Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/198

Rh , and in that collection as elsewhere we find the motifs of the sacrifice of a maiden by a magician and the offering of flesh to the demons to obtain their aid. But the credit is due to Bhavabhūti of combining them in an effective enough whole, and of producing in Act V a spectacle at once horrible and exciting. He has also improved his authorities in detail; the escaped tiger replaces the more conventional elephant; and the intrigue is more effectually welded together by making Madayantikā the sister of Nandana, the king's favourite. Further, he has introduced the machinery of Kāmandakī and her assistants Avalokitā and Saudāminī. This again is taken from the romance; Daṇḍin, as Brahmanical an author as Bhavabhūti himself, adopts Buddhist nuns as go-betweens, and Kāmandaki's offices are perfectly honourable; she merely undertakes, at the request of the parents, to subtract Mālatī from marriage with one unworthy of her and not her father's choice. The influence of Kālidāsa explains Act IX, which is a manifest effort to rival Act IV of the Vikramorvaçī, which it excels in tragic pathos, if it is inferior to it in grace and charm. The same Act has a flagrant imitation of the Meghadūta in Mādhava's idea of sending a cloud message to his lost love, and is full of verbal reminiscences of that text.

The plot, however interesting, is extremely badly knit together; the action is dependent to an absurd degree on accident; Mālatī twice on the verge of death is twice saved by mere chance. Moreover, the characters live apart from all contact with real life; they are in a city like the characters of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, but seem to exist in a world of their own in which the escape of tigers and the abduction of maidens with murderous intent cause no surprise. There is little individuality in hero or heroine, though the shy modesty of the latter contrasts with the boldness of Madayantikā, who flings herself at Makaranda's head. A friend of Mādhava, Kalahaṅsa, is asserted later to be a Viṭa, but has nothing characteristic, and probably the assertion is without ground.

The Mahāvīracarita lacks the novelty of the Mālatīmadhava,