Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/21

Rh security of love, she presents but another mystifying remark: "Why this vain effort to catch and keep the tints of the clouds, the dance of the waves, the smell of the flowers?"

Certainly Chitrā is not to Arjuna a Tennyson's princess, but a Wordsworthian "solitary reaper," or, as we have quoted above, a "wave of the sea." Chitrā is what Shelley would have liked most, a "clanless," tribeless, society-less girl, without a "vista beyond," without the "bonds of name and home and parentage." She eludes everybody's group. It is the community of communityless Chitrās which Shelley wanted to evolve out of the debris of the present-day convention-ridden world. Chitrā is "absolute," "unconditioned," "free," a part of the elemental forces, the "spirit of them all,"—the exact antipodes of Tennyson's princess who is bound to be the keystone of a social arch.

And the plot is laid in a scene which is the farthest removed from the family, the society and the state. "See how the rain pours in torrents and fiercely beats upon the hillside. The dark shadow of the clouds hangs heavily over the forest, and the swollen stream, like reckless youth, overleaps all barriers with mocking laughter." It is a place where robbers often pour from the northern hills like a mountain flood to devastate the village. Hither our renowned hero, the world-conquering Arjuna, has retired to observe his vow of celibacy for twelve years. The first human being he meets here is a hunter, and the next the rustics afraid of robbers.

The writer has told the original story as given in the Mahābhārata, in his preface. But we have not been