Very popular is Jagadīçvara’s Hāsyārṇava.[47] The king, Anayasindhu, Ocean of Misrule, is devastated because all goes ill in his realm: Caṇḍālas make shoes, not Brahmins, wives are chaste, husbands constant, and the good respected. He asks his minister where best he can study the character of his people, and is [[262]]advised to go to the house of the go-between, Bandhurā, who presents to him her daughter, Mṛgān̄kalekhā. The court chaplain enters with his pupil, and they are attracted to the damsel. A comic doctor is called in for Bandhurā, who feels ill; his remedies are worse than the disease, and he has to run away. A series of other figures are introduced. Then a barber, who has cut a patient; the latter demands damages, but is non-suited; then comes the chief of police, Sādhuhiṅsika, Terror to the Good, the comic general Raṇajambuka, the astrologer Mahāyātrika, who indicates as the time for a journey the conjunction of stars presaging death. The king disappears at the end of the first Act; the second deals with the efforts of the chaplain and his pupil to obtain the damsel; but rivals come in the form of another man of religion and his pupil; finally the two older reprobates secure the damsel, while the boys content themselves with Bandhurā, who is delighted with the turn of events. But the celebration of these double marriages is left to another holy man, Mahānindaka, who also desires to share the hetaera. The date of the piece is unknown, as is that of the Kautukasarvasva[48] of Gopīnātha Cakravartin, written for the autumn festival of the Durgāpūjā in Bengal. It is more amusing and less vulgar than most of these pieces; the king, Kalivatsala, who is licentious, addicted to every kind of vice, and a lover of hemp juice, ill-treats the virtuous Brahmin Satyācāra, who finds that everything is wrong in the state, even the people being valiant in oppression, skilled in falsehood, and persevering only in contempt for the pious. The general is valiant: he can cleave a roll of butter with his blade, and trembles at the approach of a mosquito. Play is made with the immoralities recounted in the Purāṇas; the objections of the Ṛṣis to vice are put down to the fact that they censured in others what they themselves were too old to enjoy. The king proclaims free love, but becomes himself involved in a dispute over a hetaera. He is summoned back to the queen, which so annoys the hetaera that every one hastens to console her, and the king, obligingly to please her, banishes all Brahmins from the realm.
The Dhūrtanartaka[49] of Sāmarāja Dīkṣita is of the seventeenth century. It deals with one Mureçvara, who, though a Çaiva ascetic, is a devotee of a dancing girl whom he entrusts to his [[263]]pupils on having to go away. They seek to secure the favours of the damsel and, failing in this, denounce him to the king, but Pāpācāra, Bad Conduct, is merely amused and allows the saint to keep the damsel. Rather earlier is the Kautukaratnākara[50] by the chaplain of Lakṣmaṇa Māṇikyadeva of Bhūluyā, which centres in the carrying off of the queen, though the chief of police sleeps beside her to guard her, and the adventures of the hetaera who is to take her place at the spring festival.
The Bhāṇa, despite its antiquity, attested by the theory, is not represented early in the history of the drama. To Vāmana Bhaṭṭa Bāṇa, about A.D. 1500, we owe the Çṛn̄gārabhūṣaṇa,[51] which is typical of the class. The chief Viṭa, Vilāsaçekhara, comes out to pay a visit to the hetaera Anan̄gamañjarī on the evening of the spring festival. He goes into the street of the hetaerae, and takes part in a series of imaginary conversations, giving the answers himself to his own questions, or pretending to listen to some one out of sight and then repeating the answers. He describes the hetaerae, ram-fights, cock-fights, boxing, a quarrel between two rivals, the different stages of the day, and the pleasures of the festival. Much on the same lines is the Çṛn̄gāratilaka[52] or Ayyābhāṇa of Rāmabhadra Dīkṣita, which was written to rival the Vasantatilaka[53] or Ammābhāṇa of Varadācārya or Ammāl Ācārya, the Vaiṣṇava. The play was written for performance at the festival of the marriage of Mīnākṣī, the deity of Madurā. Bhujan̄gaçekhara, the hero, is vexed at the departure of his beloved Hemān̄gī, but is assured of meeting her again, despite her return to her husband. He makes the usual promenade in the hetaerae’s street, has the usual imaginary conversations and describes the ordinary sights, including snake charmers and magic shows of gods and their mountains and so forth. Finally he succeeds in rejoining Hemān̄gī. We have similar lengthy descriptions in the Çāradātilaka[54] of Çan̄kara, who places the scene in the feigned city of uproar, Kolāhalapura, and whose satire extends to the Jan̄gamas or Çaivas and the Vaiṣṇavas. Nallā Kavi (c. A.D. 1700) is responsible for the Çṛn̄gārasarvasva,[55] [[264]]which deals with Anan̄gaçekhara, who has to part from his beloved Kanakalatā, but he is helped to meet her by the advent of an elephant which terrifies all the others in the street, but is worshipped by the lover as Gaṇeça and Çiva’s answer to his prayer for help. A slight variant is presented by the Rasasadana[56] by a Yuvarāja from Koṭilin̄ga in Kerala; the hero here is a chief Viṭa who has promised his friend Mandāraka to look after his loved one for him. He goes about with her to a temple, and then to his house; wanders out into the street, talks and describes at large, and finally, after accepting the invitation of a lady from a neighbouring town to pay her a visit, goes back home to find the lovers united again.
