Читать книгу The Lady of the Jewel Necklace & The Lady who Shows her Love - Harsha - Страница 33

who was dressed like him. She gave him his/her ornaments and he acted in the play.

Vasava·datta walked away and found the jester asleep at the door of the picture gallery. From him she learned that it had been the king playing the part of the king. She imprisoned Aranyika but set her free when she discovered that Aranyika was Priya·darshika. She joined the hands of Aranyika and the king.

Harsha’s Treatment of the

Conventions of the Narrative

Harsha’s ‘The Lady of the Jewel Necklace’ takes up the story after the events known from the versions of the story that we have seen (the prediction that Udayana must marry Ratnavali, the rumor of Vasava·datta’s death by fire) and a few more. While Ratnavali, the daughter of the king of Simhala, was sailing to Kaushambi, the ship was wrecked and Ratnavali was rescued from the water by a merchant and given to the minister, who recognized her by the jewel necklace that she always wore. He put her in Vasava·datta’s service as a handmaid named Sagarika (“the Lady of the Ocean”). And Priya·darshika has an even more complex prehistory, involving not only Priya·darshika’s father’s and stepfather’s military disasters, as well as her own marital disasters and exile, but the parallel case of Vasava·datta, whom Udayana has not yet married at the start of the play and whose father had captured Udayana. Thus here, in contrast with ‘The Lady of the Jewel Necklace,’ the two women are on an equal footing at the start: though Priya·darshika has actually ________