Page:Bibliography of the Sanskrit Drama.djvu/32

12 The Veṇīsaṃhāra, or 'Binding of the Braid,' by the playwright Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa, is a six-act drama based on the incident of the Mahābhārata in which the Pāṇḍu wife Draupadī is dragged by the hair into the assembly and outrageously exposed before the Kurus. The play is written in exact accordance with the rules of text-books and largely for that reason it has always been a favorite in India.

An admirable but less known drama is the Caṇḍakauśika by Kṣemīśvara, whose date is uncertain. This play presents a vivid picture of the workings of a curse uttered by the angry priest Kauśika against an upright king who had innocently offended him. The king forfeits his realm and loses his wife and child, the latter by death and his consort by her being sold into slavery. Though tried to the utmost, the Job-like patience of the righteous monarch never fails, and in the end he has his wife, his son, and his kingdom restored to him by divine intervention, so that all ends in happiness.

In the eleventh century was composed a dramatic monstrosity, the huge Mahānāṭaka, ascribed to Hanuman, the monkey-king. It has fourteen acts in one recension and ten in the other, and thus violates the rule which requires that no drama shall exceed ten acts in length. It is quite without interest to students of literature except as a curiosity.

The tenth and eleventh centuries in India witnessed a renewed interest in the dramatic art, and to that time belong many other plays which must be omitted here on account of lack of space. One, however, which must be mentioned is the Prabodhacandrodaya, or 'Rise of the Moon of Intellect,' an allegorical drama by the poet Kṛṣṇamiśra. The characters in this play, as in the old English Moralities, are symbolical figures and personified abstract ideas, and it is indeed remarkable that with such subject matter the author should have succeeded in producing a drama of so much real merit. The plot is as follows: The wicked King Error is the ruler of the city of Benares. He is surrounded by his followers, the Follies and Vices, while the good King Reason and his followers, Religion