Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/256

Rh served. Gan̄gādhara's Gan̄gadāsapratāpavilāsa celebrates the struggle of a Campānir prince against Muhammed II, Shāh of Gujarāt (A.D. 1443-52). The stream, though scanty, flows continuously to the Ḍillīsāmrājya of Lakṣmaṇa Sūri of 1912.

The adaptation of English drama is seen in R. Kṛṣṇamachari's adaptation in 1892 of the Midsummer Night's Dream in his Vāsantikasvapna.

3. The Allegorical Nāṭaka

We cannot say whether Kṛṣṇamiçra's Prabodhacandrodaya was a revival of a form of drama, which had been practised regularly if on a small scale since Açvaghoṣa or whether it was a new creation, as may easily have been the case. At any rate, his work can be dated with precision; it was produced for one Gopāla in the presence of the Candella king Kīrtivarman of Jejākabhukti, of whom we have an inscription of A.D. 1098. Gopāla had restored, we learn, Kīrtivarman after his defeat by Karṇa of Cedi, who was living in A.D. 1042, but we can only guess that he was a general. The play in its six Acts is devoted to the defence of the Advaita form of the Viṣṇu doctrine, a combination of Vedānta with Viṣṇuism.

The supreme reality which is truly one, but is united with illusion, has a son, Spirit, who again has two children, Discrimination (viveka) and Confusion (moha); the posterity of the latter has largely gained in strength, and the position of the former and his offspring is menaced. This is told us at the outset of the drama by Love in converse with Desire; the former is sure he has done much to attain the result. The one danger is the old prophecy that there will arise Knowledge (prabodha) and Judgement or Science (vidyā) from the union of Discrimination and Theology, Upaniṣad, but these two are long since parted, and their reunion seems unlikely. The two, however, flee before the approach of the king Discrimination who is talking with Reason