1. Spoonerism may be an error in speech or a deliberate play on words for humour. For instance, ‘The Lord is a shoving leopard’ instead of ‘The Lord is a loving shepherd’. Malapropos is a French word which means ‘out of place’. Malapropism is derived from the character called Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals who habitually misuses her words. To give an example of malapropism: ‘Texas has a lot of electrical (electoral) votes.’
1. A yogic posture adopted by ascetics while practising meditation. It is also called virasana.
2. This term is explained in the Introduction.
3. A bird, perhaps the Greek partridge. It is believed to feed on moonbeams.
4. A man belonging to any of the first three Hindu castes, namely, brahmana, kshatriya and vaishya.
5. This was a Vedic sacrifice performed by the kings of yore. A horse was let loose and allowed to wander at will accompanied by a guardian and perhaps a hundred warriors. The rulers of all those lands the horse wandered into could challenge the entry of the horse into their kingdoms. At the end of the year if the horse returned unscathed, the victorious king performed the ashvamedha sacrifice to proclaim that he was now a king of kings.
6. Sutradhara, literally the ‘thread-holder’ is a stage manager, director and producer and also an actor; his wife is an actress as well called ‘nati’ in Sanskrit. In Mrchchakatikam the Sutradhara plays a double role. As manager he introduces the play and its author to his audience. Then he turns actor and assumes the role of a penurious producer and with the supporting role played by his wife presents the Prologue which smoothly leads to the main play. He switches over to Prakritam when he speaks to his wife in obedience to the rules of dramaturgy which demand that women use only the provincial dialect on the stage.
7. It is suggested by a commentator that King Palaka, a tyrant, must have had a fancy for shaving off brides’ hair!
8. A sweetmeat made of rice flour and coconut.
9. It is a frequently occurring idea in Sanskrit literature that during the waning fortnight the phases of the moon are being swallowed one by one by the gods.
10. The terms Vita, Shakara and Cheta are explained in the Introduction.
11. In the Mahabharata Draupadi tries to flee from Duhshasana, and Subhadra, the sister of Krishna, is carried away by Arjuna. Vishvavasu is a gandharva chief also mentioned in the Mahabharata. This is another instance of Shakarism.
12. This is a faulty simile because dogs do not chase after a female fox.
13. Pallavaka means a creeper with fresh shoots; Parabhritika is the fledgling Indian female cuckoo; Madhavika is a creeper. All are features of the spring season.
14. This is the only correct reference in the whole stanza for Duhshasana did drag Draupadi by her hair.
15. One who is about to be killed by Shakara is not likely to escape death.
16. Vasudeva is the highest deity of a theistic sect known as the Bhagavatas.
17. In Sanskrit this is expressed as ‘shantam, shantam’, meaning ‘enough’, ‘god forbid’, ‘hush’.
18. Shakara chooses to hear the words as ‘shranta, klanta’ meaning ‘tired’, ‘fatigued’.
19. Kaneli means an unchaste woman or an unmarried woman. Shakara does not seem to mind this uncomplimentary way of being addressed.
20. Shakara makes a variety of malapropic statements in the course of the play. This is one such constituting yet another example of Shakarism.
21. This is a statement full of dramatic irony indicating what is in store for Charudatta in later acts. It makes one wonder if Mrchchakatikam is, after all, the work of a single dramatist.
22. Manu lists five grievous sins in Manusmriti: killing brahmanas, drinking intoxicants, stealing, intimacy with the wife of one’s teacher and associating with a perpetrator of any of these. Differently constituted lists but always numbering five appear in other texts as well, the only constant item being brahmahatya, the killing of a brahmana.
23. Chanakya is the author of the Arthashastra, the famous treatise on politics, and lived in the fourth century BC. He was the prime minister of the Maurya king Chandragupta. This is yet another example of Shakarism.
24. They are all names of Shiva.
25. This is Shakarism at its outrageous best! Shvetaketu is a venerable sage mentioned in the Upanishads and the Mahabharata.The son of Radha may be Karna as Radha is the wife of the charioteer who raised Karna after he was abandoned by Kunti. Karna is not a boon from Indra but a gift from Surya to Kunti. Ashvatthama is the son of Drona.Making him the offspring of Rama and Kunti is the most outrageous statement of all. Jatayu is the eagle that fought with Ravana to free Sita from his clutches and lost his life in the attempt. He is not the son of Dharmaraja, or Yama, the god of death.
