Chapter XV: 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.

In Act VII all take part in a supernatural spectacle devised by Bharata and played by the Apsarases. Sītā’s fortunes after her abandonment are depicted; she weeps and casts herself in the Bhāgīrathī; she reappears, supported by Pṛthivī, the earth goddess, and Gan̄gā, each carrying a new-born infant. Pṛthivī declaims against the harshness of Rāma, Gan̄gā excuses his acts; both ask Sītā to care for the children until they are old enough to hand over to Vālmīki, when she can act as she pleases. Rāma is carried away, he believes the scene real, now he intervenes in the dialogue, now he faints. Arundhatī suddenly appears with Sītā, who goes to her husband and brings him back to consciousness. The people acclaim the queen, and Vālmīki presents to them Rāma’s sons, Kuça and Lava.

Indian tradition asserts that of the Mahāvīracarita Bhavabhūti wrote only up to stanza 46 of Act V, the rest being completed by Subrahmaṇya Kavi; if this were to be taken as certain, it would be a sign that that drama was never completed, and so was the last work of the author, but the maturity of the Uttararāmacarita makes it clear that, whatever there may be of truth in the story, the incompleteness cannot have been due to lack of time.

3. BHAVABHŪTI’S DRAMATIC ART AND STYLE

It is difficult to doubt that Bhavabhūti must have been induced to write his Prakaraṇa in an effort to vie with the author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā. It is true that no such humour as lightens that drama is found in the Mālatīmādhava, but that was doubtless due to Bhavabhūti’s own temperament; conscious that he had no gift [401] in that direction, he omitted boldly the part of the Vidūṣaka which he could clearly not have handled effectively. But in doing so he lessened greatly his resources, and has to select for his theme in lieu of comic relief incidents of the terrible and horrible type blended with the supernatural. The main love-story, with the episode of the two young lovers, whose desires are thwarted by interposition of a powerful suitor, and whose affairs are mixed up with those of two other lovers, both affections ending in elopements, occurs in the Kathāsaritsāgara, [402] and in that collection as elsewhere [403] we find the motifs of the sacrifice of a maiden by a magician and the offering of flesh to the demons to obtain their aid. But the credit is due to Bhavabhūti of combining them in an effective enough whole, and of producing in Act V a spectacle at once horrible and exciting. He has also improved his authorities in detail; the escaped tiger replaces the more conventional elephant; and the intrigue is more effectually welded together by making Madayantikā the sister of Nandana, the king’s favourite. Further, he has introduced the machinery of Kāmandakī and her assistants Avalokitā and Saudāminī. This again is taken from the romance; Daṇḍin, as Brahmanical an author as Bhavabhūti himself, adopts Buddhist nuns as go-betweens, and Kāmandakī’s offices are perfectly honourable; she merely undertakes, at the request of the parents, to subtract Mālatī from marriage with one unworthy of her and not her father’s choice. The influence of Kālidāsa explains Act IX, which is a manifest effort to rival Act IV of the Vikramorvaçī, which it excels in tragic pathos, if it is inferior to it in grace and charm. The same Act has a flagrant imitation of the Meghadūta in Mādhava’s idea of sending a cloud message to his lost love, and is full of verbal reminiscences of that text.

The plot, however interesting, is extremely badly knit together; the action is dependent to an absurd degree on accident; Mālatī twice on the verge of death is twice saved by mere chance. Moreover, the characters live apart from all contact with real life; they are in a city like the characters of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, but seem to exist in a world of their own in which the escape of tigers and the abduction of maidens with murderous intent cause no surprise. There is little individuality in hero or heroine, though the shy modesty of the latter contrasts with the boldness of Madayantikā, who flings herself at Makaranda’s head. A friend of Mādhava, Kalahaṅsa, is asserted later [404] to be a Viṭa, but has nothing characteristic, and probably the assertion is without ground.

The Mahāvīracarita lacks the novelty of the Mālatīmādhava, but Bhavabhūti’s effort to give some unity to the plot is commendable, though it is unsuccessful. The fatal error, of course, is the narration of events in long speeches in lieu of action. The conversations of Mālyavant and Çūrpaṇakhā, of Jaṭāyu and Sampāti, of Indra and Citraratha, and of Alakā and Lan̄kā are wholly undramatic; the word-painting of the places of their adventures, as seen from the aerial car on the return home, has not the slightest conceivable right to a place in drama. The elaborate exchange of passionate and grandiose defiances between Rāma and Paraçurāma which drags through two Acts does credit to the rhetorical powers of the dramatist, but is wearisome and a mere hindrance to the action. On the other hand, the scene where Bharata determines to act as vicegerent and that between Vālin and Sugrīva are effective, while with excellent taste Vālin is made an enemy, who opposes Rāma under bad advice, and the treachery and fraternal strife of the Rāmāyaṇa disappear for good. The characterization is feeble; Rāma and Sītā are tediously of one pattern without shadow on their virtue, and neither Mālyavant nor Rāvaṇa surpasses mediocrity.

The Uttararāmacarita reaches no higher level as a drama; he has a period of twelve years to cover, as he had fourteen in the Mahāvīracarita, and to produce effective unity would be hard for any author; Bhavabhūti has made no serious effort to this end; he has contented himself with imagining a series of striking pictures. The first Act is admirably managed; the tragic irony of Sītā’s gazing on the pictures of a sorrow over for good just on the verge of an even crueller fate, and of asking for a visit to see the old scenes of her unhappiness as well as her joy, which affords the king the means of immediately abandoning her, is perfectly brought out. Yet excuses are made for the king; it is the voice of duty that he hears; his counsellors who might have stayed his rash act are away. The scene in