Epics in Imprints-1.pdf - Vivekananda Kendra Prakashan

Yayati
VIVEKANANDA KENDRA PATRIKA
Like Ashvatthama, the story of Yayati,
also from the Mahabharata has a
strong appeal to the modern mind.
Yayati is the king who in his unsatiated
lust for carnal pleasure shamelessly begs
his son Puru to exchange his youth with
his infirmity. Puru obliges his father. The
earliest work on the subject in this century
is Yayati (1908) by the prolific Tamil
playwright P. Sambandha Mudaliyar. He
was followed by Srikantha Satpathi, the
author of the Oriya narrative Yayati (1927)
and Govinda Ballabh Pant (Hindi play,
Yayati, 1951) and V.S. Khandekar whose
novel Yayati (1959) has been hailed as one
of the greatest works in Marathi literature.
Sudhindranath Datta’s ‘Yayati’
included in Sambarta (1953) is one of the
memorable poems in modern Bengali
literature. Similarly, Umashankar Joshi’s
Pracina (1944), a collection of seven
dialogues, created a new form of verseplays
on themes borrowed from mythology.
Manu: The creation of a New Myth
Mention must be made of the Hindi
epic Kamayani (1935) by the versatile poetdramatist
Jayshankar Prasad. Kamayani,
which tells the story of Manu in search of
a new human race, has been claimed by
critics as an epic without any pronounced
religious ideas, not to speak of any
theology but a work ‘motivated by the
metaphysics of psychology’. Like Savitri it
is also constructed on a grand scale; some
YAYATI AND MANU
Sisir Kumar Das
of its episodes can be traced back to the
Vedic or Puranic literature, but the
narrative is more than work of imagination.
Certain parts of it are allegorical in
character. This epic narrative is certainly
rooted into a Hindu perception of the
reality and it problematizes the eternal
tension within man in search for
perfections and ideals. Girija Kumar
Mathur’s observations may be quoted
here:
Jaishankar Prasad was inspired by the
fascinating legend of the great Deluge and
the regeneration of earth’s life by Manu,
the first man who created human
civilization in the post-diluvian period…..
Manu is the primordial human mind
perpetually in quest of peace. The two
women who come into his life are Sraddha,
symbolizing emotion and dedication, and
Ida, symbolizing intellect. The conflict
which develops due to Manu’s attraction
for both is finally resolved in a harmonious
synthesis between emotion and intellect,
faith and reality.
(A History of Indian Literature, Sahitya
Akademi –New Delhi 1995)