26. Bhava also means existence.
27. Radana means tooth. Radanika may perhaps mean ‘she of the clenched teeth’.
28. Abhyantara is the word used in the text by Charudatta and it means ‘inside’ or the ‘women’s apartments’. It also means ‘heart’ and Vasantasena has both these senses in mind.
29. As she is covered by the white silken shawl of Charudatta.
30. This is an odd thing to say. The moon is never surrounded by a multitude of planets. Perhaps he means the stars.
1. Manmatha, the god of love.
2. Charudatta is a brahmana born into a family of merchants. Vasantasena possibly means a brahmana scholar would be superior to her intellectually and worthy of veneration.
3. Charudatta’ means one who is graceful in giving.
4. The bees simply collect the honey; they do not know how to enjoy it. Vasantasena does not want to hoard wealth but just enjoy the company of the man she loves.
5. Gardabhi and Shakti (two lines down) are the names of the dies cast. Shakti is also the name of a weapon . Angaraja is Karna the first-born son of Kunti out of her union with Surya. He was born with golden earrings which made him invincible. Indra, Arjuna’s father, came to Karna disguised as a brahmana to beg for these earrings in order to make things easy for his son. Karna who never turned away any supplicant, gave him the earrings which left him vulnerable. However, in return, Indra gave Karna the weapon Shakti which if released against an individual would kill him without fail. Karna intended to use Shakti against Arjuna but was forced by Duryodhana to deploy it against Ghatotkacha, the son of Bhima and Hidimba.
6. Sabhika is some one in charge of the gambling house.
7. It means the gambler and here it is the winning gambler.
8. Rudra is another name for Shiva.
9. Sumeru is a mythical golden mountain, the tallest in creation, around which the sun and the planets are believed to revolve.
10. One commentator says that perhaps Mathura actually draws a line around Samvahaka even as he speaks his lines.
11. The half that is owed to the Dyutakara is not the same half that is cancelled by Mathura. Samvahaka would still owe excluding the cancelled amounts one half to the Dyutakara in addition to the pledge for one half to Mathura.
12. This is a stage device used to convey the impression that an actor on the stage is talking to someone not on the stage. The actor usually prefaces the relaying of the words supposedly spoken by the unseen character to the audience by the question ‘What do you say?’ It is a device employed to reduce the number of actors on the stage.
13. Treta, Pavara, Nardita, and Kata are the names of the different throws of dice or cowrie, whose exact meaning cannot be ascertained.
14. One commentator says that Darduraka, penniless and with no roof over his head, is ever on the move with both feet never on the ground together.
15. This verse obviously refers to the punishments meted out to those who have failed to pay up. The gambler must be strong enough to bear punishments like being suspended upside down, his back scarred enough to withstand further grating by clods of earth, his thighs numbed to the nibbling by the dogs.
16. Upper garment.
17. Some commentators think this refers to an actual historical incident. Gopala and King Palaka were brothers and Palaka came to the throne in preference to Gopala. Aryaka, the son or grandson of Gopala, killed his uncle and came to power. But there is no reference in the play to the court intrigue; on the other hand there are enough references in the play to Aryaka’s being just the son of a cowherd, gopala daraka. As far as the play is concerned either of these interpretations should do equally well, although considering Aryaka as a cowherd boy adds a significant ideological dimension to the play. More information is given in the Introduction.
18. Vasantasena, being rich, has no fear of the creditor as it is within her capacity to pay up the debts to any number of them. The moral being that one should not undertake to do something beyond one’s means as Samvahaka has done in playing dice.
19. Pataliputra was the capital of the kingdom of Magadha.
20. Samvahaka did not learn his art for the sake of Charudatta but it is true that he served him alone and no one else.
21. Dyutalekhaka refers obviously to Samvahaka. There are two discrepancies here. First, the question arises whether enough time has elapsed for Samvahaka to leave Vasantasena, become a full-fledged monk and reappear on the street to be assaulted by the elephant. And second, Samvahaka has never been a dyutalekhaka or ‘keeper of gamblers’ accounts’; he is a mere gambler. Further, the assaulted monk being identified with Samvahaka does not fulfil any exigency in the progress of the plot.
1. The cheta seems to refer to Charudatta’s compulsive liberality which has reduced him to poverty.
2. Sixteen wonderful things are supposed to have come out of the ocean of milk when it was churned by the devas and asuras.
