there, and handed over

to Vāsavadattā who, seeing her beauty, decides to keep her from contact

with her inconstant spouse. But fate is adverse; at the spring festival

which she celebrates with Vatsa, Sāgarikā, as the princess is called

from her rescue from the sea, appears in the queen’s train; hastily

sent away, she lingers concealed, watches the ceremony of the worship

of the god Kāma, thinking Vatsa is the god in bodily presence, but is

undeceived by the eulogy of the herald announcing the advent of

evening. In Act II Sāgarikā is presented with her friend Susaṁgatā; she

has depicted the prince on a canvas, and Susaṁgatā in raillery adds her

beside him; she admits her love, but the confidence is broken by the

alarm created by the escape of a monkey from the stables. In its mad

rush it breaks the cage in Sāgarikā’s keeping, and the parrot escapes.

The king and the Vidūṣaka enter the grove where the bird is, hear it

repeat the maidens’ talk, and find the picture. The maidens returning

for the picture overhear the confidences of the king and the Vidūṣaka,

until Susaṁgatā sallies out and brings the lovers face to face. Their

meeting is cut short by the advent of the queen, who sees the picture,

realizes the position, and departs without manifesting the deep anger

which she feels and which the king vainly seeks to assuage. In Act III

the Vidūṣaka proves to have devised a scheme to secure a meeting of the

lovers; Sāgarikā dressed as the queen and Susaṁgatā as her attendant

are to meet Vatsa, but the plot is overheard, and it is Vāsavadattā

herself who keeps the rendezvous; she listens to Vatsa’s declarations

of love, and then bitterly reproaches him, rejecting his attempts to

excuse himself. Sāgarikā, who had come on the scene too late, hears the

king’s plight; weary, she ties a noose to her neck, when she is saved

by the advent of the Vidūṣaka and the king, who naturally mistakes her

for Vāsavadattā whom he fears his cruelty has driven to suicide. He

joyously recognizes his error, but the queen, who, ashamed of her

anger, has returned to make friends with her husband, finds the lovers

united, and in violent anger carries off the maiden and the Vidūṣaka

captive. But in Act IV we find the Vidūṣaka released and forgiven, but

Sāgarikā in some prison, the king helpless to aid her. Good news,

however, arrives; the general Rumaṇvant has won a victory over the

Kosalas and slain the king. A magician enters and is allowed to display

his art, but the spectacle is interrupted by the advent of Vasubhūti

and Bābhravya, who also have escaped the shipwreck. They tell their

tale of disaster, when another interruption occurs; the harem is on

fire; Vāsavadattā, shocked, reveals that Sāgarikā is there; Vatsa

rushes to aid her, and emerges with her in chains, for the fire has

been no more than a device of the magician. Bābhravya and Vasubhūti

recognize in Sāgarikā the princess, and Yaugandharāyaṇa arrives to

confess his management of the whole plot and the magician’s device.

Vāsavadattā gladly gives the king to Ratnāvalī, since her husband will

thus be lord of the earth, and Ratnāvalī is her full cousin.

The Priyadarçikā [366] introduces us in a speech by his chamberlain,

Vinayavasu, to the king Dṛḍhavarman, whose daughter is destined for

wedlock with Vatsa despite the demand for her hand made by the king of

Kalin̄ga, who revenges himself during Vatsa’s imprisonment at the court

of Pradyota by attacking and driving away Dṛḍhavarman. The maid is

carried away by the chamberlain and is received and sheltered by

Vindhyaketu, her father’s ally, but he offends Vatsa, is attacked and

killed by his general Vijayasena, who brings back as part of the booty

the unlucky Priyadarçikā; the king allots her to the harem as attendant

on Vāsavadattā with the name Āraṇyikā (Āraṇyakā). In Act II we find the

king, who has fallen in love with the maiden, seeking to distract

himself with his Vidūṣaka. Āraṇyikā enters, to pluck lotuses, with her

friend; she tells her love, which the king overhears; a bee attacks her

when her friend leaves her, and in her confusion she runs into the arms

of the king. Vatsa rescues her, but retires when her confidante

returns. Act III tells that the aged confidante of the queen,

Sāṁkṛtyāyanī, has composed a play on the marriage of Vatsa and

Vāsavadattā which the queen is to see performed; the rôle of queen is

to be played by Āraṇyikā, and Manoramā is to act the part of king, but

she and the Vidūṣaka have arranged to let the king take the part. The

performance causes anxiety to the queen, so ardent is the love-making,

though Sāṁkṛtyāyanī reminds her it is but play-making; she leaves the

hall, and finds the Vidūṣaka asleep; rudely wakened, he lets out the

secret and the queen refuses to listen to Vatsa’s lame excuses. Act IV

reveals Āraṇyikā in prison, the king in despair, and the queen in

sorrow, as she has learned from a letter from her mother that

Dṛḍhavarman, her aunt’s husband, is in bondage, needing Vatsa’s aid.

But Vijayasena brings news of the defeat of the Kalin̄ga king and the

re-establishment of Dṛḍhavarman, and the chamberlain of the latter

brings his thanks, his one sorrow being his daughter’s loss. Manoramā

enters in terror; Āraṇyikā has poisoned herself, Vāsavadattā, filled

with remorse, has her fetched, as Vatsa can cure her; the chamberlain

recognizes his princess, Vatsa’s magic arts bring her back to

consciousness, and Vāsavadattā recognizes in her her cousin, and grants

her hand to the king.

