Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/161

156 figure; she comforts and distracts the mind of Dhāriṇī; she is an authority on the dance and on the cure for snake bite, and alone among the women she speaks Sanskrit. The Vidūṣaka is an essential element in the drama, and he plays rather the part of a friend and confidant of the king than his jester; without his skilled aid Agnimitra would have languished in vain for his inamorata. But on the other hand he contributes comparatively little to the comic side of the drama.

In the Vikramorvaçī Kālidāsa shows a marked advance in imagination. We have no precise information of the source he followed; the story is old, it occurs in an obscure form in the Ṛgveda, and is degraded to sacrificial application in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa; it is also found in a number of Purāṇas, and in the Matsya there is a fairly close parallel to Kālidāsa's version, for the motif of the nymph's transformation into a creeper, instead of a swan, is already present, Purūravas's mad search for her is known as well as his rescue of her from a demon. The passionate and undisciplined love of Urvaçī is happily displayed, but it is somewhat too far removed from normal life to charm; her magic power to watch her lover unseen and to overhear his conversation is as unnatural as the singular lack maternal affection which induces her to abandon forthwith her child rather than lose her husband; her love is selfish; she forgets her duty of respect to the gods in her dramatic act, and her transformation is the direct outcome of a fit of insane jealousy. The hero sinks to a diminutive stature beside her, and, effective in the extreme as is his passionate despair in Act IV, his lack of self-restraint and manliness is obvious and distasteful. The minor characters are handled with comparative lack of success; the incident of the boy Āyus is forced, and the ending of the drama ineffective and flat. The Vidūṣaka, however, introduces an element of comedy in the stupidity by which he allows himself to be cheated out of the name of Urvaçī, and the clumsiness which permits the nymph's letter to fall into the hands of the queen. The latter, Auçīnarī, is a dignified and more attractive figure than the nymph;