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CAMDALENA
garden happily holding her by the hand. Two bards describe in long stanzas the moon-rise; the lovers under shining moon-light are in a mood of supreme felicity. The queen's arrival is announced. All disperse in haste, and the heroine retires to her room through the under-ground passage.
IV. The king and Vidūşaka describe the summer and its effect on love-stricken persons. Vidūşaka tells him how the queen discovered the under-ground passage, closed it, and appointed an army of maid-servants to guard the heroine. The king is requested by the queen to attend the vața-savitri festival. After Gauri is worshipped, the magician demands from the queen by way of daksinā that Ghanasāra-mañjarī, a daughter of Candasena of Lāța, should be married to the king who thereby becomes a universal monarch. The queen consents to this and announces her intention to the king. By playing the trick of hide-and-seek, to the great confusion of the queen, the magician produced Ghanasāramañjari on the scene. The marriage function goes on merrily; but soon the queen, to her regret, is made to realize that Ghanasāramañjarī was only another name of Karpūramañjarī. The king thanks Bhairavānanda for fulfilling all his desires.
We do not possess today earlier definitions and specimens of Sattaka in the light of which Rājasekhara's performance could be judged. Rajasekhara defines Saţtaka as analogous to Nātikā with certain reservations, and there is nothing in this play which is contradictory to Bharata's definition of Nātikā which perhaps he had in view. He has not specified the number of Javanikāntaras, but he has four; there are no Pravesaka and Viskambhaka: and excepting the stage-directions and names of characters, everything is in Prākrit. The abuses in an involved style, the series of names of female guards and the hide-and-seek scene may be interesting, but they lack effect in a play to be enacted; one wonders how that scene can be managed at all on a simple stage excepting through make-belief. Rājasekhara is more a poet than a playwright; and like those of some of his predecessors his play Karpūra-mañjarī is more worthy of being read and studied than staged. He is a consummate master of language and expression, rich in vocabulay, idiomatic usages and metrical forms. His descriptions of the spring, moon-rise, swingscene, the carcari dance, etc. are admirable pieces of poetry testifying to his rigorous training in the niceties and conventions of poetics. Some of his pictures are vivid, and his love-lorn songs full of
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