Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/251

246 despises him; angry, he reaches out his hand for his sword to slay her, but receives in it the head of his son, Akṣa, slain by Hanumant, who it is who has leaped the ocean and attacked Lan̄kā. Sītā is desperate; she seeks to burn herself on a funeral pyre, but the coal changes to pearl, and Hanumant consoles her by news of Rāma's fidelity. In Act VII Rāvaṇa is given by Prahasta a picture sent by Mālyavant showing the details of the enemy's attack and the bridge; he refuses to regard it as more than a painter's fancy; Mandodarī, his wife, enters; she has received an oracular response which terrifies her and also Prahasta, but Rāvaṇa scorns it. At last, however, he realizes that the city is attacked, sends Kumbhakarṇa and Meghanāda to their death, and at last himself issues forth to die; his fate is described by a Vidyādhara and his mate. Then enter Rāma, Sītā, Lakṣmaṇa, Vibhīṣaṇa, and Sugrīva, who all describe in turn the setting of the sun and the rise of the moon; they mount the aerial car, describe a few points of interest in the country over which they pass in their journey north, and then in turn solemnly describe the rising of the sun.

The play is typical of the later drama; its one merit is Act V where the spectacle of the river goddesses grouped round the ocean affords admirable scope for an effective tableau, but it is wholly out of harmony with dramatic action. As usual, the author is fond of the long metres, though the Vasantatilaka is his favourite; then comes the Çārdūlavikrīḍita, Çloka, Çikhariṇī, and Sragdharā, while he shows decided fondness for the Svāgatā, which occurs a few times in Rājaçekhara and the Mahānāṭaka, but not employed in the earlier drama. The drama is superior in merit to the other very popular Rāma drama, the Jānakīpariṇaya by Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita, who flourished and wrote many bad works at the end of the seventeenth century. The number of Rāma dramas already known is enormous; any one of merit appears still to be unearthed. The commentary on the Daçarūpa knows a Chalitarāma which would probably date before A.D. 1000, but its preservation is problematical. The Adbhutadarpaṇa of Mahādeva, son of Kṛṣṇa Sūri, a contemporary of Rāmabhadra Dīksita, shows Jayadeva's influence in that it presents the events