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in these days is only a dream at the best, and to draw a picture like it. would draw down the rage of society on its audacious artist. This poem is the Okha-Haran, Okha is confined within a black-hole by her father from interested motives ; and her friend Destiny has wings and puts herself on her wings to secure Okhé her sweetheart by theft from his royal grandfather's palace. The reli- gion of the land wants that the father should perform ther daughter's marriage. But the poet can teach his heroine to resort to the Gandharva marriage. The loves of Okha and her lover, the anger of his father, the conse- quent battles between the father of Okhi on the one hand and the young hero and his father and grandfather on the other, and the ultimate reconciliation of all par- ties eding in the bride being given to her lover by her father: these and a number of minor scenes have been turned by poet into so many occasions to raise before his audience the picture of men and women who feel like the people of Gujarat and yet live under conditions which violate the existing manners and institutions of child-marriage and paternal despotism. The power of the poet and the sacred source of the plot not only make the people tolerate his audacity, but compel them to sanction it as sacred and lovely, and make them shed tears for the sufferings of the rebellious daughter—a -daughter who would he stoned to death if she could turn up in their midst even in these days.