The Nāgānanda [367] performed at a festival of Indra, perhaps in the

autumn, differs from these dramas in its form, for it is a Nāṭaka in

five Acts, and in its inspiration; those are variants by Harṣa on the

theme of Vatsa’s loves, this is the dramatization of a Buddhist legend,

the self-sacrifice of Jīmūtavāhana, which was told in the Bṛhatkathā,

whence it appears in the later versions of that text [368] and in the

Vetālapañcaviṅçati. [369] Jīmūtavāhana is a prince of the Vidyādharas,

who has induced his father to resign his kingship, and give himself up

to a life of calm; he has made the acquaintance of Mitrāvasu, the

prince of the Siddhas, who has a sister. She has had a dream in which

Gaurī has revealed to her her future husband, and Jīmūtavāhana hidden

behind a thicket overhears her confiding this dream to her friend; the

Vidūṣaka forces a meeting on the timid lovers, who shyly confess their

affection, when an ascetic from the hermitage arrives to take the

maiden away. In Act II Malayavatī is love-sick, resting on a stone seat

in the garden; a sound makes her move away, when the king enters,

equally oppressed, declares his love and paints his fancy. Mitrāvasu

comes to offer him his sister’s hand; the king declines it, ignorant of

whom he loves; she deems herself disdained and seeks to hang herself,

but her friends rescue her and call for aid. Jīmūtavāhana appears, and

proves that she is his love by showing the picture. The two exchange

vows, and the marriage is concluded. In Act III, after a comic

interlude, we find them walking in the park in happiness; Jīmūtavāhana

is apprised of the seizure of his kingdom, but accepts the news gladly.

But the last two Acts change the topic. While strolling with Mitrāvasu

one day, Jīmūtavāhana sees a heap of bones and learns that they are the

bones of serpents daily offered to the divine bird Garuḍa; he resolves

to save the lives of the serpents at the cost of his own, gets rid of

Mitrāvasu, and goes to the place of offering. He hears the sobs of the

mother of Çan̄khacūḍa, whose son is about to be offered, consoles her by

offering himself in ransom, but is refused with admiration for his

gallantry. But, when the two have entered the temple to pray before the

offering, he gives himself to Garuḍa as substitute and is borne away.

The last Act opens with the anxiety of the parents of Jīmūtavāhana, to

whom and his wife is borne a jewel fallen from his crown; Çan̄khacūḍa,

also, emerged from the temple, finds the sacrifice made and reveals to

Garuḍa his crime. It is too late; the hero expires as his parents

arrive. Garuḍa is ashamed, and Gaurī appears to cut the knot, revive

the prince, and re-establish him in his realm, in order to keep faith

with Malayavatī; by a shower of ambrosia the snakes slain by Garuḍa

revive, and he promises to forego his cruel revenge.

4. HARṢA’S ART AND STYLE

Comparison with Kālidāsa is doubtless the cause why Harṣa has tended to

receive less praise than is due to his dramas. The originality of his

Nāṭikās is not perhaps great, but he has effectively devised the plot

in both; the action moves smoothly and in either play there is

ingenuity. The scene of the magician’s activity in the Ratnāvalī is

depicted with humour and vivacity; the parrot’s escape and its chatter

are sketched with piquancy, and the exchange of costumes in the

Ratnāvalī is natural and effective. The double comedy in the

Priyadarçikā is a happy thought, the intrigue in Act IV is neatly

conducted, so as to show us Vāsavadattā in the light of an affectionate

niece, and the scene with the bee is attractive. It is true that the

plays are full of reminiscences of the Mālavikāgnimitra, such as the

escape in the Ratnāvalī of the monkey, and the monkey that there

frightens the little princess while Sāṁkṛtyāyanī is Kauçikī revived.

But in this artificial comedy elegance is sought, not originality,

[370] and Harṣa is a clever borrower. The similarity of development of

both plays is perhaps more to be condemned; they are too obviously

variations of one theme.

The dominant emotion in either is love of the type which appertains to

a noble and gay (dhīralalita) hero, who is always courteous, whose

loves, that is to say, mean very little to him, and who does not forget

to assure the old love of his devotion while playing with the new. This

is a different aspect of Vatsa’s character from that displayed by

Bhāsa, and admittedly a much inferior one. Vāsavadattā suffers equal

deterioration, for she is no longer the wife who sacrifices herself for

her husband’s good; she is rather a jealous, though noble and

kind-hearted woman, whose love for her husband makes her resent too

deeply his inconstancy. The heroines are ingénues with nothing but good

looks and willingness to be loved by the king, whom they know, though

he does not, to be destined by their fathers as their husband. In

neither case is any adequate reason [371] suggested for the failure to

declare themselves in their true character, unless we are to assume

that they would not, in the absence of sponsors, have been believed.

Susaṁgatā, the friend of the heroine in the Ratnāvalī, is a pleasant,

merry girl who makes excellent fun of her mistress. The Vidūṣaka [372]

in both plays is typical in his greediness, but his figure lacks comic

force; he is, however, a pleasant enough character, for his love for

his master is genuine; he is prepared to die with him in the Ratnāvalī,

though he thinks his action in rushing into the fire quixotic. The

magician is an amusing and clever sketch of great pretensions allied to

some juggling skill.

