Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/25

 LOVE IN HINDU LITERATURE. ii that constitute the complex web. The result is a "working hypothesis " in each instance ; and it postulates the possibility of modification through' the introduction of new conditions.

Tagore's Chitra is a study of love "in vacuum," if I may use this expression from physics. It is a study in " absolute " love, love detached, for the time being, from all " bonds of name and home and parent- age," love unhampered by considerations of economic necessity, race-conservation, political power, and military efficiency. Not that these considerations are worth nothing, but those considerations are inhibited in Chitra. Incidentally one or other of these considerations may have been taken in, but the primary motif of the lyric is the profoundest physiological truth that sex-attraction is at once the origin and fundamental nature of love.

It is for this reason that Arjuna knows nothing about Chitra, and Chitra purposely mystifies her lover. Chitra seems to say : " You know me, Arjuna ; and I know you. The profane and philistine world need not pry into our sacred relation." As for Arjuna, he ftels the spell of the female heart long before he is aroused from reverie to ask a Keats-like question : " Was it a vision or a waking dream? Do I wake or sleep?" And when Chitra speaks to him about his babe in her womb, he accepts that solid fact as a matter of course. It is the consummation of the mysterious relation which he has never understood. Tagore's Arjuna is mere man, and Chitra mere woman. - In a sequel to Chitra, the babe, " a second Arjuna," may turn out to be a Hindu Perseus the Deliverer ; but the theme of the pre3ent work is complete without that. Mortal Arjuna