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56
own younger brother for the purpose. The poet has dwelt in detail on the beauty of all the aspects of her physical personality right from top to toel in keeping wilh the accepted tradition of his worthy predecessors like Subandhu, Baņa, Dhanapala, Trivikramabhatta and others. The description of her physical charm is reconciled with the central moralistic tenor of the work as a whole by adding a few touches of the divine and the sublime, by emphasizing, in the introductory part of her description, her traits as an ideal of womanly fidality, possessing spotless character in consonance with her noble birth, her natural inclination to religious observances, and her discrimination pertaining to things conducive to final emancipation. The poet seems to lay special emphasis on her 'mature understanding of the religious instruction of the Jinas, her power of propounding religious tenets, her effective expression of devotion, her shrewdness and presence of mind, and her ardent desire to serve the Tirthankaras42. Her remarkable capacity to objectively grasp the passionate proclivities of king Maņiratha's mind is well brought out in the context of her confrontation with the king and with the Vidyadhara youth Maņiprabha. 43 Her boldness, though internally accompanied by a trembling heart, in standing the stress of menacing presence of the desperately persistent royal villain who has entered her house and the bed-room too in the -absence of her husband and who has the audacity to propose to her for submission to his sensualistic advances, is as much remarkable as her indefatigable efforts in inducting religious wisdom into the hopelessly irresponsive mind of the villian. In the absence of such superhuman psychological strength it would be unimaginable that she should not have broken down or fainted when the mad elephant tossed her in the air while she was taking her first bath barely a couple of hours after she delivered a child unaided in the loneliness of a forest beset with wild beasts.
The poet has beautifully given a human touch to her personality at this juncture of child-birth when she suddenly remembers her recently beloved husband and bursts into an elegy accompanied by bitter weeping just before she delivers the child.44 She is outspoken when the question of guarding her womanly honour arises.45 Her feminine shrewdness as revealed in her decision to keep to herself the secret of the advances made by the king to her and to keep her husband in the dark is disarmingly
Op. cit., pp. 44-45.
Op. cit., pp. vs. 41-43; 56 (16-17). 43. Op. cit., pp. 71-81; P. 117 44. Op. cit. 111-112, vs. 263-269, 45. MRA, P. 75, vs. 160; pp. 79-80, Vs. 179, 181-183.
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