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

lxxi] Early Plays : Mālatī-Mādhava
33, F.—Here at any rate the play might very naturally end ; but no.
The poet wants (see i. 6) to make as diversified an appeal as he can, and so
he has introduced the second episode. It seems that at Padmāvatī, in the
cremation-ground close by the river, there was a temple of the Goddess
Karālā (the Terrible). This Goddess is very fond of blood, and her votaries
wear garlands of skulls, and offer her animal sacrifices (sometimes even
human sacrifices), and in return she grants them magic powers, such as
flying through the air, rendering oneself invisible, and so forth.¹ On the
very night of the day when Mālatī and Mādhava meet in the garden, and
Makaranda kills the tiger—it being the uncanny night that precedes
the new moon—a certain Kāpālika, Aghoraghaṇṭa by name, has arranged to
offer a human sacrifice, and Mālatī is chosen as the victim. Kapālakuṇḍalā,
the female disciple of Aghoraghaṇṭa, has all in readiness, and they are
about to immolate Mālatī, when Mādhava, hearing Mālatī's cry, appears
on the scene and rescues her. The opportune presence of Mādhava in the
dead of night, and upon the cremation-ground, was, the poet frankly
admits (v. 28), the merest chance. Mādhava was there trying to propitiate
in some occult way the ghouls and other uncanny beings who infest such
places. Mādhava kills Aghoraghaṇṭa, though he permits Kapālakuṇḍalā—
as she was a woman—to escape.
33, G.—Out of this escape comes the second hairbreadth escape of
Mālatī. Kapālakuṇḍalā longs to avenge the death of her master ; and just
when everything seems to be going well—Mādhava married to Mālatī,
Makaranda securely in possession of Madayantikā, and even the king
himself induced to pardon the two lovers,—she finds an opportunity to
pounce upon Mālatī and lead her off with intent to kill her. There is
general grief and lamentation, which fills the whole of act ix and a part of
act x. This time Mālatī is saved by another fortuitous coincidence. We
have already spoken (§ 33, A) of Saudāminī, the pupil of Kāmandakī.
She apparently had become an adept in occult sciences, and having by
chance come upon Kapālakuṇḍalā, she reproves her, rescues Mālatī from her
hands, and restores her to her sorrowing relatives, and the play ends happily.
34. Mālatī-Mādhava : criticism of the plot.—It would be easy, of
course, to criticize the plot by saying that it is no more than a loose
patchwork : it lacks the consistency, the inevitableness, that should belong
to every dramatic action. The poet evidently wishes to represent Kāman-
dakī as an expert in underhand diplomacy. She is in fact the arch-plotter
¹ Bhavabhūti, like other people of his time
(see Bāṇa, Harsha-charita, iii, story of
Bhairavāchārya), implicitly believed in
these powers, so that we cannot reason-
ably charge him with an illicit intro-
duction of the supernatural.