4. THE CHARACTERS The hero owes his name, Nāyaka, to the fact that it is he who leads (nī) the events to the conclusion which he has set before him, in so far as such a result is permitted by human frailty and the force of circumstances. His good qualities are innumerable [639]; he must be modest as is Rāma in depreciating his own prowess in comparison with that of Paraçurāma whom he has vanquished; handsome, generous like Jīmūtavāhana, prompt and skilled in action, affable, beloved of his people, of high family, ready of speech, and steadfast. He must be young, and endowed with intelligence, energy, a good memory, skill in the arts, and just pride; a hero, firm, glorious, skilled in the sciences, and an observer of law. More useful is the distinction drawn between types of hero [640]; all are noble or self-controlled (dhīra), a characteristic not universally found in heroines, but they are distinguished as light-hearted or gay (lalita), calm (çānta) exalted (udātta), and haughty or vehement (uddhata). The light-hearted hero is one free from care, a lover of the arts, and above all a devotee of love; he is normally a king whose public burdens are confided to others, and whose one business it is to secure union with a new favourite by overcoming the obstacles interposed by the not unnatural jealousy of his queen or queens; such beyond all is Vatsa in Bhāsa and Harṣa’s dramas. The calm hero differs primarily from the light-hearted hero by reason of his birth, for he is a Brahmin or merchant, such as Mādhava in the Mālatīmādhava and Cārudatta in the Daridracārudatta and the Mṛcchakaṭikā; the hero of the Prakaraṇa, or comedy of manners, normally is of this class. The exalted hero is a character of great strength and nobility, firm of purpose, but free from vanity, forbearing, and without egotism. Of such a type are generals, ministers and high officials, and Jīmūtavāhana in the Nāgānanda. An instructive controversy rages round this description of Jīmūtavāhana; to be exalted, it is argued, implies the desire of superiority, but Jīmūtavāhana renounces every dream of empire and is a model of calm, of boundless pity, and freedom from passion save, indeed, as regards his love for Malayavatī, which is inconsistent with the general nature of his character. He should really be ranked among the calm heroes, with the Buddha himself, disregarding the meaningless convention which excludes kings from that category. Dhanika [641] effectively defends the classification of Jīmūtavāhana by insisting that he is not without desire, namely that of saving others at the cost of his own life; the desires he lays aside are wishes for personal advantage which Kālidāsa rightly censures in a king; his love for Malayavatī is wholly inconsistent with calmness, which, on the contrary, is in fact as in drama a characteristic of Brahmins, and it distinguishes him absolutely from the Buddha, who is exempt from passion.