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

lxxi] Early Plays : Mālatī-Mādhava 33, F.—Here at any rate the play might very naturally end ; but no. The poet wants (see i. 6) to make as diversified an appeal as he can, and so he has introduced the second episode. It seems that at Padmāvatī, in the cremation-ground close by the river, there was a temple of the Goddess Karālā (the Terrible). This Goddess is very fond of blood, and her votaries wear garlands of skulls, and offer her animal sacrifices (sometimes even human sacrifices), and in return she grants them magic powers, such as flying through the air, rendering oneself invisible, and so forth.¹ On the very night of the day when Mālatī and Mādhava meet in the garden, and Makaranda kills the tiger—it being the uncanny night that precedes the new moon—a certain Kāpālika, Aghoraghaṇṭa by name, has arranged to offer a human sacrifice, and Mālatī is chosen as the victim. Kapālakuṇḍalā, the female disciple of Aghoraghaṇṭa, has all in readiness, and they are about to immolate Mālatī, when Mādhava, hearing Mālatī's cry, appears on the scene and rescues her. The opportune presence of Mādhava in the dead of night, and upon the cremation-ground, was, the poet frankly admits (v. 28), the merest chance. Mādhava was there trying to propitiate in some occult way the ghouls and other uncanny beings who infest such places. Mādhava kills Aghoraghaṇṭa, though he permits Kapālakuṇḍalā— as she was a woman—to escape. 33, G.—Out of this escape comes the second hairbreadth escape of Mālatī. Kapālakuṇḍalā longs to avenge the death of her master ; and just when everything seems to be going well—Mādhava married to Mālatī, Makaranda securely in possession of Madayantikā, and even the king himself induced to pardon the two lovers,—she finds an opportunity to pounce upon Mālatī and lead her off with intent to kill her. There is general grief and lamentation, which fills the whole of act ix and a part of act x. This time Mālatī is saved by another fortuitous coincidence. We have already spoken (§ 33, A) of Saudāminī, the pupil of Kāmandakī. She apparently had become an adept in occult sciences, and having by chance come upon Kapālakuṇḍalā, she reproves her, rescues Mālatī from her hands, and restores her to her sorrowing relatives, and the play ends happily. 34. Mālatī-Mādhava : criticism of the plot.—It would be easy, of course, to criticize the plot by saying that it is no more than a loose patchwork : it lacks the consistency, the inevitableness, that should belong to every dramatic action. The poet evidently wishes to represent Kāman- dakī as an expert in underhand diplomacy. She is in fact the arch-plotter ¹ Bhavabhūti, like other people of his time (see Bāṇa, Harsha-charita, iii, story of Bhairavāchārya), implicitly believed in these powers, so that we cannot reason- ably charge him with an illicit intro- duction of the supernatural.