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Supreme Theme: Srigära or Love
were
marriage the desire and consent of a girl are taken for granted; but if there some kind of stake or stipulation it would be an attempt to select the best possible bridegroom for a girl. The gandharva form of marriage, on the other hand, is a pure love match, determinad by the mutual love and consent of the young pair. Kalidāsa takes particular care about the treatment of love in his dramas and tries to ensure that the pictures do not remain one-sided and that the heroine is only waiting to get the proposal of marriage from the hero. The love the hero and the heroine. deeply feel for one another does not merely depend upon the encouragement and assurances received from the helpmates; when they confess and express their love in a number of ways and in actual private meeting, then only the way to their marri age seems to open up. These scenes of mutual confessions of love are painted with all the intensity of emotion and the lyrical grace of poetry in the plays of Kalidasa. It is quite interesting to see that Agaimitra, who is the least impressive of Kalidasa's dramatic heroes, gives expression to a very peep philosophy of love: He says, 'Of the two lovers if one has an irresistible yearning, but the other does not show eagerness of any kind, there can be no joy in a married union of such lovers. On the contrary, if the two lovers share an equal and intense love, and were they to meet death in disappointment without the prospect of gaining each other, the death itself would be welcome !36 If an ordinary king like Agnimitra does have such a feeling for love in human life, feelings of heroes like Purúravas and Duşyanta can be easily guessed. In showing the men forgetting their whim, obstinacy, authority and the animal force of passion, waiting for the woman's response of love and her willing consent, and suffering during the period the tortures of unfulfilled love, artists like. Kalidasa are trying to establish that man and woman, at least in the kingdom of love, and in the view of art, are equal; in fact, the woman is somewhat superior to man, because man must wait for her pleasure before the fulfilment comes. This is the way of art to remove the social inequality between man and woman.
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(5) Another particular trait found in the dramatic heroes of Kalidasa is that they are men of valour. As kings, statesmen and politicians, as leaders of the contemporary society, their position is unexceptional. Even the lovelorn and passive Agnimitra must be granted these qualities. Apparently Agnimitra fails to create any striking impression on a modern reader, because he sees in the dramatic action Agnimitra's son fighting on a battle-front while the king himself is running after Malavika in his own palace garden; and even in his pursuit of love it is the king's companion, the Vidüşaka Gautama, who plots and manoeuvres the whole development. However, these situations have a different meaning in the light of the contemporary standards. The dramatist gives an idea of the sound knowledge of Agnimitra of statecraft and polity in the opening scene. Agnimitra's decision in regard to the Vidarbha Prince is fully endorsed by his ministers and political counsellors. From the point of view of military strategy it does not happen that the chief of the army fights at the front himself in every engagement; he plans and directs the attack. remaining at the back, and gives his junior commanders an opportunity to show
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