________________
PLAYS
159 driven consciousness. His call has come compulsively and he must quit the world in compliance with the call. Yet, formal permission of both mother and wife, according to the tradition of sannyas, is necessary. So, he says to his mother :
“Then, mother, listen: I want to leave my home To sing the name of Krishna, my Beloved, From door to door--a wandering mendicant"
He further requests :
"I only know: my yearning to my heart's One Lord is authentic even as the mother's For her child she worships and adores, and so
I adjure you, mother mine, to-let me go."
The mother, naturally, is deeply pained. Which of the mothers would permit such a talented son to leave the comforts of a happy household and court privations and suffering of a Hindu monk ? She displays, nevertheless, heroic fortitude, when, for the well-being of the people, she grants her permission to leave. Sachi, in fact, was given a foreknowledge when she was yet a virgin of the birth of this Divine Child from her womb and also of his leaving the world 'to redeem the world'. She had already sanctioned that unborn child the permission to leave in her vision with these words :
"I will, my darling ! I'll defy Aeons of torture if I may but hold And nurse you at my breast for a single hour. I will hail you and promise, in return, I will not falter now in self-love nor Claim to possess you and will let you go When you, to companion those who have need of you,
Will consign me to my utter loneliness."7 She has simply to repeat what she has already said to him before his birth :
"And abide I will now by my word—if I Be blinded by the tears, I know, I'll shed
Abandoned by you."
All drama sets forth a problem or a conflict and this drama is not an exception. In the first half of Act II, "Conflict', we find a conversation among three persons, Keshav, Murari and Roma.
Keshav is a scholar of Sanskrit language. He is very much proud of his learning. He does not like Murari and Roma's praising of Sri Chaitanya's scholarship and learning. Contempt and irony are powerful in his utterance when he says of Chaitanya :
raising of Sri Chaitanya:
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
