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Comparative study of the traditions...
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In accordance with the past tradition, Guņapāla has not gone beyond the third birth of Bhavadatta-Bhavadeva in which he, born as Sägaradatta, has been described as acquiring emancipation. But Vira stretched the fabric upto the fifth birth in which he made Sudharma related in brief all the four earlier births, thus maintaining connection without a break that had started from the first birth. Similarly, Vira has, in pursuance of artistic standards, tried to show that the four goddess wives of Vidyunmāly were born as the four brides given in marriage to Jambu, justifying the rebirths on the ground of meritorious lives they all four lived when they were goddesses. Just as other previous writers, Vira has not painted, his hero, Jambu, as given over to dejection and detachment but he has invested him with all the qualities and characteristics which a hero normally possesses or should possess in order to be true to his being a hero. In Vira's Jaṁbusāmicariu, we see Jambu moving about freely and enjoying pleasures in the company of his friends with ladies in the swimming pool, though of course without any tinge of passion or amorousness. Jambu is also presented here in Jambusāmicariu as having patience, strength, courage, boldness and all such strong points as a hero should have. In order to illustrate the presence of this potentiality in Jambu, the author, Vira, has invented episodes and events in which an infuriated elephant is brough to book by Jambu without much or special efforts as also the war in Keral. These are author's own innovations but they have been so nicely mixed up with the central theme that they do not appear as isolated. On the contrary, they have become part and parcel of the main subject. Short narratives such as those of Prasannacandra ( or Dharmaruci) have been dropped by Vira and their place is given to other fresh and fitting talkes. The long stories of a treacherous quoen and the daughter-in-law of Bania which, consisting of two stories but presented as one, has been curtailed and cut so as to appear as believable and untiresome.
In sum, Sanghadāsa, Guņabhadra and Guņapāla appear at best as preachers who have to say something religious to the people and while doing so they have sacrificed pure art to compelling exigency but Vira has followed strictly the principal of Art for the sake of Art only and not for any purpose. The first three are preachers pure and simple while Vira is a poet of outstanding ability and a genius.
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