The Nāgānanda reveals Harṣa in a new light in the last two Acts. His

liking for the marvellous is exhibited indeed in the last Acts of both

the Nāṭikās in accord with the theory, but it has a far wider scope in

the Nāgānanda, where the supernatural freely appears, and, though the

drama be Buddhist in inspiration, Gaurī is introduced to solve the

difficulty of restoring Jīmūtavāhana. Harṣa here rises to the task of

depicting the emotions of self-sacrifice, charity, magnanimity, and

resolution in the face of death; Jīmūtavāhana, however bizarre his

setting, is one of the ideals of Buddhism, a man seized with the

conviction that to sacrifice oneself for others is the highest duty.

Çan̄khacūḍa and his mother too appear as noble in character, far

superior to the savage Garuḍa. There is, it must be admitted, a decided

lack of harmony between the two distinct parts of the drama, but the

total effect is far from unsuccessful. Perhaps as a counterpoise to the

seriousness of the last part, Harṣa has introduced effective comedy in

Act III. The Vidūṣaka, Ātreya, is hideous and stupid; as he lies

sleeping, covered by a mantle to protect him from the bees, the Viṭa,

Çekharaka, sees him, mistakes him for his inamorata, embraces him and

fondles him. Navamālikā enters, and, indignant, the Viṭa makes the

Vidūṣaka, though a Brahmin, bow before her and drink alcohol. A little

later Navamālikā makes fun of him before the newly married couple by

painting his face with Tamūla juice.

Harṣa is fond of descriptions in the approved manner; the evening,

midday, the park, the hermitage, the gardens, the fountain, the

marriage festival, the hour for the bath, the mountain Malaya, the

forest, the palace, are among the ordinary themes beloved in the Kāvya.

In imagination and grace he is certainly inferior to Kālidāsa, but he

possesses the great merit of simplicity of expression and thought; his

Sanskrit is classical, and precise; his use of figures of speech and

thought restrained and in good taste. There is fire in his description

of a battle: [373]

astravyastaçirastraçastrakaṣaṇaiḥ kṛttottamān̄ge muhur

vyūḍhāsṛksariti svanatpraharaṇair gharmodvamadvahnini

āhūyājimukhe sa Kosalādhipatir bhagne pradhāne bale

ekenaiva Rumaṇvatā çaraçatair mattadvipastho hataḥ.

‘Heads were cleft by the blows of swords on helmets sore smitten; blood

flowed in torrents, fire flashed from the ringing strokes; when his

main host had been broken, Rumaṇvant challenged in the forefront of the

battle the lord of Kosala, who rode on a maddened elephant, and alone

slew him with a hundred arrows.’ The matching of the sound to the sense

is admirable, while a delicate perception is evinced in the line

describing the king’s success in soothing the wounded queen: [374]

savyājaiḥ çapathaiḥ priyeṇa vacasā cittānuvṛttyādhikam

vailakṣyeṇa pareṇa padapatanair vākyaiḥ sakhīnāṁ muhuḥ

pratyāsattim upāgatā na hi tathā devī rudatyā yathā

prakṣālyeva tayaiva bāṣpasalilaiḥ kopo ’panītaḥ svayam.

‘It was not so much by my false oaths of devotion, my loving words, my

coaxing, my depths of dejection, and falling at her feet, or the advice

of her friends, that the queen was appeased as that her anger was wiped

away by the cleansing water of her own bitter tears.’ Pretty, if not

appropriate, is the king’s address to the fire: [375]

virama virama vahne muñca dhūmānubandham: prakaṭayasi kim uccair

arciṣāṁ cakravālam?

virahahutabhujāhaṁ yo na dagdhaḥ priyāyāḥ: pralayadahanabhāsā tasya

kiṁ tvaṁ karoṣi?

‘Stay, stay, fire; cease thy constant smoke; why dost thou raise aloft

thy circle of flames? What canst thou avail against me, whom the fire

of severance from my beloved, fierce as the flame that shall consume

the universe, could not consume?’ There is excellent taste and

propriety in Vatsa’s address to the dead Kosala king: [376] mṛtyur api

te çlāghyo yasya çatravo ’py evaṁ puruṣakāraṁ varṇayanti. ‘Even death

for thee is glorious when even thy foes must thus depict thy manly

prowess.’ Such a phrase may reveal to us the true Harṣa himself, the

winner of many victories, and the hero of one great disaster.

The Nāgānanda strikes varied notes; there is fire and enthusiasm in the

assurances which Mitrāvasu gives the prince of the swift overthrow of

his enemy, Matan̄ga, at the hands of his faithful Siddhas, will he but

give the word: [377]

saṁsarpadbhiḥ samantāt kṛtasakalaviyanmārgayānair vimānaiḥ

kurvāṇāḥ prāvṛṣīva sthagitaravirucaḥ çyāmatāṁ vāsarasya

ete yātāç ca sadyas tava vacanam itaḥ prāpya yuddhāya siddhāḥ

siddhaṁ codvṛttaçatrukṣayabhayavinamadrājakaṁ te svarājyam.

‘With their chariots, meeting together and o’erspreading the whole

surface of the sky as they speed along, darkening the day as when the

sun’s rays are hidden in the rain, my Siddhas await but the bidding to

fare forthwith hence to the battle; but say the word and thy haughty

foe shall fall, and thy kingdom be restored to thee, while the princes

bow before thee in fear of his fate.’