3. A low and sweet tone.
4. Charudatta is in love with the ‘public woman’ Vasantasena yet finds it abhorrent to take her jewels inside! This is surely a slip made by the dramatist.
5. At the end of the Mahabharata war, with Duryodhana lying on his deathbed and all the other Kauravas dead, Ashvatthama broke into the Pandava camp in the dark and killed all the sons of the Pandavas, Dhrshtadyumna and the others in order to avenge his father Drona’s killing by subterfuge. The Pandavas themselves escaped death as they were away.
6. Skanda is Kartikeya, and ‘Skanda putra’ is a euphemistic term for a thief.
7. Kanakashakti is another epithet of Subramanya, meaning wielder of the weapon of ‘golden shakti’. Some commentators feel that he is probably a teacher who taught the science of breaking in.
8. The mridangam, panava and dardura are percussion instruments. The veena is the Indian lute.
9. The special seeds that he had with him are supposed to swell up in the vicinity of hidden wealth!
10. It was very likely in those days household servants were bonded labourers who could be freed by paying a ransom.In an earlier scene Samvahaka tries to sell himself to a householder for ten sovereigns, money that he owed to the Sabhika.
11. It is not clear whether this is an unconscious spoonerism or an untimely joke by the Vidushaka.
12. This is a fast observed on the sixth day of a summer month which should be followed by the gift of a gem to a brahmana, which the latter may not refuse to accept. The gift is really meant for Charudatta and Maitreya is only the messenger.The giving is done gracefully, sparing Charudatta feelings of shame and inadequacy. It is much easier to accept the jewel from Maitreya to whom it has already been given than taking it directly from his wife.
13. She means that any effusive praise would make her feel embarrassed.
14. To bind someone with an oath by touching the person implies that the body of the one who demands the oath will come to harm if his instructions are not fulfilled.
1. Rati, the wife of Manmatha, the god of love, is supposed to be very beautiful.
2. Madana is another name for Manmatha.
3. One commentator thinks that what Madanika means is that his thefts have not been discovered so far.
4. Madanika may have meant that jewels that have to be worn privately would not be of any use to Vasantasena who is a public woman.
5. The Sanskrit word ‘raga’ used here can mean both ‘redness’ and ‘love’. The redness of the twilit sky is but momentary and so is the love of a woman.
6. The red resin or sap of some trees used by Indian women to dye the soles of their feet.
7. Sharvilaka’s passion is the summer heat and the shade-giving branch he approaches is Vasantasena. The leaves that he plucked unwittingly were the ornaments that belonged to her.
8. Kamadeva is yet another name for Manmatha.
9. Shiva is believed to have placed the moon on his head to cool the heat caused by his drinking the halahala, a dire poison that came out of the ocean of milk when it was churned by the devas and asuras.
10. The word vadhu is used here to denote a duly married woman as distinct from a ganika or courtesan.
11. Yaugandharayana is minister to King Udayana who helped the king out of his many difficulties in Bhasa’s play Swapnavasavadatta.
12. Rahu and Ketu were two demons who, disguised as snakes, took a small surreptitious lick at the amrita churned from the ocean of milk. The sun and the moon gods chased them away before they could take a substantial amount.Vishnu tried to cut off their heads but they could not altogether be killed because of the little nectar they had already tasted. To this day it is believed that Rahu and Ketu take ther revenge on the sun and the moon by periodically swallowing them for brief periods thereby causing the solar and the lunar eclipses.
13. ‘Bandhula’ as an adjective means bent, curved, also pleasing and beautiful. In the noun form—bandhulah—it is the child of a courtesan; but it can also mean an attendant in the courtesans’ chamber.
14. A flying car.
15. Airavata is the white elephant belonging to Indra, the king of the devas.
16. A demon.
17. It seems to have been the practice in medieval India to keep monkeys in the stables for the well-being of the horses. Monkey fat was believed to remove the pain of the horses due to wounds and burns. It was also thought that the monkeys prevented violence and injury to the animals by promoting their well-being.
18. Shringara is the sentiment of love as portrayed in the performing arts as well as in literature.
19. Asafoetida.
20. Small cakes made of flour or meal.
21. Apsaras and gandharvas are celestial beings, the former being beautiful female dancers and the latter handsome male musicians.
