Читать книгу The Lady of the Jewel Necklace & The Lady who Shows her Love - Harsha - Страница 28

asleep (innocently) in the rival’s bed, remembers another occasion on which he behaved less innocently in another rival’s bed and was revealed by the shameful slip of the tongue (a subconscious act, just like a dream, hence a kind of dream within a dream). (Indeed, it is not clear whether the king in the play or the author himself has yet another slip of the tongue about the slip of the tongue, substituting Virachika for Virachita.) This conversation within the dream is particularly noteworthy because the traditional dream books usually analyze only the visual images of dreams, never the words (Doniger O’Flaherty 1984: 25).

In both of these stories about the co-wife Padmavati, the king loves Vasava·datta more than the other woman, and merely takes a second wife for political reasons. But in Harsha’s plays, the king prefers the second wife erotically as well as politically, and Vasava·datta’s quandary is not merely political, nor is it so easily resolved. Significantly, these co-wives do not have political pseudonyms, as Vasava·datta does when she calls herself Avantika, but, rather, natural pseudonyms, like Padmavati (“the Lady with the Lotus,” who is briefly mentioned as another co-wife in ‘The Lady who Shows her Love’): they are called “Sagarika” and “Aranyika,” the ladies of the ocean and the jungle. In Harsha’s plays, moreover, as in the third narrative text, it is the identity of the co-wife, not of Vasava·datta, that is concealed for political reasons, and the co-wife therefore suffers much of the loss of status and identity that Vasava·datta suffers in the other versions. To this extent, our sympathy is with the co-wife; but we also empathize with Vasava·datta, who suffers the loss of the king’s love.