________________ The Puspadusitaka in the critical tradition Indian literary theorists and critics favoured PD. to typically illustrate various characteristics of the Suddha variety of Prakarana, wherein the Nayika and Nayaka are not Uttama-prakrti but are Manda-gotra i.e. not of royal descent but such as a merchant, an army-chief, a Brahmin etc. The Nayika is either a Kulaja or a Varangana only as against the Samkirina variety of Prakarana. Abhinavagupta dismisses the objections that because in PD. the father-in-law suspects her daughter-in-law of lapse of character during the absence of her husband, the heroine stays for sometime at the abode of a Sabara-senapati, and the hero entertains some doubts about the heroine's behaviour-these are shortcomings in the charactirzration approprate in a Prakarana, in view of the fact that the suspicions were baseless and are cleared in the end (Abhinavabharati, II, pp. 431-432). The same points are touched upon in the ND. (pp. 117-120). The latter stresses another point also. In the Prakarana, as for example in PD., because of suffering there is limited scope for Srngara and Hasya, hence Kaisiki Vrtti is sparingly used. Kuntaka has praised PD. for 'an organic unity which strikingly underlies the various incidents described in different parts of the work leading to the ultimate end intended, each bound to the other by a relation of mutual assistance' (Krishnamoorthy, p. 545) and for its plot constructed so as to have delightful junctures; each of the parts being organically related to each other, the succeeding one following logically from the preceding one (Krishnamoorthy, p. 566). ND. and NRL have made frequent use of PD. to illustrate Natya-laksanas, Sandyangas etc. All this shows how important and well-known PD. was as a dramatic work. [17]
