Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/163

158 love to make her forgetful of the essential duty of hospitality and reverence to the stranger and saint. Before the king she utters no threat but behaves with perfect dignity, stunned as she is by his repudiation of their love. The king is a worthy hero, whose devotion to his public duties and heroism are insisted on, and who deserves by reason of his unselfishness to be reunited with his wife. His love for his son is charmingly depicted, and, accepting as an Indian must do the validity of the curse, his conduct is irreproachable; it is not that he despises the lovely maiden that he repulses her, but as a pattern of virtue and morality he cannot accept as his wife one of whom he knows nothing. Çakuntalā's own love for him is purified by her suffering, and, when she is finally united to him, she is no longer a mere loving girl, but one who has suffered tribulation of spirit and gained in depth and beauty of nature.

The other characters are models of skilful presentation. Kālidāsa here shakes himself free from the error of presenting any other woman in competition with Çakuntalā; Duḥṣanta is much married, but though Haṅsavatī deplores his faithlessness he does not meet her, and, when Vasumatī enters in Act VI, the effect is saved by the entry of the minister to ask the king to decide a point of law. The Vidūṣaka, who would have ruined the love idyll, is cleverly dismissed on other business in Act II, while he serves the more useful end of introducing comic relief; Mātali playfully terrifies him to rouse the king from his own sorrows. Kaṇva is a delightful figure, the ascetic, without child, who lavishes on his adopted daughter all the wealth of his deep affection, and who sends her to her husband with words of tender advice; he is brilliantly contrasted with the fierce pride and anger of Durvāsas who curses Çakuntalā for what is no more than a girlish fault, and the solemn majesty of Mārīca, who, though married, has abandoned all earthly thoughts and enjoys the happiness of release, while yet contemplating the affairs of the world and intervening to set them in order with purely disinterested zeal. The companions of the heroine are painted with delicate taste; both are devoted body and soul to their mistress, but Anasūyā is serious and sensible; Priyaṁvadā