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

Introduction. [lxxviii in The Winter's Tale it is a much grosser insult and far too unkind a treatment which Hermione receives, and yet she is reconciled to her husband on the evidence of hearsay reports of Paulina, and possibly his expressions of remorse in the statue-scene. Apparently, Bhavabhūti was not satisfied with such inadequate motivation: he was not content to bring somehow the estranged pair together and then leave them to settle their causes of dispute later—amicably or otherwise. He felt that a reunion, to be perfect, must first be a reunion of hearts; and this was the psychological problem which he deliberately proposed to himself in this play, especially in the first three acts. The complicated chain of events leading to the actual reunion and the recognition of the princes forms the burden of the last four acts. 40. Technical perfection of the opening act of the Uttara-Rāma- charita.—Nothing can show more clearly the advance which Bhavabhūti had made in his technique than a careful study of the first act of the Uttara-Rāma-charita in relation to its significance for the final dénouement. This is the act in which Rāma abandons Sītā. The prologue has already informed us (i. 6) of the circulation of a rumour which, when it reaches Rāma, makes him decide upon the abandonment of his wife. Before the rumour actually reaches him, however, it was necessary for the poet to make clear to the audience several essential points. (1) That Rāma himself would put no faith in the rumour; this is effected by U. R. C. i. 12⁸–i. 14. Lakshmaṇa might just as well have said that the pictures ended with ‘our return from Laṅkā’, or ‘our meeting with Bharata in Nandigrāma’; but he (unintentionally) happens to mention Sītā’s fire- ordeal, and that gives the poet his chance. (2) That in nevertheless abandoning his wife on the basis of this false rumour, Rāma was obeying the higher call of what he owed as a king to his subjects. A king and his affairs must be above even the faintest possibility of suspicion. This stern conception of duty, and the readiness to sacrifice everything for it, is illustrated not only by i. 12 or i. 41, 42, 44, but even in the very first speech that Rāma makes (i. 7⁴–i. 8). We here get the first distant echoes, as it were, of a storm that is brewing. (3) That Sītā would understand Rāma’s higher motive, and would have gone herself voluntarily into exile if necessary (i. 12¹). What Sītā did resent was not that she was abandoned, but that she was abandoned in so heartless a fashion (i. 49) without her having the faintest inkling of whither she was being led and why. symbolically this difference in atmo- sphere. It is for a similar purpose that Bhavabhūti has placed the great reconciliation scene of U. R. C. act iii in the Pañchavaṭī, ‘every spot in which, unto those manifold expressions of our unreserved endear- ments, can bear testimony.’