22. Betel leaves.
23. Possibly mynas.
24. Partridges.
25. Swans or flamingos.
26. Indra’s garden in heaven.
27. A tree of yellow flowers.
28. It is surely not quartan fever, which is very difficult to cure, that the lady is suffering from; if such were the case the patient would not put on such a lot of weight. Later on in the play, in Act X, she has no difficulty walking to the court when summoned by the judge.
29. Vidushaka wants to know if they are carrying on any kind of riverine trade as such wealth could be amassed only by commerce.
30. All these are flowering trees.
31. A tree that has red flowers.
32. Maitreya comes out with the story of the Sabhika just to prevent Vasantasena from wanting to know why Charudatta did not redeem the jewels by paying the money owed to the Sabhika.
1. It is believed that the swans live in Manasa Lake in the lower reaches of the Himalayas from where they fly down to the plains in winter when the lake freezes. They fly back to the lake when it begins to rain in the plains. It is also believed that a rainy day inflames the passion of lovers.
2. Originally a solar deity of the Vedic pantheon, he is seen striding across the skies.
3. Vishnu, in later Hindu mythology, has come to possess dark skin, no doubt after his identification with Krishna, hence the comparison with the clouds. He always has the conch named Panchajanya in his hand, hence the relevance of the white cranes flying in formation.Vishnu is portrayed as wearing a golden-yellow silken garment, the pitambara, which in this simile is likened to the streaks of lightning. In the Rig Veda, where he appears for the first time, he is the god young and vast in body who takes three steps to cross all the three worlds. Hence the comparison of Vishnu to the clouds is essentially valid.
4. Literally, the bearer of the discus. It is yet another name for Vishnu.
5. Chakravakas or the red geese are often referred to in Sanskrit literature as models of tragic love. The birds always move in pairs during the day but at night it is believed the pairs are separated and are unable to see each other even if it is just a lotus plant that separates them.
6. Dhritarashtra in the Mahabharata was blind and so the world was dark for him; Duryodhana was exultant because he was sure of victory with his huge army; Yudhishtira had to go into exile after he lost everything at dice; and the Pandavas had to ‘disappear’ in order to remain incognito for one year after spending twelve years in the forest.
7. Kayasthas are court scribes, portrayed in literature as clever and unscrupulous.
8. Tumburu is the name of a celestial being, a gandharva who is a great musician.
9. Narada is a divine sage known for his great musical knowledge. They are both adept at playing the veena.
10. Wood-apple tree.
11. Abhisarika is a woman who goes to meet her lover; she is usually brilliantly dressed.
12. Nipa is the rakta kadamba (red kadamba) whose blooms look like lamps. The flowers bloom in the rainy season.
13. The night, the rival woman, is said to want Charudatta all to herself and is placing obstacles in Vasantasena’s path.
14. Kara used in the text means both ‘ray’ and ‘tribute’. The ‘deer-marked one’ is the moon. The shadow on the moon is likened to a deer or a rabbit, according to the preference of the writer.
15. It is a poetic conceit in Sanskrit literature that the lovers’ pangs of separation from their beloved increase when it rains.
16. Fans made of the bushy tail of the deer used as fly-flap and also as royal insignia.
17. Tamala is a bay leaf.
18. It can also mean like a cow being pulled up from the slush, as the word ‘gam’ stands for both cow and earth.
19. The white birds are believed to be the teeth of the sky.
20. Indra’s bow is the rainbow.
21. Ahilya is the chaste and beautiful wife of the sage Gautama. Indra, the lord of the devas, falls in love with her. He deceives her by assuming the physical form of her husband, and makes love to her. When the sage comes to know about it he curses Ahilya that she turn into stone. She regains her human form many years later when Rama, wandering in the forest, steps on the stone releasing her from the curse.
22. A kind of tree (Stephegyne parvifolia) said to bud at the roar of thunder.
23. When a crown prince was anointed, his father, the reigning king, would sit next to him. But the purified water would be poured only on the young prince.
24. Balarama, the brother of Krishna, is believed to have always worn dark-coloured garments.
1. One commentator feels that Charudatta ordered the carriage early for Vasantasena to be brought to the garden while it is still dark, presumably to spare her the embarrassment of being seen out during the day. That plan seems to have misfired because Vasantasena slept late.
2. Is this remark an indication that Dhuta is upset about this development?
3. There are no stage directions for acting out the driving of a carriage.
4. As it rained heavily the previous night the road must have been slushy and the cartwheels must have got stuck in the mud.
