Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/263

258 Act V Māruta tries conjuring up spirits; he finds Mallikā stolen by a Rākṣasa, rescues her, but is himself stolen, and finally overcomes the demon. But the marriage is to proceed, so that we have the elopement of Māruta and Mallikā, and the usual deception of the bridegroom, while the other couple follow the example set and elope also. The inevitable second abduction of Mallikā takes place, with the necessary search for her, which at last is rewarded; all are united under Mandākinī's protection, and the king and the parents accord their sanction.

The work is metrically interesting, because the author shows a remarkable preference for the Vasantatilaka (118), and, while he is fond of the Çārdūlavikrīḍita and employs a great variety of metres, he, unlike most later authors, uses freely the Ārya in its different forms (74).

We know also of Prakaraṇas written by Jain writers.' Rāmacandra, pupil of the great Hemacandra, who perished under the reign of Ajayapāla, nephew and successor of Hemacandra's patron, Kumārapāla, between A.D. 1173 and 1176, wrote, besides other plays, the Kaumudīmitrāṇanda in ten Acts. The work is wholly undramatic and is really the working up in the form of a play of a number of Kathā incidents, presenting a result not unlike the plot of a modern pantomime. We first learn of a merchant's son, Mitrāṇanda, who on the island of Varuṇa attains as wife the daughter, Kaumudī, of the head of a monastery, after he and his friend have freed from durance the Siddha king, cruelly nailed to a tree by Varuṇa. She reveals to him the fact that the ascetics are frauds, and that the fate of her husbands is normally to be flung into a pit under the nuptial chamber; in this case, however, attracted to her husband by the love charm he had received from Varuṇa, she agrees to flee with him and the treasure collected from former spouses to Ceylon. There the pair would have been in evil plight, since Mitrāṇanda is taken for a thief by the police, had he not cured from death by snakebite the crown prince Lakṣmīpati with the aid of the magic spell given to him to revive the dead by the goddess Jān̄gulī on the occasion of his marriage. The king in gratitude entrusts the pair to the minister, who, however, is enamoured of Kaumudī and anxious to get rid of her husband. The opportunity is given