महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

Introduction [lxii
If he robs Sītā, it is simply to hasten the wished-for end, and without any
sinful designs against Sītā, whom he revered as his mother.
26, C. Idealization.—Attempts were made quite early to clear the
character of the intriguing queen Kaikeyī. Thus her nurse Mantharā
(see § 18, E) becomes a special messenger sent by the Gods to secure Rāma's
exile, and, as a necessary consequence, Rāvaṇa's death. Mantharā is the
spirit of Kali (Quarrel), and she possesses Kaikeyī's soul, and makes her
say and do what she, a paragon of virtue and kindness, would never
otherwise have said and done. Similarly in regard to the episode of Sītā's
residence at Laṅkā, the capital of the demon Rāvaṇa. The point was to
establish her purity beyond the possibility of a suspicion. To effect this
we found that the Uttara-kāṇḍa brought in the story of the curse (see § 18,
L, note). Even that apparently did not suffice. The Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa
(iii. 7) goes farther and says that Rāvaṇa did not abduct Sītā at all: only
her shadow. When the golden deer appeared, Rāma, being an omniscient
God, knew that it was a trick of the demon, and he rather welcomed it as
it would give him a pretext to kill Rāvaṇa. So he tells Sītā to remain
invisible for a while, himself creating in her place an illusory Sītā, which
Rāvaṇa carries away. At the time of the fire-ordeal, this illusion is
consumed and the real Sītā, untouched by the hand of the demon, shows
herself. It is not necessary to mention the other fantastic devices adopted
for the same purpose.
26, D. Curse-motif.—Curse as a motif in explaining conduct and fate
came to be increasingly applied. Thus Daśaratha dies of grief for separa-
tion from his son Rāma, because Daśaratha had himself been the unwitting
instrument of causing separation between a father and his son (see Rāmā-
yaṇa, ii. 63–64), and so had been cursed to that effect. Similarly almost
every demon whom Rāma in his wanderings meets and kills, was repre-
sented as a God or a superhuman being who had been, for one fault or
another, cursed to assume the form of that particular demon, the release from
the curse following immediately after his being killed by Rāma's hand.
Quite a number of these additions also resulted from the attempt to
describe the earlier lives of the characters that figure in the Rāmāyaṇa,
the object being to explain their conduct in this birth by the influence
of a previous birth.
26, E. Philosophizing.—Nor, we may be sure, were the interests of
philosophy neglected. The Yoga-Vāsiṣhṭha, a philosophical poem even
larger than the Rāmāyaṇa, and attributed to Vālmīki himself, is in form
a dialogue which takes place between Vasiṣhṭha and Rāma on the occa-
sion of Viśvāmitra's visit (§ 18, C) to Daśaratha's court. This work is in