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INTRODUCTION
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prabandhasya 1 in Mv. I 7/8 may perhaps refer to My being his first production, while apūrva-vastu-prayogena 2 in Māl. I. 5/6 may be understood to mean that he wanted to make up a new theme. Having failed to depict the Heroic Sentiment in My, he took to the delineation of the Erotic Sentiment, which is simpler to treat, and which, besides, appeals more easily to every human being
I do not find any force in the only argument advanced by Anundoram Borooah in favour of his view that Utt was written between Mv and Māl, viz 'the fact that its verses agree more with the verses of the Vira Charita and the Malatı Madhava than the verses of the Vira Charita do with the verses of the Malatı Madhava':3 And when we remember that, firstly, in Borooah's time no critical editions of Bhavabhūti's works were in existence to justify a statement like his, and secondly, that Utt, being a continuation of Mv., should have more affinities with that play, his argument loses its entire force.
11. BHAVABHŪTI'S LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS
(a) Bhavabhūtr as a dramatist We may without reservation concede to Bhavabhūti the title which he, in his Mv I 4, claims for himself, viz 'the master of speech' (vasya-vāk) * His command of language, which enables him to express with facility minute shades of meaning, his cleverness in employing words suited to the sentiment, his mastery in depicting the grand and sublime aspects of Nature as discernible in the towering mountains and the thick forests, his delineation of different human sentiments, especially the karunā, bringāra, bībhatsa and raudra, his skılful expression of the depth of passion, are simply unsurpassed. Kālıdāsa, as Wilson points out, has more fancy and is a greater artist than Bhavabhūti. The former suggests or indicates the sentiment which the latter expresses in forcible language.' In his Mv. he aims at depicting the Heroic Sentiment (I 3, I 6) and the grand exploits of the chief characters (I 2) in the play, and though he succeeds in depicting the profoundness of Rāma's nature in Act II, the uncontrollable fury of
11e having no compositions preceding it
10 by resorting to a theme quite different to the one treated before
. Bhavabhutz and his place in Sanskrit Laterature, Calcutta, 1878 (P 29)
+ Cf. also Ut I 2
8 In his introduction to his tianslation of Mai, p 4 (see his 'Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindus', Vol II
London, 1871), Wilson ascribes this to the influence of the mountains of the South, his native land
& Of the traditional eulogy, Kārunyam bhavabhūtır eva tanute, as well as the verse bhavabhūteh sambandhāt bhadhara-bhūyeva bhārati bhats etat-krta-kärinye kim anyatha rodita grāva
7 Bhandarkar in his Mal (Introduction, p xii).