Jīmūtavāhana, however, has other views of his duty: [378]

svaçarīram api parārthe yaḥ khalu dadyām ayācitaḥ kṛpayā

rājyasya kṛte sa katham prāṇivadhakrauryam anumanye?

‘Gladly, unasked, would I give my own life for another in compassion;

how then could I consent to the cruel slaughter of men merely to win a

realm?’ The saying is essential to the drama, for it leads immediately

to the determination of the prince to sacrifice himself for the Nāga.

There is dignity and force in the admonition addressed by the dying

hero to the repentant Garuḍa who begs him to command him: [379]

nityam prāṇātipātāt prativirama kuru prākkṛte cānutāpam

yatnāt puṇyapravāhaṁ samupacinu diçan sarvasattveṣv abhītim

magnaṁ yenātra nainaḥ phalati parimitaprāṇihiṅsāttam etad

durgāḍhāpāravārer lavaṇapalam iva kṣiptam antar hradasya.

‘Cease for ever from taking life; repent of thy past misdeeds; eagerly

accumulate a store of merit, freeing all creatures from fear of thee,

so that, lost in the infinite stream of thy goodness, the sin of

slaying creatures, in number limited, may cease to fructify, even as a

morsel of salt cast in the unfathomable depths of a great lake.’

Though Buddhist the drama, the benediction is enough to show how

effectively the spirit of the Nāṭikā has been introduced into the

legend: [380]

dhyānavyājam upetya cintayasi kām unmīlya cakṣuḥ kṣaṇam?

paçyānan̄gaçarāturaṁ janam imaṁ trātāpi no rakṣasi

mithyākāruṇiko ’si nirghṛṇataras tvattaḥ kuto ’nyaḥ pumān?

serṣyam Māravadhūbhir ity abhihito Buddho [381] jinaḥ pātu vaḥ.

‘“Feigned is thy trance; of what fair one dost thou think? Open thine

eyes for a moment and gaze on us whom love doth drive mad. Protector

art thou; save thou us. False is thy compassion; could there be any man

more pitiless than thou?” May he, whom Māra’s beauties thus addressed,

the Buddha, the conqueror, protect you.’

But Harṣa’s chief merit is undoubtedly shown in erotic verses as in the

description of the shyness of the new-made bride in the Nāgānanda:

[382]

dṛṣṭā dṛṣṭim adho dadhāti kurute nālāpam ābhāṣitā

çayyāyām parivṛtya tiṣṭhati balād ālin̄gitā vepate

niryāntīṣu sakhīṣu vāsabhavanān nirgantum evehate

jātā vāmatayaiva me ’dya sutarām prītyai navoḍhā priyā.

‘Looked at, she casts down her face; addressed, she gives no reply;

with head averted she lies on the couch; forcibly embraced, she

trembles; when her maidens leave her chamber, she seeks also to depart;

perverse though she be, my new-wed love delights me more and more.’ The

accuracy of the aim of love as an archer is described in the Ratnāvalī:

[383]

manaḥ prakṛtyaiva calaṁ durlakṣyaṁ ca tathāpi me

anan̄gena kathaṁ viddhaṁ samaṁ sarvaçilīmukhāiḥ.

‘Mind is naturally mobile and hard to find; nevertheless mine has been

pierced by love at once with all his darts.’ In entire harmony with

Indian taste Harṣa dwells on the points of physical perfection in the

adored one in the Nāgānanda: [384]

khedāya stanabhāra eṣa kim u te madhyasya hāro ’paras

tāmyaty ūruyugaṁ nitambabharataḥ kāñcyānayā kim punaḥ

çaktiḥ padayugasya noruyugalaṁ voḍhuṁ kuto nūpurau

svān̄gair eva vibhūṣitāsi vahasi kleçāya kiṁ maṇḍanam?

‘The burden of thy bosom serves to weary thy waist; why then add the

weight of thy necklace? Thy thighs are wearied by the bearing of thy

hips; why then thy girdle of bells? Thy feet can barely carry the load

of thy thighs; why add thine anklets? When in every limb thou dost

possess such grace, why dost thou wear ornaments to thy weariness?’

Harṣa is also capable of expressing a deeper side of love, as when the

king in the Ratnāvalī [385] fancies that Vāsavadattā has been driven to

suicide by his faithlessness:

samārūḍhaprītiḥ praṇayabahumānād anudinam

vyalīkaṁ vīkṣyedaṁ kṛtam akṛtapūrvaṁ khalu mayā

priyā muñcaty adya sphuṭam asahanā jīvitam asau

prakṛṣṭasya premṇaḥ skhalitam aviṣahyaṁ hi bhavati.

‘My beloved, whose love for me waxed daily because of my affection and

respect, has seen my falsity which she has never known before, and now

assuredly she seeks to lay life aside in despair; for unendurable is a

wrong against a noble love.’

