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

PREFACE <span style="font-size: larger;">I</span><span style="font-size: smaller;">T</span> is now just a century and a quarter since Sir William Jones published, in 1789, his translation of Kālidāsa's Śākuntala, and thereby gave to the western world its first knowledge of the dramatic literature of the Hindus. During these hundred and twenty-five years the Śākuntala has been edited some thirty times, and there are over fifty translations in as many as thirteen European tongues, to say nothing of translations into the vernaculars of India. Its own intrinsic merits have won for it, in the land of its birth, the title of a masterpiece, not only of Kālidāsa's plays, but even of the Indian literature. And on the strength of these merits, and in part perhaps on account of Goethe's lavish praise, this title has been recognized in the Occident, and without demur. The Hindus, on other hand, hold that our present play, Rāma's Later History or Uttara-Rāma-charita, the masterpiece of Bhavabhūti, surpasses in some respects even the Śākuntala. Almost a hundred years ago, in 1827, Horace Hayman Wilson introduced it to western readers by giving a very free version of it in his Hindu Theatre. But strangely enough, in all this time, not a single edition of the play has appeared in the Occident, nor even a translation that is both adequate and now obtainable. Félix Nève's French version, long out of print, was issued in 1880. The English version of Charles H. Tawney was twice printed, in 1871 and 1874, but in distant Calcutta and in scant supply. In India the Uttara-Rāma-charita is placed in the hands of almost every college student, and he admires it and loves it ever after. It becomes a part of his experience, 'revealing new and newer charms every moment.'¹ So at least it has been with me ever since 1899, when I made my first acquaintance with the play. And it is as a partial return for the many happy hours that I passed in the company of Bhavabhūti that I here undertake to make the real genius of the author, his greatness as a dramatic poet, known beyond the little band of zealous Indianists in Europe and America who can study the play in the original. For there are many, in the West as elsewhere, who are eager for an intelligent general knowledge of the great literatures of the world, such as is accessible, however, to no human being in the originals, so numerous are the languages in which veritable masterpieces have been written. ¹ Kṣaṇe kṣaṇe yan navatām upaiti tad eva rūpaṁ ramaṇīyatāyāḥ.—Śiśupālavadha, iv. 17.