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INTRODUCTION
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the theme is suggested, the king and the queen describe the advent of spring. The bards also greet the king by elaborately depicting the scenes of spring. Vidūşaka and the maid-servant Vicakşaņā dwell on the same theme; they fall out in their poetic competition and begin abusing each other; her superiority being recognised by the king, Vidūşaka is about to quit the royal company. But he gets a pretext to come back with a magician, Bhairavānanda, who praises the Kaula religion and parades his miraculous ability to achieve any feat. At the king's suggestion and Vidūşaka's request, the magician brings on the stage the lovely Vidarbha princess in her bathing dress. The king falls in love with her and grows eloquent about her physical charms; and she also glances him affectionately. She discloses to the queen that she is the daughter of Vallabharāja and Saśiprabhā of Kuntala country; the queen finds that she was her cousin sister Karpūramañjarī, and takes her into the palace for dressing and toilet.
II. The door-keeper tries, by describing nature, to divert the king who is passionately brooding over the charms of that heroine. Vidūşaka enters with Vicakşaņā with whom he has a truce and who has brought from Karpūramañjarī a love-letter describing her passion for the king: therein a stanza depicting heroine’s pangs has been added by her friend. Vicakşaņā describes how the heroine was dressed and decorated; and the king frames the details with his own fancy. Both the king and heroine are suffering equally. At Vicakşaņā's hint, the king accompanied by Vidüşaka sees the heroine gracefully playing on the swing. Vidūşaka offers a poetic description, and the king continues his amorous plaints. It is learnt how she is suffering love-fever. Later the king sees her in the garden while she is embracing the Kurabaka, glancing the Tilaka and kicking the Aśoka tree: all this only heightens king's passion for her.
III. The queen has grown suspicious and has kept the heroine in a guarded room, but the king has got prepared an underground passage from it to the palace garden. The king broods over her charms and narrates to Vidūşaka a dream in which he met the heroine; Vidūşaka mocks him by narrating a fantastic counterdream. Both of them have a discussion about the philosophy of love. Karpūramañjarī is suffering excessively, and she discloses her pangs to her companion Kurangikā. The king, with Vidūşaka, hears it, approaches her to her pleasant surprise, and leads her to the pleasure
5 . .
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