5. THE LANGUAGE AND THE METRES OF HARṢA’S DRAMAS

Harṣa’s Sanskrit is of the usual classical type, eschewing any

deviation from the beaten paths, and his Prākrits, mainly Çaurasenī

with Māhārāṣṭrī in the verses, offer nothing of special interest,

beyond evidence of his careful study of Prākrit grammar. [386]

His use of metrical forms, on the other hand, marks the tendency to

reject the simplicity of the earlier dramatists, and to insist on the

use of the more elaborate metres, which in themselves are wholly

undramatic, but give a much wider range of opportunity for the

exhibition of merits of description. Harṣa’s favourite is the

Çārdūlavikrīḍita, which occurs 23 times in the Ratnāvalī, 20 times in

the Priyadarçikā, and 30 times in the Nāgānanda; the Sragdharā takes

second place with 11, 8, and 17 occurrences. The Çloka occurs in the

Ratnāvalī (9) and the Nāgānanda (24), the frequency in the latter being

due to the more epic character of the piece; its absence from the

Priyadarçikā is marked. The Āryā occurs 9 times each in the Nāṭikās,

and 16 times in the Nāgānanda. The Priyadarçikā suggests by its content

immaturity, and its poverty in metres supports this view; it has but

seven in all, including Indravajrā, Vasantatilaka (6), Mālinī, and

Çikhariṇī. The Nāgānanda has also Çālinī and Hariṇī, in common with the

Ratnāvalī, and Drutavilambita, while the Ratnāvalī adds Puṣpitāgrā,

Pṛthvī, and Praharṣiṇī. That play has 5 Prākrit Āryās and 1 Gīti, the

other two 3 Āryās apiece, while the Ratnāvalī contains a pretty pair of

rhymed verses, each with Pādas of 12 morae.

6. MAHENDRAVIKRAMAVARMAN

Almost a contemporary to a day of Harṣa was Mahendravikramavarman, son

of the Pallava king Siṅhaviṣṇuvarman, and himself a king with the

styles of Avanibhājana, Guṇabhara, and Mattavilāsa, all alluded to in

his play, [387] who ruled in Kāñcī, the scene of his drama, in the

first quarter of the seventh century A.D. [388] Chance rather than any

special merit has preserved for us his Prahasana, [389] which is so far

the only early farce published, and which has special interest as it

comes from the south, and, as we have seen, shows signs of the same

technique as that of Bhāsa. Thus the play is opened by the director at

the close of the Nāndī, which is not preserved, and the prologue is

styled Sthāpanā, and not, as usual, Prastāvanā. We have also a

reference to Karpaṭa as the writer of a text-book for thieves, as in

the Cārudatta of Bhāsa, but there is an essential difference in the

fact that great care is taken in the prologue to set out at length the

merits of the author as well as the name of the drama.

The director introduces the play by a dialogue in which he by skilled

flattery induces his first wife to aid him in the work, despite her

annoyance at his taking to himself of a younger bride, and the

transition to the actual drama is accomplished as in Bhāsa by his being

interrupted in the midst of a verse by a cry from behind the scene,

which leads him to complete his stanza by mentioning the appearance of

the chief actor and his companion. They are a Çaiva mendicant of the

skull-bearing order, a Kapālin, and his damsel, Devasomā by name. Both

are intoxicated, and the maiden asks for her companion’s aid to prevent

her from falling; he would hold her if he could, but his own condition

hinders aid; in remorse he proposes to forswear strong drink, but the

lady entreats him not for her sake thus to break his penance, and he

joyfully abandons the rash project, praising instead his rule of life:

[390]

peyā surā priyatamāmukham īkṣitavyam: grāhyaḥ svabhāvalalito

’vikṛtaç ca veṣaḥ

yenedam īdṛçam adṛçyata mokṣavartma: dīrghayur astu bhagavān sa

pinākapaṇiḥ.

‘Long live the god who bears the trident and who has revealed to men

this as the way of salvation, to drink brandy, to gaze on the face of

one’s beloved, to wear beautiful and becoming raiment.’ He is reminded

by his companions that the Arhants have a very different definition of

the path of salvation, but he has little trouble in disposing of them:

kāryasya niḥsaṁçayam ātmahetoḥ: sarūpatāṁ hetubhir abhyupetya

duḥkhasya kāryaṁ sukham āmanantaḥ: svenaiva vākyena hatā varākāḥ.

‘They establish that an effect, as self-caused, is of the same nature

as its causes; when, therefore, they declare that pleasure is the

effect of pain, the poor fools contradict their own dogmas.’ There

follows a complimentary description of Kāñcī, and a careful parallel

between the tavern where the pair are seeking more charity and a scene

of sacrifice; the Kapālin also discovers that Surā has a celestial

origin; it is none other than the form taken by the god of love when

burnt by the flame from Çiva’s eye, a conclusion heartily accepted by

his friend. The two are successful in attaining alms, but the tragic

discovery is made that the skull, which serves as begging bowl, and

which seems indeed at first to be the raison d’être of the Kapālin, is

lost, though he consoles himself by reflecting that it was only a sign

and that his occupation is still intact. A search through Kāñcī

follows, and suspicion falls on a Buddhist monk, Çākyabhikṣu, who is

lamenting the fact that despite the excellent fare he has received the

law forbids the enjoyment of strong drink and women; he concludes that

the true gospel of the Buddha contained no such ridiculous

restrictions, and expresses his desire to benefit the whole community

by discovering the authentic text. Naturally, when challenged, he

denies that his begging bowl is that of the Kapālin, and blesses the

master for his good sense in insisting on shaving the head, since it

prevents the damsel from succeeding in her well-meant effort to aid her

companion by pulling his hair. His arguments as to the identity of his

bowl are unconvincing to the Kapālin:

dṛṣṭāni vastūni mahīsamudra—: mahīdharādīni mahānti mohāt

apahnuvānasya sutaḥ kathaṁ tvam: alpaṁ na nihnotum alaṁ kapālam?

