unnamati namati varṣati garjati meghaḥ karoti timiraugham
prathamaçrīr iva puruṣaḥ karoti rūpāṇy anekāni.
‘The cloud rises aloft, bows down, pours rain, sends thunder and the dark; every show it makes of its wealth like the man newly rich.’[28]
Last we may cite the rebuke of Vasantasenā to the lightning:
yadi garjati vāridharo garjatu tannāma niṣṭhurāḥ puruṣāḥ
ayi vidyut pramadānāṃ tvam api ca duḥkhaṁ na jānāsi?
‘If the cloud must thunder, then let him thunder; cruel were men ever; but, O lightning, can it be that thou too dost not know the pangs of a maiden’s love?’[29]
The merits of the play are sufficient to enable its author to dispense with praise not deserved. For Çūdraka, regarded as the author, has been credited[30] with the distinction of being a cosmopolitan; however great the difference between Kālidāsa, ‘the grace of poetry’[31] and Bhavabhūti, ‘the master of eloquence,’[32] these two authors, it is said, are far more allied in spirit than is either of them with the author of the Mṛcchakaṭikā; the Çakuntalā and the Uttararāmacarita could have been produced nowhere save in India, Çakuntalā is a Hindu maid, Mādhava a Hindu hero, while Saṁsthānaka, Maitreya, and Madanikā are citizens of the world. This claim, however, can hardly be admitted; the Mṛcchakaṭikā as a whole is a drama redolent of Indian thought and life, and none of the three characters adduced have any special claim to be more cosmopolitan than some of the [[140]]creations of Kālidāsa. The variety of the characters of the play is unquestionably laudable, but the praise in part is due to Bhāsa, and not to his successor. To the same source also must be attributed the comparative simplicity of the style, which certainly contrasts with the degree of elaboration found even in Kālidāsa, and carried much further in Bhavabhūti. The variety of incident is foreshadowed in Bhāsa, but the development of the drama must be attributed to the author, and frankly it cannot be said to be wholly artistic; that the drama is unnecessarily complex must be conceded, nor can the action be said to proceed with complete ease and conviction. The humour of the play is undoubted, but here again to Bhāsa must honour be given. Bhāsa again is the prototype for the neglect of the rule of the dramaturgy which demands the presence of the hero on the stage in each act; the naming of the play, in defiance of convention, from a minor incident may justly be ascribed to the author himself.
The real Indian character of the drama reveals itself in the demand for the conventional happy ending, which shows us every person in a condition of happiness, with the solitary exception of the evil king. Cārudatta is restored to affluence and power from the depths of infamy and misery; Vasantasenā’s virtue and fidelity are rewarded by the signal honour of restoration to the rank of one whom the hero may marry; the monk, who refuses worldly gain, has the pleasure of becoming charged with spiritual oversight, with its attendant amenities—not inconsiderable to judge from our knowledge of the wealth of Buddhist monasteries. Even Saṁsthānaka is spared, to save us, we may assume, the pain of seeing anything so unpleasant as a real, even if well deserved, death on the stage, for the king perishes at a distance from the scene. If, as Cārudatta asserts at the end of the play, fate plays with men like buckets at the well, one rising as another falls, Çūdraka is not inclined to seek realism sufficiently to permit of his introducing even a tinge of sorrow into the close of his drama.