and nobility of spirit, the other ethereal and spiritual, removed from the gross things of earth. Janaka and Kauçalyā are effectively drawn; their condolences have the accent of sincerity, but the other characters—there are twenty-four in all—present nothing of note. It was not within Bhavabhūti’s narrow range to create figures on a generous scale; in his other dramas they are reduced to the minimum necessary for the action. As a poem the merits of the Uttararāmacarita are patent and undeniable. The temper of Bhavabhūti was akin to the grand and the inspiring in nature and life; the play blends the martial fervour of Rāma and his gallant son with the haunting pathos of the fate of the deserted queen, and the forests, the mountains, the rivers in the first three Acts afford abundant opportunity for his great ability in depicting the rugged as well as the tender elements of nature; what is awe-inspiring and magnificent in its grandeur has an attraction for Bhavabhūti, which is not shown in the more limited love of nature in Kālidāsa. He excels Kālidāsa also in the last Act, for the reunion of Sītā and Rāma has a depth of sentiment, not evoked by the tamer picture of the meeting of Duḥṣanta and Çakuntalā; both Rāma and Sītā are creatures of more vital life and deeper experience than the king and his woodland love. We find, in fact, in Bhavabhūti, in a degree unknown to Kālidāsa, child of fortune, to whom life appeared as an ordered joyous whole, the sense of the mystery of things; ‘what brings things together’, he says, ‘is some mysterious inward tie; it is certainly not upon outward circumstances that affection rests’. [405] Self-sacrifice is a reality to Bhavabhūti; Rāma is prepared to abandon without a pang affection, compassion, and felicity, nay Sītā herself, for the sake of his people, [406] and he acts up to his resolve. Friendship is to him sacred; to guard a friend’s interests at the cost of one’s own, to avoid in dealings with him all malice and guile, and to strive for his weal as if for one’s own is the essential mark of true friendship. [407] Admirable also is his conception of love, far nobler than that normal in Indian literature; it is the same in happiness and sorrow, adapted to every circumstance of life, in which the heart finds solace, unspoiled by age, mellowing and becoming more valuable as in course of time reserve dies away, a supreme blessing attained only by those that are fortunate and after long toil. [408] The child completes the union; it ties in a common knot of union the strands of its parents’ hearts. [409] Bhavabhūti was clearly a solitary soul; this is attested by the prologue of the Mālatīmādhava: ye nāma kecid iha naḥ prathayanty avajñām: jānanti te kim api tān prati naiṣa yatnaḥ utpatsyate ’sti mama ko ’pi samānadharmā: kālo hy ayam anavadhir vipulā ca pṛthvī.