‘Thou art the son of one who denies in his folly things that we see,

the earth, the ocean, mountains and so forth; how then art thou not

ready to deny so small a thing as a bowl?’ Moreover, when the Buddhist,

politely and with commendable charity, picks up Devasomā when her

fruitless assault on his locks lands her on the ground, he accuses him

of taking her in marriage and invokes punishment on this violator of

the rights of Brahmins. A Pāçupata, a more respectable type of Çaiva

sectarian, comes on the scene and is appealed to as an arbitrator, but

finds the task too difficult; both claimants proudly assert their

adherence to a creed which forbids lying, and the Buddhist recites in

addition the whole list of moral rules which makes up the Çikṣāpada.

The obvious arguments from colour and shape in favour of the Buddhist

are made out by his rival to be no more than signs of his skill in

changing objects at pleasure. Finally the Pāçupata suggests that they

must take the matter before a court. En route, however, a diversion is

made by an Unmattaka, or madman, who has rescued the skull from a dog,

the real thief; he first appears willing to give it as a present to the

Pāçupata, who haughtily rejects the horrible object, but suggests the

Kapālin as the recipient; then he changes his mind, but, annoyed by the

cry of ‘mad’, asks the Kapālin to hold the skull and to show him the

madman; the Kapālin, nothing loth, accepts the skull, and misdirects

the madman. All are now happy; the Kapālin makes a handsome apology to

the Buddhist monk, and the usual Bharatavākya with a reference to the

ruling king, the author, concludes the work.

The author undoubtedly shows a considerable knowledge of the tenets of

the Buddhists, and the play is not unamusing, though the subject is

much too trivial for the pains taken to deal with it. The style is

certainly appropriate to the subject-matter; it is like that of Harṣa,

simple and elegant, while many of the verses are not without force and

beauty. In the prose speeches of the Kapālin, however, we have

occasional premonitions [391] of the unwieldy compounds of Bhavabhūti.

There is, as in all the later Prahasanas, a certain incongruity between

the triviality of the subject-matter and the elaboration of the form

but the king has the merit of avoiding the gross vulgarity which marks

normally the later works of this type.

Short as is the play, it shows a variety of Prākrits, for of the

dramatis personae only the Kapālin and the Pāçupata speak Sanskrit,

while the madman, the Buddhist, and Devasomā talk in Prākrit. That of

the Buddhist and of Devasomā is practically Çaurasenī, but the madman

uses Māgadhī. [392] The Prākrits show some of the signs of antiquity

which have been seen in Bhāsa’s dramas; thus forms of the plural in āṇi

and ññ in lieu of ṇṇ are found, doubtless as a result of the influence

of Bhāsa. The frequency of such forms as aho nu khalu and kiṁ nu khalu

is precisely in the manner of Bhāsa, and mention may be made of the

employment of mā with the infinitive in Prākrit in a prohibition.

The variety of metres is large in view of the brief extent of the play.

There are nine different stanzas employed; five each of the Çloka and

Çārdūlavikrīḍita, three each of Indravajrā type and Āryā, two each of

Vaṅçasthā type and Vasantatilaka, the solitary Prākrit verse being of

the former kind, and one each of Rucirā, Mālinī, and Sragdharā. [393]

VIII

BHAVABHŪTI

1. THE DATE OF BHAVABHŪTI

Bhavabhūti tells us in his prologues that he belonged to a family of

Brahmins styled Udumbaras, of Padmapura, apparently in Vidarbha, who

were of the Kāçyapa Gotra and followed the Taittirīya school of the

Black Yajurveda. His full name was Çrīkaṇṭha Nīlakaṇṭha, son of

Nīlakaṇṭha and Jātūkarṇī, grandson of Bhaṭṭa Gopāla, fifth in descent

from Mahākavi, a Vājapeya sacrificer, famed for his scholarship. He was

skilled in grammar, rhetoric, and logic, or perhaps in grammar, logic,

and Mīmāṅsā, [394] if we may believe the legend that he was a pupil of

Kumārila preserved in one manuscript of the Mālatīmādhava, which

complicates the matter by styling the author also Umvekācārya, a

commentator on Kumārila’s works. As he expressly mentions his knowledge

of the Vedas, the Upaniṣads, Sāṁkhya and Yoga, and gives Jñānanidhi as

his teacher, we may probably discard this suggestion. The whole three

of his plays were performed for the feast of the Lord Kālapriya, who is

normally identified with Mahākāla of Ujjayinī, though the scene of the

Mālatīmādhava is laid in Padmāvatī. We may conjecture, therefore, that

he left his home and proceeded to Ujjayinī or Padmāvatī in search of

fortune. From the silence in his dramas on any good luck, it is strange

to find that Kalhaṇa in the Rājataran̄giṇī [395] expressly asserted that

he was a member of the entourage of Yaçovarman of Kanyakubja, who was

defeated by Muktāpīḍa Lalitāditya of Kashmir, not earlier, probably,

than A.D. 736. A further indication of date is afforded by the

reference in Vākpati’s Gaüḍavaha [396] to Bhavabhūti’s ocean of poetry;

the poem is a prelude to a description in Prākrit of Yaçovarman’s

defeat of a Gauḍa king, and, as it seems never to have been finished,

it presumably was interrupted by the king’s own defeat. We must,

therefore, place Bhavabhūti somewhere about A.D. 700. The silence of

Bāṇa regarding him suggests that he was not known to him, while it is

certain that he knew Kālidāsa; the first writer on poetics to cite him

is Vāmana. [397] Verses not in our extant dramas are ascribed to him,

so he may have written other works than the three dramas, two Nāṭakas

on the Rāma legend and a Prakaraṇa, which we have. His friendship with

actors is a trait to which he himself refers, and efforts have been

made to trace in his works evidence of revision for stage purposes.

