पृष्ठम्:मालविकाग्निमित्रम्.djvu/२२

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PREFACE.

S'âkuntala and the Vikramorvaśi have their scenes mostly in the woods and forests, and afforded their author opportunities of indulging his fancy in giving excellent descriptions of nature, and that "both rest moreover upon a mythical background, and conse- quently bear a more magnificent and ideal character: the Mâlavikagnimitra portrays the life in the court of a historic prince, and consequently the bare actuality, with its self-made, and therefore, scanty concerns." Though it is perfectly true that the nature of the subjects and the places of action of the two plays may have contributed to their excellence, by enabling their author to compose them as he has done, and by making us admire them as we do, it is, nevertheless, much open to doubt whether "the life in the court of a historic prince" may have restrained a poet of Kalidasa's powers and genius in Writing as excellent a drama on that subject as on the Lost Ring or the Heavenly Nymph. Considerable portions of the two dramas, whose legitimacy is unquestionable, have also their scenes in courts of princes; and if it be urged that Dushyanta and Purûravas were mythical characters, Agnimitra also, who lived according to Professor Weber himself, at least five centuries before Kalidasa, might have, if the latter wanted it, been invested with as much mythology as was required for dramatic excellence, if this depended on mythology. But instances are not wanting where & « the bare actualities’ and " the scanty concerns' of unmythical and real persons have supplied materials, even to Sanskrit poets, for dramas, whose excellence is beyond dispute.