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56
CAMDALEHA
vi) CANDRALEKHĀ, AS A LITERARY PIECE
When the spring season is bathing the earth with beauty, the miraculous jewel Cintamani brings to the palace of king Manaveda a lovely girl, of noble descent and winning appearance. The king falls in love with her, and she also feels attraction for him. The queen is suspicious and guards her movements. The king suffers pangs of separation, and his mind is being diverted by Vidūşaka and attendants. Once he gets an opportunity to see and hear the heroine singing in the Ruby park. Along with the passion of lovers, the jealousy of the queen increases. The lovers meet each other in the Plantain arbour. The queen now keeps the heroine in chains. The lovely heroine, it is disclosed, is Candralekha, the cousin sister of the queen; and she was already betrothed to Manaveda whom she would make a universal monarch. The queen consents to the marriage, and Manaveda is wedded to Candralekha. This is the outline of all that we get in the Candralekha by way of plot. The story is neither engrossing, nor are the threads of the plot complicated. This is all quite in keeping with the spirit of most of our dramas; and the subject-matter is just of the pattern dictated by theory for a Naṭikā, and consequently for a Saṭṭaka. In working out the development of the intrigue and some of the details of the plot (for instance, the Sarika episode, Vidūṣaka talking in dream, keeping the heroine unrecognised almost upto the end, etc.) Rudradāsa shows some cleverness. The characters are of timehonoured mould; their words, movements and acts have nothing extraordinary about them that they might get individualised and capture the attention of readers or spectators: in short there is no attempt at characterisation. Due to want of action, the Candralekha is more a dramatic poem with a set of florid and poetic extracts than a play; it deserves to be read, nay studied, rather than witnessed; and its author stands before our eyes more prominently as a poet.
Rudradasa has created many an opportunity for descriptions in which he could exhibit his poetic ability: the king Manaveda, his metropolis, the spring scenes in the park etc., physical charms of a maiden, the condition of separated lovers, the singing entertainment, the evening, moon-rise, the feudatory kings etc. He takes peculiar pleasure in presenting long metres and prose passages loaded with lengthy compounds. These long speeches rumbling with compound expressions would certainly torture an audience.
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