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SAMBODHI
The drama consists of ten Ankas, and may possibly be regarded as a sort of a prakaran type of Sanskrit rūpaka or drsya-kāvya. The drama, being presented in the traditional style, begins with a Nāndī, a prayer in praise of Truth- a flame of Supreme Being - that governs the Moon, the Sun and the Rain. It is followed by the exposition in the convertional form of a Prastāvanā. The theme of the play is also indicated in the Nandi sloka. Although the author has devised Viskambha etc., he has not strictly followed all the conditions laid down by Bharata. The use of Prākrta has been avoided for obvious reasons. So it can be called a modern purely Sanskrit drama, following as closely as possible the traditional or conventional; aspects of the Classical Sanskrit Drama. It ends with the Bharata-vākya in the traditional style.
The title of the drama is based on the central theme of the anklet of the heroine around which the entire story is woven. The anklet of the heroine Kannaki becomes intrumental in the destruction of the capital city of the Pāndya king, consequent to the curse of the heroine whose really innocent husband Govala was hastily executed on the unproved charge of the theft of his queen's anklet which in reality belonged to Kannaki.
In his Sanskrit Prästāvika, Dr. C. R. Swaminathan of Madras has rightly pointed out to the extreme devotion of Kannaki for her husband Govala, who fell in love with Madhavi a dancer in the city, and betrayed her. Further, although the author is a Vedic Pundit profound in his scholarship, he has in a way falisified the poetic claim of Kālidāsa that one who has become totally immune to emotions due to Vedic Studies cannot create such a beautiful drama! Although the number of verses in the whole drama does not exceed sixty in all the acts, his poetic genius is evident in many of them and the poet has exhibited his skill in Sanskritising many idioms of his Tamil original N.M.K.
Bhoja and Haravijaya of Sarvasena by Dr. V. M. Kulkarni, with Introduction, Definitive Text, Translation and Notes. Saraswari Pustak Bhandar, Ahmedabad (in Saraswati Oriental Series No.5), 1991, pp. vii + 100, Rs. 901-.
In his Harivijaya ( the Victory of Hari, i.e. Krsna), an epoch making classical Maharastri Prākrta epic, the poet Sarvasena restructures the famous Parijata episode depicted in the Bhāgavatapurāna (10.59) around the rivalry betwen the two consorts of Krsna and his atempt to appease the hurt party, viz., Satyabhāmā against Rukmini. The erotic thus gains an upper hand over the heroic rasa.
The importance of Sarvasena lies in the fact that the great Sanskrit rhetoricians like Anandavardhana of the Dhvani fame and Kuntaka of the Vakrokti fame have placed him on par with Kālidāsa, and quote from the Harivijaya, as from the Raghuvamsa, the Kumārasambhava, etc., to support his viewpoint that preoccupation with emotion (bhāva) and the generation (nispatti) of aesthetic experience (rasa) is the essential method of literature. Kuntaka chooses Sarvasena, along with Kālidāsa, as representative of the sukumāra mārga, the old Vaidarbhi style.
