The Sanskrit drama : $b in its origin, development, theory and practiceKeith, Arthur Berriedale
History
The Sanskrit drama : $b in its origin, development, theory and practice
Keith, Arthur Berriedale
Sanskrit drama -- History and criticism
Very popular is Jagadīçvara’s Hāsyārṇava. [545] The king, Anayasindhu,
Ocean of Misrule, is devastated because all goes ill in his realm:
Caṇḍālas make shoes, not Brahmins, wives are chaste, husbands constant,
and the good respected. He asks his minister where best he can study
the character of his people, and is advised to go to the house of the
go-between, Bandhurā, who presents to him her daughter, Mṛgān̄kalekhā.
The court chaplain enters with his pupil, and they are attracted to the
damsel. A comic doctor is called in for Bandhurā, who feels ill; his
remedies are worse than the disease, and he has to run away. A series
of other figures are introduced. Then a barber, who has cut a patient;
the latter demands damages, but is non-suited; then comes the chief of
police, Sādhuhiṅsika, Terror to the Good, the comic general
Raṇajambuka, the astrologer Mahāyātrika, who indicates as the time for
a journey the conjunction of stars presaging death. The king disappears
at the end of the first Act; the second deals with the efforts of the
chaplain and his pupil to obtain the damsel; but rivals come in the
form of another man of religion and his pupil; finally the two older
reprobates secure the damsel, while the boys content themselves with
Bandhurā, who is delighted with the turn of events. But the celebration
of these double marriages is left to another holy man, Mahānindaka, who
also desires to share the hetaera. The date of the piece is unknown, as
is that of the Kautukasarvasva [546] of Gopīnātha Cakravartin, written
for the autumn festival of the Durgāpūjā in Bengal. It is more amusing
and less vulgar than most of these pieces; the king, Kalivatsala, who
is licentious, addicted to every kind of vice, and a lover of hemp
juice, ill-treats the virtuous Brahmin Satyācāra, who finds that
everything is wrong in the state, even the people being valiant in
oppression, skilled in falsehood, and persevering only in contempt for
the pious. The general is valiant: he can cleave a roll of butter with
his blade, and trembles at the approach of a mosquito. Play is made
with the immoralities recounted in the Purāṇas; the objections of the
Ṛṣis to vice are put down to the fact that they censured in others what
they themselves were too old to enjoy. The king proclaims free love,
but becomes himself involved in a dispute over a hetaera. He is
summoned back to the queen, which so annoys the hetaera that every one
hastens to console her, and the king, obligingly to please her,
banishes all Brahmins from the realm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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