The Prahasanas and Bhāṇas are hopelessly coarse from any modern Europe standpoint, but they are certainly often in a sense artistic productions. The writers have not the slightest desire to be simple; in the Prahasana their tendency to run riot is checked, as verse is confined to erotic stanzas and descriptions, and some action exists. In the Bhāṇa, on the other hand, the right to describe is paramount, and the poets give themselves full rein. They exhibit in this comic monologue precisely the same defects as are seen in the contemporary Nāṭaka; all is reduced to a study of stylistic effects, especially as regards sound. They rejoice in exhibiting their large command of the Sanskrit vocabulary, as obtained from the lexica, and the last thing desired is simplicity or perspicuity. Nothing more clearly indicates the close connexion of the two styles than the fact that we find a type of mixed Bhāṇa in the Mukundānanda[57] of Kāçīpati Kavirāja, who is certainly not earlier than the thirteenth century. The adventures recounted by Bhujan̄gaçekhara, the hero, allude also to the sports of Kṛṣṇa and the cowherdesses, a double allusion which explains the difficulty of the style asserted by the author.
7. Minor Dramatic Types
The Vyāyoga seems not to have been often written, despite the example of Bhāsa. The Pārthaparākrama[58] of Prahlādanadeva falls in the period between A.D. 1163 and half a century [[265]]later, for its author was the brother of Dhārāvarṣa, son of Yaçodhavala, and lord of Candrāvatī, whose reign ranks honourably in the records of the Paramāras of Mount Ābu. It was acted on the occasion of the festival of the investment of Acaleçvara, the tutelary deity of Mount Ābu with the sacred thread, and claims to exhibit the sentiment of excitement (dīptarasa). The story, taken from the Virāṭa Parvan of the Mahābhārata, is the well-known one of the recovery by Arjuna of the cows of Virāṭa, raided by the Kauravas, and the defeat of the raiders. It accords, therefore, well with the definition in the text-books, for the struggle which it describes is not caused by a woman, the feminine interest is restricted to the colourless figures of Draupadī and Uttarā, and the hero is neither a divine being nor a king. The poet, whose fame as a warrior and whose princely generosity are extolled by Someçvara, claims for his poetry the merits of smooth composition and clearness, and these may be admitted, though the play does not rise above mediocrity. Technically the play is of some interest, in so far as after the Nāndī the Sthāpaka enters, recites a couple of stanzas, and then an actor comes on the stage who addresses him, but is answered by the Sūtradhāra; apparently the two terms were here synonymous to the author of the play or the later tradition. Moreover the final benediction is allotted, not to Arjuna, the hero of the play, but to Vāsava, who appears at the close of the play in a celestial chariot in company with the Apsarases to bestow applause and blessing. Prahlādana wrote other works, of which some verses are preserved in the anthologies, and must have been a man of considerable ability and merit.
The Kirātārjunīya[59] is a Vyāyoga based on Bhāravi’s epic by Vatsarāja, who calls himself the minister of Paramardideva of Kālañjara, who reigned from A.D. 1163 to 1203. Vatsarāja is interesting as a good specimen of the poet of decadence; we have from him six plays illustrating each a different type of drama. The Karpūracaritra is a Bhāṇa of orthodox type; the gambler Karpūraka describes in monologue his revelry, gambling, and love. The Hāsyacūḍāmaṇi is a farce in one act which has as its hero an Ācārya of the Bhāgavata school, styled Jñānarāçi, who professes the possession of supernatural knowledge, [[266]]enabling him to trace lost articles and buried treasure, and who carries out his professions by various tricks and fooleries. He has an irresistible pupil, who is sadly lacking in respect for his teacher, and delights in interpreting literally his remarks. The Kirātārjunīya has no special merit, but is technically interesting; after a Nāndī celebrating Çiva’s consort, the Sūtradhāra enters, immediately followed by the Sthāpaka, who insists on his reciting a further Nāndī of the trident of Çiva, on the score that the play is heroic in sentiment and should be appropriately introduced. This play was produced later than the other five, for it came out under Trailokyavarmadeva, successor of Paramardi. The other three plays, an Īhāmṛga, Ḍima, and Samavakāra will be noticed below.
We have also a Vyāyoga by Viçvanātha, the Saugandhikāharaṇa,[60] of about A.D. 1316, which deals with Bhīma’s visit to Kubera’s lake to fetch water-lilies for Draupadī, his struggle first with Hanumant and then with the Yakṣas, and his final victory; the Pāṇḍavas meet at Kubera’s home and Draupadī obtains her desired flowers. Of unknown date is the Dhanaṁjayavijaya[61] of Kāñcana Paṇḍita, son of Nārāyaṇa, which deals with the prowess of Arjuna in the defeat of Duryodhana and the Kauravas when they raid the cattle of Virāṭa, evidently a special favourite of the dramatic authors. The description of the contest in which Arjuna uses magic weapons is given by Indra and a couple of his celestial entourage; the play ends with the giving to Arjuna’s son Uttarā, daughter of the king Virāṭa, in marriage. A manuscript of A.D. 1328 is extant of the Bhīmavikramavyāyoga[62] of Mokṣāditya, while the Nirbhayabhīma[63] of Rāmacandra belongs to the second half of the twelfth century A.D.
Of the type Īhāmṛga we have a specimen by Vatsarāja in the Rukmiṇīharaṇa, which in four Acts deals with the success of Kṛṣṇa in depriving Çiçupāla of Cedi of Rukmiṇī, his promised bride. The play opens with a dialogue between the Sūtradhāra who enters, after a Nāndī in a couple of stanzas has been pronounced, and the Sthāpaka, which tells us that the play was performed at moonrise during the festival of Cakrasvāmin. The action of the play is languid, and the author has had trouble to [[267]]spread it out over four Acts; the characters are conventional; Rukmiṇī the heroine is a nonentity, and neither Çiçupāla nor Rukmin, the objects of Kṛṣṇa’s enmity, has any distinct characterization. Kṛṣṇa goes into a state of trance on the stage in Act IV to produce the presence of Tārkṣya to enable him to complete his victory. The female character, Subuddhi, uses Sanskrit in lieu of Prākrit.