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
A woman, who is in the power of another, may be the wife of another man
or a maiden. An amour with a married woman may not form the subject of
the dominant sentiment in the play, but that for a maiden may occur as
an element in the principal or the secondary action. Even when a parent
or guardian is willing to permit a maiden’s marriage, there may be
other obstacles, as in the case of the love of Mālatī and Mādhava and
in Vatsa’s numerous amours. The woman who is common to all (sādhāraṇī)
is a courtesan, skilled in the arts, bold, and cunning; she accepts as
lovers the rich, the foolish, the self-willed, the selfish, and the
impotent so long as their money lasts, then she has them turned out of
doors by her mother, who acts as go-between. If she is a heroine, she
must be represented as in love, like Vasantasenā in the Mṛcchakaṭikā,
except in a Prahasana or farce, where she can be depicted as fleecing
her lovers for comic effect; she must not figure as a heroine if the
hero is divine or royal.
The heroine may occupy eight different relations to her lover. [648]
She may be his absolute mistress (svādhīnapatikā) and he her obedient
slave; she may be awaiting him in full dress (vāsakasajjā); she may be
distressed by his involuntary absence (virahotkaṇṭhitā), enraged
(khaṇḍitā) at discovering him disfigured by the marks of her rival’s
teeth and nails, or be severed from her beloved by a quarrel
(kalahāntaritā) and suffer remorse, or be deceived (vipralabdhā) by a
lover who fails to meet her at the rendezvous which she has named. Her
lover may be absent abroad (proṣitapriyā), or she may have to seek him
out or press him to come to her (abhisārikā), giving as meeting-place a
ruined temple, a garden, the house of a go-between, a cemetery, the
bank of a stream, or in general any dark place. The first two classes
of heroine are bright and gay, the others are wearied, tearful,
changing colour, sighing, and wear no ornaments as token of their
dejection. A woman, who is subject to another, cannot stand in all
these relations to a lover; she may be distressed at his absence,
deceived, or driven to seek him out, but she cannot be enraged, for she
is not the mistress of her lover, and thus the king’s courtesy to
Mālavikā in Kālidāsa’s play is not to be treated as an effort to
appease an enraged heroine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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