prasiddhau kāryāṇām pravadati janaḥ pārthivabalam
vipattau vispaṣṭaṁ sacivam atidoṣaṁ janayati
amatyā ity uktāḥ çrutisukham udāraṁ nṛpatibhiḥ
susukṣmaṁ daṇḍyante matibalavidagdhāḥ kupuruṣāḥ.
'If policy succeeds, the people acclaim the prince's might; if disaster ensue, it condemns the incompetency of the minister; poor fools, puffed up by their strength of intellect, they receive from kings the noble and sweet sounding style of "counsellor" only to be punished sharply for any failure.'
Bhāsa is fond of expressing typical feelings in simple language which later poets would deem lacking in ornament; thus he expresses a mother's feelings regarding her daughter's marriage in the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa:[1]
adattety āgatā lajjā datteti vyathitam manaḥ
dharmasnehāntare nyastā duḥkhitaḥ khalu mātaraḥ.
'Shame were it if she be not betrothed; yet if betrothed sorrow is one's lot; between duty and love mothers are sore vexed in heart.' The responsibility of a teacher is set out by Droṇa in the Pañcarātra:[2]
atītya bandhūn avalan̄ghya mitrāṇy: ācāryam āgacchati çiṣyadoṣaḥ.
bālaṁ hy apatyaṁ gurave pradātum: naivāparādho 'sti pitur na mātuḥ.
'A pupil's fault passes over relatives and friends and settles on the teacher, for it is no wrong in father or mother to hand over a young child to a preceptor."
Bhāsa's power of depicting irony is specially prominent in the Svapnavāsavadattā,[3] where Vāsavadattā is driven to weave the garland for the new queen's marriage, on the score of her skill in this art. Rāvaṇa shows the heads which he represents as those of Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa to Sītā, only to hear the announcement that his son is slain in the battle, by the very two whose death he has feigned.[4] Effective is the contrast between Vālin's splendour and his fall in his son An̄gada's lament:[5]
atibalasukhaçāyī pūrvam āsīr harīndraḥ: kṣititalaparivartī kṣīṇasarvān̄gaceṣṭaḥ.
'Soft indeed thy couch aforetime as lord of the apes, who now
