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Appointment with Kaliảasa
of the waiting may be very intense; and occasionally they may be led to hold the heroine's hand, steal an embrace or attempt to kiss her; but such occasional physical liberties, prompted by the intensity of love, are immediately checked either by circumstances which the dramatist contrives to build or by the heroine herself. The liberty, thus, is confined to open declaration of love; the action is kept under proper control. The words of Sakuntalā, Paurava, preserve your discipline and modesty. I am consumed with love, but I am not my own mistress.'32 are like a whip-lash to Duşyanta's rash and impatient overture. The girls show this awareness of propriety and have the power or tact to control men. The innocent Śakuntala has also the instinctive knowledge which women possess without any tutoring and the wisdom which comes with it (a-śikṣita-pațutva). For, after the mutual confessions of love, Sakuntalā says to her friend, 'My girl, the Royal Sage has been separated from his harem for a long time, and must be pining to go homa, Why take his time 7°38 Dusyanta is touched to the quick by this apparently simple but cleverly administered thrust. A king is bound to have a number of wives. Sakuntalā is trying to find out obliquely and with a woman's inborn sagacity what her position would be in the royal harem if she accepted Duşyanta's proposal of a love marriage and how far his confession of love was sincere. Pricked to the quick Duşyanta replies, 'This is like hitting a person who is already wounded by the shafts of Cupid.'34 He assures Ŝakuntalā and her companions on this occasion that, in spite of his previous wives, the stability and glory (pratişthā) of his royal family rests on his kingdom of the earth wrapped by the seas and on Sakuntalā.35 The entire scene and the situation contrived by the dramatist provide a final test of the hero's sincerity of love and, at the same time, an assurance of a proper marriage and the future status of the lawfully wedded wife. That this did not happen as promised is not due to any fault or moral blemish on the part of the two lovers. Sakuntala's adverse fate ruined their happiness for some time. It is clear from Kalidāsa's picture that the story of Sakuntala would have en. ded on a happy note in the fifth act had not the curse given it a drastic turn.
(4) It is necessary to probe a little deeper into Kālidāsa's pictures of love. Kalidāsa does not appear to aim at making his drama merely entertaining all round or displaying the charm and grace of his incomparable literary art. Considering the suggestions (vyang ya-artha) flowing from his poetic content one is led to believe that for Kālidāsa the freely given consent of the woman, her willing response of love, is an important test of love-fulfilment. If in a male-dominated, polygamous state of society, where the freedom and license of the male was an acknowledged fact, Kālidāsa shows his heroes caring for a real response of love of a woman and not rushing into a one-sided mariage until the woman has expressed her desire in plain, unambiguous words, it can only mean that Kālidāsa wishes to achieve poetic justice tbrough his art, so that the woman who in the social and religious laws thrust into a position of inferiority was, at least in the pictures of art, the equal of man. Barring a few examples in poetry and drama Kalidasa, it will be seen, has strongly advocated mutual and equal love between man and woman. In the syayamvara form of
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