Lilavaikaha

Author(s): K R Chandra, Ramniklal M Shah
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 18

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military expeditions and has full confidence in his ministers and commanders. But he has no initiative whatsoever. Hearing of Lilävai's resolve not to marry before Mahānumāri he is despondent. But queerly, he starts for Pātāla to enjoy the nether-worldly pleasures there ! Merely by chance he rescues Mādhavānila from the Nāgas in the Pātāla by virture of the ring on his finger given by Mahānumāti. Again, in his fight with Bhīşaņānana, he sees the demon army with the power of the charm given by the Naked pāśupata. Such supernatural assistance hardly enhances his appeal as a brave hero, although in the final fight with the demons, he exhibits his personal valour and deserves the divine favours that are bestowed on him.
The heroine Lilāvati is born of a human king and a Vidyā-. dhara princess mortalized by Gaņeśa's curse. Beautiful and bold, she falls for king Sālāhaņa on seeing his portrait. In her dream she yields to his ravishment and admits it. Her father, strangely, sends her to meet her lover. On her way there, when she comes to know that her elder cousin Mahānumāti is yet unmarried, she decides not to proceed and spend her time in devotion to her cousin instead ! This cool resolve of hers is unintelligible in view of her earlier burning passion. The poet perhaps wanted to impress us with the girl's traditional respect for seniority in marriage. But he has depicted a less convincing heroine in the bargain !
Mahānumati is a much better creation. She is the daughter of a Yakșa father and a Vidyādhara mother. Beginning as a carefree child, growing into a self-willed maiden travelling with her companions to distant Malaya mountain for a swing-ride, falling in love at first sight, being shy of disclosing it to her parents, then suffering the pangs of separation and the shock of her lover's calamity, barely overcoming thoughts of suicide and resolving to spend the rest of her life in austerities, coming to know of her younger cousin's plight and then taking over as a mature elder sister till the cousin is happily married--these stages in her growth are very skilfully depicted in the course of the story. If the poet was labouring to improve upon Mahasvetā of Bāņa.. bhatta, he has succeeded.