The plot, however interesting, is extremely badly knit together; the action is dependent to an absurd degree on accident; Mālatī twice on the verge of death is twice saved by mere chance. Moreover, the characters live apart from all contact with real life; they are in a city like the characters of the Mṛcchakaṭikā, but seem to exist in a world of their own in which the escape of tigers and the abduction of maidens with murderous intent cause no surprise. There is little individuality in hero or heroine, though the shy modesty of the latter contrasts with the boldness of Madayantikā, who flings herself at Makaranda’s head. A friend of Mādhava, Kalahaṅsa, is asserted later[11] to be a Viṭa, but has nothing characteristic, and probably the assertion is without ground.
The Mahāvīracarita lacks the novelty of the Mālatīmādhava, [[194]]but Bhavabhūti’s effort to give some unity to the plot is commendable, though it is unsuccessful. The fatal error, of course, is the narration of events in long speeches in lieu of action. The conversations of Mālyavant and Çūrpaṇakhā, of Jaṭāyu and Sampāti, of Indra and Citraratha, and of Alakā and Lan̄kā are wholly undramatic; the word-painting of the places of their adventures, as seen from the aerial car on the return home, has not the slightest conceivable right to a place in drama. The elaborate exchange of passionate and grandiose defiances between Rāma and Paraçurāma which drags through two Acts does credit to the rhetorical powers of the dramatist, but is wearisome and a mere hindrance to the action. On the other hand, the scene where Bharata determines to act as vicegerent and that between Vālin and Sugrīva are effective, while with excellent taste Vālin is made an enemy, who opposes Rāma under bad advice, and the treachery and fraternal strife of the Rāmāyaṇa disappear for good. The characterization is feeble; Rāma and Sītā are tediously of one pattern without shadow on their virtue, and neither Mālyavant nor Rāvaṇa surpasses mediocrity.
The Uttararāmacarita reaches no higher level as a drama; he has a period of twelve years to cover, as he had fourteen in the Mahāvīracarita, and to produce effective unity would be hard for any author; Bhavabhūti has made no serious effort to this end; he has contented himself with imagining a series of striking pictures. The first Act is admirably managed; the tragic irony of Sītā’s gazing on the pictures of a sorrow over for good just on the verge of an even crueller fate, and of asking for a visit to see the old scenes of her unhappiness as well as her joy, which affords the king the means of immediately abandoning her, is perfectly brought out. Yet excuses are made for the king; it is the voice of duty that he hears; his counsellors who might have stayed his rash act are away. The scene in Act III, when Sītā sees and forgives her spouse, is admirable in its delicacy of the portrayal of her gradual but generous surrender to the proof that, though harsh, he deeply loved her. Lava again is a fine study in his pride, followed by submission to the great king when approached with courtesy, but the Vidyādhara’s tale of the use of the magic weapons, doubtless an effort to vie with Bhāravi’s Kirātārjunīya, is ineffective. The last Act, however, reveals [[195]]Bhavabhūti at his best; the plain tale of the Rāmāyaṇa makes Kuça and Lava recite the story of the Rāmāyaṇa at a sacrifice and be recognized by their father; here a supernatural drama with goddesses as actors leads insensibly to a happy ending, for Bhavabhūti again defies tradition to attain the end, without which the drama would be defective even in our eyes. Sītā and Rāma are splendidly characterized; the one in his greatness of power and nobility of spirit, the other ethereal and spiritual, removed from the gross things of earth. Janaka and Kauçalyā are effectively drawn; their condolences have the accent of sincerity, but the other characters—there are twenty-four in all—present nothing of note. It was not within Bhavabhūti’s narrow range to create figures on a generous scale; in his other dramas they are reduced to the minimum necessary for the action.
As a poem the merits of the Uttararāmacarita are patent and undeniable. The temper of Bhavabhūti was akin to the grand and the inspiring in nature and life; the play blends the martial fervour of Rāma and his gallant son with the haunting pathos of the fate of the deserted queen, and the forests, the mountains, the rivers in the first three Acts afford abundant opportunity for his great ability in depicting the rugged as well as the tender elements of nature; what is awe-inspiring and magnificent in its grandeur has an attraction for Bhavabhūti, which is not shown in the more limited love of nature in Kālidāsa. He excels Kālidāsa also in the last Act, for the reunion of Sītā and Rāma has a depth of sentiment, not evoked by the tamer picture of the meeting of Duḥṣanta and Çakuntalā; both Rāma and Sītā are creatures of more vital life and deeper experience than the king and his woodland love.