2. THE THREE PLAYS

Perhaps the earliest of the works is the Mahāvīracarita, but the

evidence for this is uncertain, and there is no reason to assign it

definitely to an earlier date than the Mālatīmādhava; both antedate,

perhaps considerably, the Uttararāmacarita. The Mālatīmādhava, [398] as

a Prakaraṇa, should have a plot invented by the author, and this is

true to the extent that the combination of elements which make up the

intrigue is clearly the poet’s, though the main motif of the story and

the chief episodes can all be paralleled in the Kathā literature even

as we have it.

Bhūrivasu, minister of the king of Padmāvatī, has asked an old friend,

now turned nun, Kāmandakī, to arrange a marriage between his daughter,

Mālatī, and Mādhava, son of an old friend Devarāta, minister of the

king of Vidarbha, who has sent his son to Padmāvatī, mainly in the hope

that Bhūrivasu would remember a compact of their student days to marry

their children to each other. The obstacle in the way is the desire of

Nandana, the king’s boon companion (narmasuhṛd), to wed Mālatī with the

king’s approval. Kāmandakī, therefore, decides to arrange the meeting

of the young people and their marriage, so as to be able to present the

king with a fait accompli. Both hero and heroine have friends,

Makaranda and Madayantikā, sister of Nandana, and, after Acts I and II

have made the main lovers sufficiently enamoured, in Act III, when the

lovers are meeting in a temple of Çiva, Madayantikā is in danger of

death from an escaped tiger, and is rescued by Makaranda, not without

injury. These two then are deeply in love. But Act IV shows us the king

resolved on the mating of Mālatī and Nandana; Mādhava, despairing of

success through Kāmandakī’s aid alone, decides to win the favour of the

ghouls of the cemetery by an offering of fresh flesh; this leads him in

Act V to a great adventure, for on his ghastly errand he hears cries

from a temple near by, and rushes in just in time to save Mālatī whom

the priest Aghoraghaṇṭa and his acolyte Kapālakuṇḍalā were about to

offer in sacrifice to the goddess Cāmuṇḍā. He slays Aghoraghaṇṭa. In

Act VI Kapālakuṇḍalā swears revenge, but for the moment all goes well;

Mālatī is to wed Nandana, but by a clever stratagem Makaranda takes her

place at the temple where she goes to worship before her marriage, and,

while Mādhava and Mālatī flee, Makaranda is led home as a bride. In Act

VII we hear how poor Nandana has been repulsed by his bride;

Madayantikā comes to rebuke her sister-in-law, finds her lover, and

elopes. But they are pursued, as they make their way to rejoin their

friends, and in Act VIII we learn that the fugitives were succoured by

Mādhava and so splendidly routed their foes that the king, learning of

it, gladly forgives the runaways. But in the tumult Mālatī has been

stolen away by Kapālakuṇḍalā, and Act IX is devoted to Mādhava’s wild

search with his friend to find her, which would have been fruitless,

had not Saudāminī, a pupil of Kāmandakī, by good fortune come on

Kapālakuṇḍalā and rescued her victim. A scene of lament at the

beginning of Act X is interrupted by the return of the lovers, and the

king approves the marriage.

The source of the Mahāvīracarita [399] is very different; it is an

effort to describe the main story of the Rāmāyaṇa by the use of

dialogue narrating the main events, but a deliberate bid for dramatic

effect is made through treating the whole story as the feud of Rāvaṇa,

and his plots to ruin Rāma. The motif is introduced in Act I; at

Viçvāmitra’s hermitage Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa see and love Sītā and Ūrmilā,

daughters of Janaka of Videha. Rāvaṇa, however, sends a messenger to

demand Sītā’s hand in marriage, but Rāma defeats the demon Tāḍakā, and

Viçvāmitra gives him celestial weapons, and summons Çiva’s bow, which,

if he bends, he may have Sītā. The bow is broken and Rāvaṇa’s envoy

departs in rage. In Act II Rāvaṇa’s minister Mālyavant plots with his

sister Çūrpaṇakhā how to make good the defeat sustained; a letter from

Paraçurāma suggests a means; they incite him to avenge the breaking of

Çiva’s bow. Paraçurāma acts on the hint in his usual haughty pride; he

arrives at Mithilā, insults Rāma and demands a conflict. In the next

Act the exchange of insults continues; Vasiṣṭha, Viçvāmitra, Çatānanda,

Janaka, and Daçaratha in vain seek to avoid a struggle between the

youth and the savage Brahmin, slayer of his own mother and exterminator

of Kṣatriyas, but they fail. Act IV reveals that Paraçurāma has been

defeated, and has saluted with respect the victor; Mālyavant bethinks

him of a new device, Çūrpaṇakhā will assume the dress of Mantharā,

servant of Kaikeyī, Daçaratha’s favourite wife, and destroy the concord

of the royal family. That family is in excellent spirits; Rāma is at

Mithilā with his father-in-law when the supposed Mantharā appears,

bearing an alleged letter from Kaikeyī asking him to secure Daçaratha’s

fulfilment of two boons he had once granted her; these are the

selection of her son Bharata as crown prince and Rāma’s banishment for

fourteen years. Meanwhile Bharata and his uncle Yudhājit have asked

Daçaratha to crown Rāma forthwith; he is only too willing, but Rāma

arrives, reports the demands of Kaikeyī and insists on leaving for the

forest, accompanied by Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa, while Bharata is bidden

