महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

iv. 3¹—] Bhavabhūti — Uttara-Rāma-Charita [62 furthermore, the [severe] penances of parāka,¹ sāntapana,² and so forth— while all these are using up its substance and humours, this accursed body of mine, bereft of its staying [tissues], even now it refuses to fall! Those are the so-called Sunless regions enveloped in blind darkness; [and they,] say the sages, are assigned [after death] unto the men who slay themselves.³ Even after the lapse of so many years, these transports of a grief that is as poignant as though it were fresh, and that, through my continual broodings over it, is steadily gaining in vividness—[these transports] know no abating. Alas, alas! O thou that didst spring from the [very] altar of the [holy] sacrifice,-my Sītā, such has come to be the lot of thy life that, for very shame, I cannot even cry aloud at will. Alas, alas, [my] daughter!— I remember—when thou wast yet a child—that little lotus-like mouth with its capricious cryings and laughings, [that mouth] blooming with the tips of a few tender and bud-like teeth, and stammering over thy sweet and thoughtless prattle. 4 Exalted Earth! Thou certainly art excessively hard : Thou and Fire and the Sages—[sage] Vasishṭha’s wife [Arundhatī] and the [holy] Ganges—when ye all and when even the great guru of Raghu’s family, the divine Sun himself, knew her greatness ; when, as the [sacred] Word unto Learning, thou unto her didst thyself give birth, and who was no less divine than [Learning herself] : Of such a daughter wherefore then didst thou, O ruthless one, permit that outrageous death ⁴ (viśasana) ? 5 [Voice,] behind the curtain—This way, your exalted Ladyship—This way, my great Queen ! Janaka, looking—Oh, it is Grishṭi, showing the way to the exalted Arundhatī. Rising. But whom now does he style great Queen ? Observing. Alas ! Is she then no other than the wedded wife of the great King Daśaratha—Kausalyā, my dear friend ? Who indeed can believe that she is the same ? In Daśaratha’s house she was like the Goddess of Wealth: or rather, why say like? She was the Goddess of Wealth herself. But woe and alas! Now, following the decree of Fate, she has become like some strange and unfamiliar being, all made up of grief : Alas for the outcome! 6

---

¹ A twelve-days’ fast. ² A modified form of fast in which only one variety of food—milk, curds, ghee, and so forth—is eaten every day. ³ Or, in Shakespeare’s words—‘O ... that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter !’ ⁴ Nearly every one thinks that Sītā is dead. So Janaka here, and so Rāma at iii. 34.