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

lxxix]    Uttara-Rāma-Charita: Critical Estimate
Wherefore did Rāma follow this unstraightforward course? In order to
motivate this act adequately the poet (4) places Rāma in a peculiar
situation: He is newly crowned (i. 8⁶) and has just taken upon himself
the heavy responsibilities of the state; and every man who knows what
it is to take charge of a new and important office will fully understand
Rāma's conscientiousness, his anxious care not to seem to be wanting in
the due discharge of his duties. Further Rāma is alone (i. 3); the elders
and advisers, who presumably might have restrained him from such im-
petuous acts, are away (ii. 6¹⁰); and his forlornness has been brought home
to him (i. 11) and has thrown him into a sort of nervous excitement just
a little before the crisis comes which calls for immediate action. If the
matter to be decided upon had been some non-personal affair of state,
Rāma might have settled it in the way best for all; but where it was
a personal affair of state, it was to be expected that he would be more
rigorously self-exacting than was either right or just to himself. Finally,
it was necessary to make clear (5) that, having abandoned his wife,
Rāma would nevertheless suffer, and so would Sītā. The picture-gallery
episode serves to show how dearly they loved each other, how they could
not bear even the thought of living away from each other (i. 27²⁻⁶, i. 30,
i. 33¹⁴).
  To bring out vividly these five points would have been achievement
enough for one act, but Bhavabhūti is not content with that. In act i he
is thinking of act vii, and so, besides giving us the dohada affair (i. 10¹,
i. 33³) which serves as the immediate pretext for Sītā's banishment, the act
gives us also the jṛimbhaka incident (i. 15²), which plays such a signal part
in the recognition of the princes, as well as the allusions to Bhāgīrathī
(i. 23¹) and Pṛithivī (i. 51), who later take charge of the abandoned Sītā¹
and bring her into the action at the proper time. Two more points, which
perhaps are not so very obvious at first sight: When we learn that Rāma
has caused to be painted, on the walls of his palace, scenes from his past
career—that career wherein Sītā was so prominent a figure,—and when we
see the intense feeling and devoutness with which he looks at the pictures
and recalls the memory of his past life with his beloved,—we can then
readily understand his passionate clinging to these dear memories (iii. 14⁴,
iii. 43¹³, vi. 38), and the source of mournful comfort that he will find therein
even after the loss of his wife, so that we do not have to be actually told
that Rāma did not marry a second time. Of course, he did not and would

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¹ Herein Bhavabhūti departs from his sources.    in his hermitage. Bhavabhūti wanted to
  It was Vālmīki who, both according to     keep the twins ignorant of their parent-
  the Rāmāyaṇa and the Padma-Purāṇa,     age; hence the change.
  took charge of Sītā and gave her a shelter