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

Introduction [lxii If he robs Sītā, it is simply to hasten the wished-for end, and without any sinful designs against Sītā, whom he revered as his mother. 26, C. Idealization.—Attempts were made quite early to clear the character of the intriguing queen Kaikeyī. Thus her nurse Mantharā (see § 18, E) becomes a special messenger sent by the Gods to secure Rāma's exile, and, as a necessary consequence, Rāvaṇa's death. Mantharā is the spirit of Kali (Quarrel), and she possesses Kaikeyī's soul, and makes her say and do what she, a paragon of virtue and kindness, would never otherwise have said and done. Similarly in regard to the episode of Sītā's residence at Laṅkā, the capital of the demon Rāvaṇa. The point was to establish her purity beyond the possibility of a suspicion. To effect this we found that the Uttara-kāṇḍa brought in the story of the curse (see § 18, L, note). Even that apparently did not suffice. The Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa (iii. 7) goes farther and says that Rāvaṇa did not abduct Sītā at all: only her shadow. When the golden deer appeared, Rāma, being an omniscient God, knew that it was a trick of the demon, and he rather welcomed it as it would give him a pretext to kill Rāvaṇa. So he tells Sītā to remain invisible for a while, himself creating in her place an illusory Sītā, which Rāvaṇa carries away. At the time of the fire-ordeal, this illusion is consumed and the real Sītā, untouched by the hand of the demon, shows herself. It is not necessary to mention the other fantastic devices adopted for the same purpose. 26, D. Curse-motif.—Curse as a motif in explaining conduct and fate came to be increasingly applied. Thus Daśaratha dies of grief for separa- tion from his son Rāma, because Daśaratha had himself been the unwitting instrument of causing separation between a father and his son (see Rāmā- yaṇa, ii. 63–64), and so had been cursed to that effect. Similarly almost every demon whom Rāma in his wanderings meets and kills, was repre- sented as a God or a superhuman being who had been, for one fault or another, cursed to assume the form of that particular demon, the release from the curse following immediately after his being killed by Rāma's hand. Quite a number of these additions also resulted from the attempt to describe the earlier lives of the characters that figure in the Rāmāyaṇa, the object being to explain their conduct in this birth by the influence of a previous birth. 26, E. Philosophizing.—Nor, we may be sure, were the interests of philosophy neglected. The Yoga-Vāsiṣhṭha, a philosophical poem even larger than the Rāmāyaṇa, and attributed to Vālmīki himself, is in form a dialogue which takes place between Vasiṣhṭha and Rāma on the occa- sion of Viśvāmitra's visit (§ 18, C) to Daśaratha's court. This work is in