remain, though he treats himself but as vicegerent. In Act V a dialogue

between the aged vultures Jaṭāyu and Sampāti informs us of Rāma’s

doings in the forest and destruction of demons; Sampāti is uneasy and

bids Jaṭāyu guard Rāma well. Jaṭāyu fares on his duty, sees Sītā stolen

by Rāvaṇa, and is slain in her defence. We see Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa in

mourning; they wander in the forest, save, and receive tidings from, an

ascetic; Vibhīṣaṇa, brother of Rāvaṇa, exiled from Lan̄kā, wishes to

meet them at Ṛṣyamukha where also are the jewels dropped by Sītā in her

despair. Vālin, however, on the instigation of Mālyavant, seeks to

forbid their entry; Rāma persists and slays his foe, who bids his

brother Sugrīva lend his aid to Rāma’s search. In Act VI Mālyavant

appears desolated by the failure of his plans; he hears of Hanumant’s

setting Lan̄kā on fire. Rāvaṇa appears, doting on Sītā; in vain

Mandodarī warns him of the advance of the enemy, but his disbelief is

rudely dispelled; An̄gada bears terms of surrender of Sītā and

humiliation before Lakṣmaṇa; he refuses, and seeks to punish the envoy,

who escapes. He then goes out to battle, described at length by Indra

and Citraratha, who, as divine, can watch it from the sky; Rāvaṇa

performs feats of valour, but Hanumant revives with ambrosia Rāma and

his comrades, and Rāvaṇa finally falls dead beside his gallant son,

Meghanāda. In Act VII the cities Lan̄kā and Alakā, represented by their

deities, exchange condolences; it is reported that Sītā has by the fire

ordeal proved her chastity. The whole of Rāma’s party are now

triumphant; an aerial journey carries them to the north, where they are

welcomed by Rāma’s brothers and Daçaratha’s widows, and Viçvāmitra

crowns Rāma.

The Uttararāmacarita [400] is based on the last and late book of the

Rāmāyaṇa. Janaka has departed; Sītā enceinte is sad and Rāma is

consoling her. News is brought from Vasiṣṭha; he bids the king meet

every wish of his wife, but rank first of all his duty to his people.

Lakṣmaṇa reports that the painter, who has been depicting the scenes of

their wanderings, has finished; they enter the gallery, and live over

again their experiences, Rāma consoling Sītā for her cruel separation

from her husband and friends; incidentally he prays the holy Gan̄gā to

protect her and that the magic arms he has may pass spontaneously to

his sons. Sītā, wearied, falls asleep. The Brahmin Durmukha, who has

been sent to report on the feeling of the people, reveals that they

doubt Sītā’s purity. Rāma has already promised Sītā to let her visit

again the forest, scene of her wanderings; he now decides that, when

she has gone, she must not return, and the command is obeyed. Act II

shows an ascetic Ātreyī in converse with the spirit of the woods,

Vāsantī; we learn that Rāma is celebrating the horse sacrifice, and

that Vālmīki is bringing up two fine boys entrusted to him by a

goddess. Rāma enters, sword in hand, to slay an impious Çūdra Çambūka;

slain, the latter, purified by this death, appears in spirit form and

leads his benefactor to Agastya’s hermitage. In Act III two rivers

Tamasā and Muralā converse; they tell us that Sītā abandoned would have

killed herself but Gan̄gā preserved her, and entrusted her two sons,

born in her sorrow, to Vālmīki to train. Then Sītā in a spirit form

appears, unseen by mortals; she is permitted by Gan̄gā to revisit under

Tamasā’s care the scenes of her youth. Rāma also appears. At the sight

of the scene of their early love, both faint, but Sītā, recovering,

touches unseen Rāma who recovers only to relapse and be revived again.

Finally Sītā departs, leaving Rāma fainting.

The scene changes in Act IV to the hermitage of Janaka, retired from

kingly duties; Kauçalyā, Rāma’s mother, meets him and both forget self

in consoling each other. They are interrupted by the merry noises of

the children of the hermitage; one especially is pre-eminent;

questioned, he is Lava, who has a brother Kuça and who knows Rāma only

from Vālmīki’s work. The horse from Rāma’s sacrifice approaches,

guarded by soldiers. Lava joins his companions, but, unlike them, he is

undaunted by the royal claim of sovereignty and decides to oppose it.

Act V passes in an exchange of martial taunts between him and

Candraketu, who guards the horse for Rāma, though each admires the

other. In Act VI a Vidyādhara and his wife, flying in the air, describe

the battle of the youthful heroes and the magic weapons they use. The

arrival of Rāma interrupts the conflict. He admires Lava’s bravery,

which Candraketu extols; he questions him, but finds that the magic

weapons came to him spontaneously. Kuça enters from Bharata’s

hermitage, whither he has carried Vālmīki’s poem to be dramatized. The

father admires the two splendid youths, who are, though he knows it

not, his own sons.