5. According to Hindu astrology, these planetary positions bring about disasters. Chandanaka is saying that the one responsible for Aryaka’s escape is in great danger.
6. Aryah drshtah is masculine and aryaa drshtaa is feminine.
7. It is the wood-apple fruit which has a hard shell. An unbroken wood apple looks very nice from the outside, but once broken the pulp inside is unprepossessing.
8. The kettledrum and tabor are percussion instruments made with stretched leather.
9. Both a crow and a percussion instrument. Viraka means to say that Chandanaka is an ugly worker in hides and skins, in short a shoemaker.
10. Shumbha and Nishumbha were demon brothers who were oppressing the gods with the power they drew from a boon granted to them by Shiva. Goddess Durga finally slew them for the relief of the gods.
11. There is just one problem about this act—the carriage carrying Vasantasena and driven by Sthavaraka Cheta left earlier than Charudatta’s cart with Aryaka in it and yet does not arrive till much later at the garden as will be seen in the next act.
1. The throbbing of the left eye is considered to be an ill omen for men while for women it is the right eye. Vasantasena is disturbed when her right eye throbbed as she set out in the carriage to meet Charudatta.
2. The sight of a Buddhist monk with his uncovered shaven head was considered inauspicious.
1. Taken literally, these lines sound odd coming from a Buddhist monk. The interpretation of the verse that makes sense is to take ‘five men’ for the five senses, the ‘woman’ for ignorance or avidya, and ‘community’ for the self which must be protected from unrighteousness. The chandala or the low-caste fellow is the ego which has to be felled.
2. The garden is free to be enjoyed by all and therefore Shakara has no right to prevent the monk from using it.
3. By the word upasaka, the monk means a worshipper. It may also mean a server, a shaver, napita, for instance.
4. Dhanya generally means one deserving of wealth; also one virtuous or blessed. Shakara purposely takes it to mean greedy. However, sometimes, it denotes an atheist too, a follower of Charvaka, a materialist philosopher who had a good following in ancient India. Punya means meritorious; it could, however, indicate a pot filled with water for all to drink from or a granary filled with corn to be used by all. A potter too is blessed because he makes vessels for religious purposes.
5. Kulittha is a kind of pulse.
6. Gandhari is the wife of King Dhritarashtra in the Mahabharata who bears him a hundred sons, all of whom are dead by the end of the Great War.
7. Gandharvas are celestial musicians.
8. This is yet another example of Shakarism.
9. He means mrtosmi—‘I am dead’—but says mrtosi—‘You are dead’.
10. Shakarism. The female demon may gobble them and the thief may loot them, not the other way round as Shakara puts it.
11. A closely fitting dress worn on the upper part of the body.
12. Shakarism. It should be ‘crows are flying up’ and ‘jackals are walking about’. Similarly, ‘eaten up’ and ‘gazed at’ have been interchanged.
13. Shakara knows very well that there is a woman sitting in the carriage although he does not recognize her as Vasantasena. All the talk of a female demon and a thief is mere clowning on his part.
14. It is another name for Lord Krishna. Here it is used with irony.
15. The wife of the monkey king Vali in the Ramayana is Tara, who has nothing to do with Jatayu the eagle that fought unto death with Ravana to save Sita who was being abducted by the demon king and taken to Lanka.
16. One commentator thinks the reference to a rakshasi or she-demon is to emphasize, somewhat perversely, that there is no bad smell at all, either of sin or even of she-demons who are supposed to stink!
17. It is believed that all souls have to cross River Vaitarani before going into higher worlds. Only souls with merit will be able to do that.
18. Mallaka is a cup made out of coconut shell, possibly for keeping oil and therefore nothing big or of any significance. It is a good example of a Shakarian tongue-in-cheek statement.
