Arts

Dūta-vākya continued ...

Madhyama-vyāyoga, Dūta-vākya, Dūta-ghaṭotkaca, Karṇa-bhāra, and Ūru-bhaṅga are the other plays authored by Bhāsa based on the Mahābhārata. It is hard to say if there were more plays in the Bhāsa-nāṭaka-cakra. We have been able to place our hands on only these for now. In some sense, we can say that the cakra is complete with these. The Mahābhārata is the story of the kṣāttra of the Pāṇḍavas and Kauravas. From a poetic perspective, the yuddha-pañcaka constitutes the heart of the epic.

Continued from the previous part ...

Virāṭa, Uttara, Pāṇḍavas and Abhimanyu constitute the third group of people. It is almost impossible to undertake an exclusive study of their characters, values, and the episodes associated with them; their nature and character are closely knit with each others. Abhimanyu’s character is noteworthy and here is a small extract from the drama.

The play Pañca-rātra does not contain some of the bitter episodes that are present in the original Mahābhārata; for instance, in Bhāsa’s version, Kīcaka does not molest Draupadī and neither does King Virāṭa strike Dharmarāja with his dice; the episode of go-grahaṇa took place not because of the jealousy of Suśarmā and Duryodhana but because of Bhīṣma who wanted a peaceful resolution for the dispute between the brothers.

The Bāla-carita is a play based on the childhood of Bhagavān Śrī-kṛṣṇa. The following is the summary of the plot: Vasudeva crosses the river Yamunā, reaches the village on the farther shore, hands over his child Kṛṣṇa to Nandagopa, and brings back the latter’s girl child, who was dead. He hands over the child to Devakī. The five āyudhas and Garuḍa serve Śrī-kṛṣṇa; Yamunā paves the way to Vasudeva on his way to Gokula and parts as he returns to Mathurā as well.

As Svapna-vāsava-dattā is the most famous among Bhāsa’s plays and Pratijñā-yaugandharāyaṇa forms its prequel, we took them up for analysis first. In fact, we should have started examining the play Avimāraka; the play is based on stories popular in the folklore. There are many significant reasons to consider this as the first work of Bhāsa.

The story that began in Pratijñā-yaugandharāyaṇa continues in the play Svapna-vāsavadatta. Yaugandharāyaṇa and Vāsava-dattā work together in order to get Udayana married to Padmāvatī. In this play too, Udayana does not come to the fore as the primary character. Though Padmāvatī plays a prominent role, Vāsava-dattā is a more important character. Every event is designed with Vāsava-dattā as the locus. Udayana feels as if he saw her in his svapna – dream and the story goes ahead to tell us the reason behind the dream and its effect on the rest of the characters.

The original work of Bṛhatkathā is not available today. However, we can infer its structure and content based on the Kathā-saritsāgara. The main storyline relates to Udayana and his son Naravāhana-datta and comes with a large number of sub-stories. It seems like the story of Udayana was as popular as the stories of Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata, and Bhāgavata in the past.