Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/214

Rh his wife, the one female figure in the play. The kings Candragupta and Malayaketu represent the contrast of ripe intelligence with youthful ardour, and the weak petulance of one who does not know men's worth, and who rashly and cruelly slays his allies on the faith of treachery. Bhāgurāyaṇa, who is the false friend deluding Malayaketu in Candragupta's interest, is a carefully drawn figure; he dislikes the work, but dismisses his repulsion as essentially the result of dependence which forbids a man to judge between right and wrong.

Viçākhadatta's diction is admirably forcible and direct; the martial character of his dramas reflects itself in the clearness and rapidity of his style, which eschews the deplorable compounds which disfigure Bhavabhūti's works. An artist in essentials, he uses images, metaphors, and similes with tasteful moderation; alone of the later dramatists, he realizes that he is writing a drama, not composing sets of elegant extracts. Hence is explained the paucity of citations from him in the anthologies, which naturally find little to their purpose in an author of a more manly strain than is usual in the drama. It is significant that the Subhāṣitāvali cites but two stanzas, under his name, as Viçākhadeva, both pretty but undistinguished; the second is graceful:

sendracāpaiḥ çṛtā meghair nipatannirjharā nagāḥ

varṇakambalasaṁvītā babhur mattadvipā iva.

'The mountains, with their leaping waterfalls, girt with rainbow clouds, shone like rutting elephants clad in raiment of bright hue.'

More characteristic is the terse and effective phraseology in which he describes the dilemma of Malayaketu when his mind has been poisoned against Rākṣasa:

bhaktyā Nandakulānurāgadṛḍhayā Nandānvayālambinā

kiṁ Cāṇakyanirākṛtena kṛtinā Mauryeṇa saṁdhāsyate

sthairyam bhaktiguṇasya vā vigaṇayan satyasandho bhavet

ity ārūḍhakulālacakram iva me cetaç ciram bhrāmyati.

'His loyalty was founded on his love for the family of Nanda, it rested on a scion of that house; now that the cunning Maurya is severed from Cāṇakya, will he make terms with him? Or,