19. Butea frondosa, its flowers resemble a parrot’s beak.
20. Palasha and kimshuka seem to be the same!
21. This is a very good example of how Shakara mixes up well-known figures in Hindu mythology and Indian history with perverse fluency. Shakra and Mahendra are other names for Indra; the son of Vali is Angada. Kalanemi is not the son of the apsara Rambha who is not known to have had any children. Kalanemi is in fact a demon killed by Vishnu and born again as Kamsa, to be killed by Krishna. Subandhu is a minor poet, not very well known. Raja Rudra may be the real King Rudradaman, the Kshatrapa of the Sakas, who lived and ruled around 150 AD. Drona is the teacher of the Pandavas and Kauravas and Jatayu, as we have already seen, is an eagle that tries bravely to rescue Sita when she is abducted by Ravana. Chanakya is the famous brahmin minister of Chandragupta Maurya who helped his king establish the great Mauryan empire in the fourth century BC. Dhundhumara, one of the kings of Ayodhya, is the killer of the demon Dhundhu. Trishanku, a king who wanted to go to heaven with his body intact, is kicked down by Indra but is held up by the great sage Vishvamitra by the power of his penance. He is therefore perpetually hanging in the region between heaven and earth. There is no Bharata Yuga; the area south of the Himalayas came to be referred to as Bharatavarsha after a great monarch.
22. What Shakara means is that let the crime be ascribed to person or persons unknown.
23. This is a pun on the word guna which means both virtue as well string. This is not a happy simile because if the bowstring breaks the bow is not thrown away but one gets a new string for it.
24. Shakara thinks it is the same monk whom he teased, beat up and drove out of the garden. If it was indeed Samvahaka who ran into Shakara, why has he come back to the garden the same morning, this time to dry the washed garments? Strangely he never refers to the earlier unpleasant incident.
25. According to the rules of renunciation, a Buddhist monk is not allowed to touch a woman.
1. An officer in a criminal court.
2. In his excitement he seemed to have forgotten the name of his victim.
3. Bent grass or panic grass, considered sacred and offered at worship to deities.
4. The head of a merchant or any other guild who also acts as the equivalent of the modern sheriff.
5. The writer.
6. The rules of procedure restrict what is admissible in court.
7. The poet possibly means that with half-truths being stated in court there can be a miscarriage of justice, bringing infamy to the king.
8. In his earlier statement, Shakara describes Vasantasena as decked ‘with a hundred gold ornaments’. Here he talks of the places for gold ornaments being empty. The judges too do not notice the contradiction, nor did the playwright to begin with.
9. This case obviously belongs to the second category to solve which the judge has to collect all the relevant facts.
10. This seems to be an unhappy device used by the dramatist to establish the fact that Vasantasena is not at home. How could the mother, that obese woman suffering from the ‘quartan fever’, have walked to the court?
11. This line is quite obscure. Shodhanaka, the court peon, has been sent to get Charudatta. There is no reason for any counsellor to be present at the court or for his servants to be calling out Charudatta’s name on the road.
12. According to the Brhatsamhita, a crow perched on a dried-up tree in such a manner foretells great danger.
13. How can a king cobra lie coiled up in the middle of the highway in broad daylight? Disregarding plausibility, the author seems intent on creating a sense of fear and suspense by piling on all these ill omens.
14. Earlier Charudatta had said that he did not see her go and therefore he did not know how she went, whether on foot or by the carriage. In the light of Viraka’s testimony Charudatta looks guilty at least of not telling the full truth.
15. Traditionally, the lunar eclipse was explained as the moon being swallowed by Rahu the snake.
16. One such point of vulnerability would be Charudatta’s friendship with Vasantasena, and yet another would be the help he gives to Aryaka that must remain a secret.
17. Perhaps Charudatta is right in saying that no one would believe his words. It is very unlikely that a courtesan would give away her ornaments to her lover’s son.
18. Satya means truth.
19. Charudatta means he is from a virtuous family. But if the judges consider him guilty, his being sinless becomes irrelevant because it is the court’s opinion that matters.
20. It seems necessary for the accused to confess to the crime before the judge can pronounce him guilty and issue the sentence.
21. Vasantasena’s mother tries her best to save Charudatta. But this is not a civil suit that concerns only the plaintiff and the defendant; this is a criminal case of the state versus the individual, in this instance, Charudatta.
22. A crow is black in colour and so a ‘white crow’ means a crow that does not reveal his true colours—a hypocritical person.
23. These are four of the five ordeals mentioned by Yajnavalkya. The accused is made to take poison and if the poison does not kill him then he is declared innocent. Or he is made to lie under water for as long as it takes a champion runner to fetch an arrow shot when the accused enters the water. If he survives he is declared innocent. Or the accused is put on one side of a balance and weights equal to his own weight are put on the other side. If his side rises in spite of its being equal in weight to the other side he is considered innocent! Lastly if his hands do not get burnt when put in fire he is found innocent!
