Page:The Sanskrit Drama.djvu/303

298 difficulty can be surmounted; and finally the object is attained (phalāgama). Thus in the Çakuntalā we have the king's first anticipation of seeing the heroine, then his eagerness to find a device to meet her again; in Act IV we learn that the anger of the sage, Durvāsas, has in some measure been appeased, and the possibility of the reunion of the king and Çakuntalā now exists; in Act VI the discovery of the ring brings back to the king remembrance, and the way for a reunion is paved, to be attained in the following act. The Ratnāvalī, no less perfect an example of the minor type, the Nāṭikā, reveals to us the aims of the minister to secure the union of the heroine and the king; a definite step to this end is taken when the heroine decides to depict the face of Vatsa on the canvas; in Act II the lovers are united for the moment, but subject to the risk of discovery by the queen; then the king recognizes that his success in love depends on winning the queen's favour, which is successfully accomplished in the last act.

There are also five elements of the plot (arthaprakṛti), which the theory not very accurately parallels with the five stages of the action. The first is the germ (bīja), whence springs the action, as in the Ratnāvalī from Yaugandharāyaṇa's scheme to secure the princess for the king. The second, with change of metaphor, is the drop (bindu), which spreads out as oil on water; the course of the drama, which has seemed to be interrupted, is again set in activity; thus in the Ratnāvalī, when the festival of the god of love is over, the princess gives a decisive impulse to the motion of the drama by recognizing in him, whom she deemed the god himself, the king for whom she was destined as a bride. The other three elements are the episode, the incident, and the dénouement (kārya).

Based on these parallel sets is a third division of the junctures (sandhi), which carry each of the stages of the action to its natural close. They are the opening (mukha), progression (pratimukha),