THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

288 The Harmony of Virtuewould have been incongruous with the high romantic beauty ofthe drama and therefore a serious dramatic error. The functionof Manavaca is accordingly reduced to that of an interlocutor;he is there because Pururavas must have somebody to confidein and talk with, otherwise his only dramatic purpose is to giverise by his carelessness to the episode of Aushinarie's jealousyand self-subdual. Nevertheless his presence affects the compositetone of the picture. He is other than the buffoons of the Malavicaand Shacountala, far more coarse in the grain, far less talentedand high-spirited than Gautama, yet not a stupid block. He has,along with the stock characteristics of gluttony, ugliness and cowardice,an occasional coarse humour, infertile and broad, and evena real gift of commonsense and rather cynical practicality, to saynothing of that shadow of the purple flung across the speech ofall those who associate habitually with Pururavas; he is at thesame time low in mind, unable to understand characters higherthan his own. His best virtue is perhaps the absence of all pretensionsand readiness to make a gibe on himself. Such a figurenecessarily tends to set off by its drab colour and equal dimensionsthe lyric idealism of Pururavas, the radiant charm of Urvasieand the pale loftiness of the Queen. But it is by his placein the picture and not what he is in himself that he justifies hisexistence. He does not attract or interest, indeed he at times onlyjust escapes being tiresome. At the same time he lives.Among all these minor figures who group themselves aroundthe two protagonists and are of purely accessory interest, thereis one who stands out and compels the eye by her nobler proportionsand her independent personality. Queen Aushinarie hasno real claim by any essentiality in her action on the large spaceshe occupies in the play; her jealousy does not retard and herrenunciation sanctifies rather than assists the course of Pururavas*love for Urvasie. The whole episode in which she figuresfits more loosely into the architecture of the play than can beexampled elsewhere in Kalidasa's dramatic workmanship. Theinterest of her personality justifies the insertion of the episoderather than the episode that justifies the not inconsiderable spacedevoted to her. The motif of her appearance is the same conventionalelement of wifely rivalry, the jealousy of the rose-in-bloom