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

lxxxi] Uttara-Rāma-Charita: Critical Estimate To begin with, in Rāma there is no change of mood, no development of character. His grief is of the steady abiding kind, only made more intense and alive by the sight of Pañchavaṭī. It is Sītā who passes through a progressive emotional experience, wherein from a feeling of apathy and even resentment towards her husband she, after many a swing of the pendulum, reaches finally a state of confidence and perfect reconciliation. The various psychological moments in this process will be duly set forth in our Notes to the several passages. We will here review them briefly. In iii. 7⁶ Sītā is so thoroughly estranged from Rāma that she finds it impossible to speak of him as ‘My noble Lord (ajjaütta)’, but simply as ‘The King (rāā)’. In iii. 46¹³ she admits that ‘the dart of disgraceful abandonment’¹ has been removed from her heart. What has happened in the interval is that she has seen Rāma, has heard him, has received ample apology for her wrongs. The important point to note, however, is that Sītā did not expect to get this apology, and yet she has it offered to her, and that too in a manner precluding all possibility of Rāma’s being insincere, for he does not know that he is overheard by his wife, or even that his wife is alive. It is also creditable to the poet that all through this mental evolution Sītā does not appear as the stern jurist who refuses to be convinced until the last shred of evidence is in, but always as the true woman and the loving wife that she had never ceased to be. There are three main stages in this process of rapprochement:

1. Seeing Rāma faint and following the impulse of the moment, Sītā runs to his rescue (iii. 10¹), but upon brief reflection she turns to withdraw (iii. 12⁵), and settles down slowly into a mood of despondency and resignation to fate (iii. 22²ᶠᶠ.). Sītā has, however, made sure of one thing: Rāma has not forgotten her, although why he abandoned her is yet a mystery. 2. In the second stage she goes one step further, and, when Vāsantī begins to reprove Rāma for his cruelty to his wife, it is Sītā herself who, with a truly feminine instinct, takes her husband’s part against all attacks from without (iii. 26⁶, iii. 27¹). This self-effacement (iii. 36¹) almost reaches a total surrender of self-respect in iii. 40⁸, but Tamasā’s words (iii. 43) recall her to a truer estimate of her present position. 3. Then follows a second reaction (iii. 43⁹, ¹⁵, iii. 45¹), not so violent as the first; and this is immediately followed by a counter- reaction, especially when she has the assurance that her husband not only loves her as passionately as ever, but will never love or marry another. The inward reconciliation is now complete (iii. 46¹³). ¹ Observe that it is no longer a ‘causeless’ abandonment as it was in iii. 14² and elsewhere. 1 [H.O.S. 21]