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

lxxxv] Common Characteristics of Bhavabhūti's Plays words that he had a lesson to teach; or finally that he was tempera- mentally incapable of dwelling long on the sunny side of life. A few more defects of a minor nature could also be pointed out; but in this connexion the more important thing is to see how many of his earlier shortcomings he has in this play successfully overcome, and so to realize, as Bhavabhūti did, that the key to consummate success lies in a constant practice in the light of earlier failures. 45. Some common characteristics¹ of Bhavabhūti's plays.—The three plays were all given as open-air performances on the occasion of a religious fair, and they end happily. The hero in all cases is devoted to one wife, and there is no illicit love of any kind. Pathos is the prevailing sentiment in the U. R. C., and it is not wholly absent in the other two plays. In all of them there appears at least one aged mourner. They show only one kind of Prākrit, Śaurasenī, and it is all prose and no verse.² All the three plays have characters flying through the air (two of them have aerial cars), and this circumstance, as well as the effect of light and shade given by the stanza vyatikara iva,³ is of importance in connexion with the stage- properties.⁴ We have already spoken (§ 37) of the long Prākrit passages in the Mālatī-Mādhava as an indication of the nature of Bhavabhūti's audience; we may further note that all the three plays contain a number of learned allusions to different Śāstras, and this must be meant as an appeal to another element of the audience. Finally, what are called unities of time and place are entirely absent in the plays. The action moves in a rapid succession from the interior of a house or a palace to the garden surrounding it, the street, the cemetery, the river, or the forest, sometimes indeed the high regions of the atmosphere. Then as to time, the first play covers a period of some fifteen years, the last about twelve years. The action of the Mālatī-Mādhava occupies nearly three months. The only unity recognized is the unity of plot. About that we have spoken elsewhere. All these circumstances make it likely that the plays were given by one and the same company of actors; and this is an important factor in determining the authorship of the stage-emendations discussed in appendix 8. ¹ Mere parallelisms in words, images, and sentiments will be found collected in appendix 3. ² M. M. vi. 10 and 11 are so worded as to have one form both in Sanskrit and in Prākrit. ³ M. M. ix. 54; x. 8; U. R. C. v. 13; M. V. C. has the thing (i. 43) but not the words. This last circumstance might be additional proof that the M. V. C. was the earliest of the three plays. ⁴ See appendix 11.