We find, in fact, in Bhavabhūti, in a degree unknown to Kālidāsa, child of fortune, to whom life appeared as an ordered joyous whole, the sense of the mystery of things; ‘what brings things together’, he says, ‘is some mysterious inward tie; it is certainly not upon outward circumstances that affection rests’.[12] Self-sacrifice is a reality to Bhavabhūti; Rāma is prepared to abandon without a pang affection, compassion, and felicity, nay Sītā herself, for the sake of his people,[13] and he acts up to his resolve. Friendship is to him sacred; to guard a friend’s interests [[196]]at the cost of one’s own, to avoid in dealings with him all malice and guile, and to strive for his weal as if for one’s own is the essential mark of true friendship.[14] Admirable also is his conception of love, far nobler than that normal in Indian literature; it is the same in happiness and sorrow, adapted to every circumstance of life, in which the heart finds solace, unspoiled by age, mellowing and becoming more valuable as in course of time reserve dies away, a supreme blessing attained only by those that are fortunate and after long toil.[15] The child completes the union; it ties in a common knot of union the strands of its parents’ hearts.[16] Bhavabhūti was clearly a solitary soul; this is attested by the prologue of the Mālatīmādhava:
ye nāma kecid iha naḥ prathayanty avajñām: jānanti te kim api tān prati naiṣa yatnaḥ
utpatsyate ’sti mama ko ’pi samānadharmā: kālo hy ayam anavadhir vipulā ca pṛthvī.
‘Those that disparage me know little; for them my effort is not made; there will or does exist some one with like nature to mine, for time is boundless and the earth is wide.’ Yet we may sympathize with those who felt[17] that his art was unfit for the stage, for Bhavabhūti’s style has many demerits in addition to the defects of his technique.
Bhavabhūti in fact proclaims here as his own merit richness and elevation of expression (prauḍhatvam udāratā ca vacasām) and depth of meaning, and we must admit that he has no small grounds for his claims. The depth of thought and grandeur which can be admitted in the case of Bhavabhūti must be measured by Indian standards, and be understood subject to the grave limitations which are imposed on any Brahmanical speculation as to existence by the orthodoxy which is as apparent in Bhavabhūti as it is in the lighter-hearted Kālidāsa. When, therefore, we are told[18] that ‘with reference to Kālidāsa he holds a position such as Aeschylus holds with reference to Euripides’, we must not take too seriously the comparison. No poet, in fact, suggests less readily comparison with Euripides than does Kālidāsa. He has nothing whatever of the questioning mind of the [[197]]Greek dramatist, contemporary of the Sophists, and eager inquirer into the validity of all established conventions. In style again he aims at a level of perfection of achievement, which was neither sought nor attained by Euripides. Unquestionably, if any parallel were worth making, Kālidāsa would fall to be ranked as the Sophokles of the Indian drama, for as far as any Indian poet could, ‘he saw life steadily and saw it whole’, and was free from the vain questionings which vexed the soul of Euripides. Bhavabhūti again cannot seriously be compared with Aischylos, for he accepted without question the Brahmanical conceptions of world order, unlike the great Athenian who sought to interpret for himself the fundamental facts of existence, and who found for them no solution in popular belief or traditional religion. There can, moreover, be no greater contrast in style than that between the simple strength of Aischylos, despite his power of brilliant imagery,[19] and the over-elaboration and exaggeration of Bhavabhūti. The distinction between Kālidāsa and his successor is of a different kind. Both accepted the traditional order, but Kālidāsa, enjoying, we may feel assured, a full measure of prosperity in the golden age of India under the Gupta empire, viewed with a determined optimism all that passed before him in life, in strange contrast to the bitterness of the denunciations of existence which Buddhism, then losing ground, has set forth as its contribution to the problems of life. Bhavabhūti, on his part, recognized with a truer insight, sharpened perhaps by the obvious inferiority of his fortunes and failure to enjoy substantial royal favour, the difficulties and sorrows of life; his theme is not the joys of a pleasure-loving great king or the vicissitudes of a Purūravas, too distant from humanity to touch our own life, but the bitter woes of Rāma and Sītā, who have for us the reality of manhood and womanhood, as many a touch reminds us:[20]
kim api kim api mandam mandam asattiyogād: avicalitakapolaṁ jalpatoç ca krameṇa