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As a play, Rm. does not leave a favourable impression. One wonders how a cultured audience would receive the love dalliance of a king with his two queens, one after the other, on the stage. The tone of the amorous sentiment is devoid of depth and dignity: the depiction of it is more an exhibition than suggestion. In some places, strangely indeed, without making the characters speak and act, the author begins to describe their behaviour outside the stagedirections (II. 18-20; III. 7, 21).
Though the Poona мs. and, perhaps following it, the printed text of the Rambha-mañjari call it a Naṭikā: samāptā Rambhāmañjarī nāma națikā, Nayacandra has plainly called Rm. a Saṭṭa or Saṭṭaka (I. 19). The play comes to a close within only three Javanikāntaras, so far as the present documentary evidence is concerned; but the ambition of the king to become the lord of earth is not explicitly fulfilled, though the King marries Rambha in the very first Yavanikāntara and sports with her in the second and third. Either the play is incomplete, or the author has overlooked what he has put in Sutradhara's mouth': the abrupt ending of the play just in three Javanikāntaras and the absence of Bharata-vakya go to strengthen the former alternative.
INTRODUCTION
Nayacandra employs both Sanskrit and Prakrit in this play, and the use of them by different characters is interesting. The Nata, the queens Vasantasena and Rambha, Pratihārī, Vidūṣaka and Ceți speak Prakrit, and their verses also are in Prakrit excepting one (II. 14) in the mouth of Ceți (with the phrase samskṛtam asritya) which is in Sanskrit. The Sutradhara, king, Nārāyaṇadāsa and Mangala-pathaka have their speeches in Sanskrit, but their verses are in Sanskrit as well as Prakrit. One bard has a glorificatory prose passage in Prakrit, while others have their songs both in Sanskrit and Prakrit. The Nandi verses are in both the languages.
The Dasarupaka, as seen above, admits a varying number of acts in a Națika which has been a model for later Saṭṭaka; but whenever the number of Javanikāntaras is specified, it is necessarily four; and in this respect, the Rambhā-mañjarī, as a Saṭṭaka, does not conform to its description. Further in the use of languages too, it does not satisfy the accepted condition of Saṭṭaka: it is not
1 इक्खागूण नरेसवंसतिलओ सो जेत ( ०.८. जयत ) चंदप्पहू, जुत्तीए परिणीय सत्त घरिणी रूवेण जा अच्छरा । एयाणि भवितुं जहुत्तविहिणा भूमंडलाखंडलो, रंभं तं परिणेदि अट्ठमतियं एयम्मि सट्टे वरे
॥ १-१९॥
6 चं. ले.
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