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;