24. Charudatta is not fair to the judge and the other officers of the court for they did do their best to make him come out with the truth. They had enough faith in his honesty to accept his statement as likely to be true and to order further investigations. Curses from the mouth of Charudatta do seem incongruous and do not go with his noble character. The king cannot be faulted in assigning the quantum of punishment, which, in this case, seems quite commensurate with the gravity of the offence as mistakenly understood by the judges and the king to have been committed by Charudatta.
1. Karavira is a kind of flower that grows in the cemetery.
2. Perhaps an animal sacrifice offered to a female deity like Kali.
3. He means that the people know that he is not guilty of the terrible crime that he has been charged with.
4. Meteors are supposed to be good human souls that have exhausted their merit and are falling back to the earth from the heavens.
5. Addressing the Chandalas as being noble is surely to placate them so that they might allow him to see his son. According to Hindu theology, a son by the regular performance of the post-mortem rituals keeps the father from falling into hell.
6. According to the Hindu socio-religious rules, no brahmana may accept any gift from the low-caste Chandalas.
7. The sacred thread is worn over the left shoulder normally and when offerings are given to the gods. When giving offerings to the pitris, or manes it is shifted to the right shoulder.
8. In fact, during an eclipse many people in India worship the moon god by observing a fast and offering prayers to him.
9. The fragrant root of Andropogonmuricatus.
10. Perhaps an indication that Charudatta would come through unscathed, unlike a clay pot that would surely break.
11. The term dronamegha is used to describe a particular kind of cloud from which water streams down as though poured from buckets.
12. Shali means rice.
13. This is another weak point in the play. How can Shakara slip a jewel into the hands of Sthavaraka in that crowd of people without anyone noticing? Without this absurd little sleight of hand he could still have accused Sthavaraka of constant stealing and shown the Cheta’s back with the marks of lashings as evidence of punishment for stealing.
14. These two verses are a repetition of what he has said earlier.
15. He is calling upon Vasantasena to prove his innocence.
16. Shiva was married to Sati, the daughter of Daksha Prajapati, one of the gods presiding over the act of creation. Once Daksha performed a sacrifice to which Shiva and Sati were not invited. Sati went anyway and, insulted by her father, committed suicide. Shiva in his rage destroyed the sacrifice and killed Daksha. Sati was then born as Parvati, did penance and married Shiva again. Aryaka is compared to Shiva because he too killed Palaka as the latter was in the act of performing a sacrifice as will be shown presently.
17. Kartikeya, the six-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, is supposed to have pierced through the Krauncha Mountains—an episode metaphorically referred to as the killing of the demon Krauncha.
18. A garland removed from a deity or from an ascetic is considered sacrosanct. Any comparison with such a garland indicates something that is worthy of great respect.
19. Bala stands for the cloud that Indra smashes to bring down rain to end the drought.
20. Vasantasena is compared here to a boat that takes one across the turbulent seas. The play is on the word ‘guna’ which means ropes as well as virtues. Just as a boat well fastened with fine ropes can take one across choppy seas, Vasantasena too with her virtuous qualities helps Charudatta sail out of the sea of troubles. They both shine like the moon, together with its full lustre after having been released from an eclipse.
21. Kushavati is generally associated with Ramnagar in Bundelkhand.
22. Vena is a tributary of the Krishna.
23. This sentence is a little obscure. It probably means that as the lotus is only a plant there is nothing remarkable in the fact of its opening or closing. It is a non-sentient entity and it allows itself to be handled by all unlike a chaste woman.
24. The word vadhu generally means a woman, but it may also specifically indicate a woman of virtue, namely, a bride or wife, as in the present context, as against a courtesan The king has thus elevated the social status of Vasantasena and freed her from the odious bondage of a courtesan’s life. As all virtuous women always wore a veil in public the king presents her with one.
25. How is it that Sharvilaka, a known thief by profession, a house-breaker, has gained such respectability that the king deputes him to take care of the noble Charudatta’s wishes?
26. The pots attached to the waterwheel are not all full at the same time. Some are full, some are half-full and others empty. Further, some are up and some down and others somewhere in the middle. As the wheel works, the empty pots get filled and the full ones get empty; pots that are up go down and those at the bottom climb up. Fate too works in a similar manner.
27. The concluding benedictory verse is found in all Sanskrit plays. It is called the bharatavakyam in honour of Bharata, the founder of dramaturgy. The word bharata also means an actor; the concluding verse is recited by an actor in his own capacity and not as the character he portrayed in the play.