at the cost of one's own, to avoid in dealings with him all malice and guile, and to strive for his weal as if for one's own is the essential mark of true friendship.[1] Admirable also is his conception of love, far nobler than that normal in Indian literature; it is the same in happiness and sorrow, adapted to every circumstance of life, in which the heart finds solace, unspoiled by age, mellowing and becoming more valuable as in course of time reserve dies away, a supreme blessing attained only by those that are fortunate and after long toil.[2] The child completes the union; it ties in a common knot of union the strands of its parents' hearts.[3] Bhavabhūti was clearly a solitary soul; this is attested by the prologue of the Mālatīmadhava:
ye nāma kecid iha naḥ prathayanty avajñām: jānanti te kim api tān prati naiṣsa yatnaḥ
utpatsyate 'sti mama ko 'pi samānadharmā: kālo hy ayam anavadhir vipulā ca pṛthvī.
'Those that disparage me know little; for them my effort is not made; there will or does exist some one with like nature to mine, for time is boundless and the earth is wide.' Yet we may sympathize with those who felt[4] that his art was unfit for the stage, for Bhavabhūti's style has many demerits in addition to the defects of his technique.
Bhavabhūti in fact proclaims here as his own merit richness and elevation of expression (prauḍhatvam udāratā ca vacasām) and depth of meaning, and we must admit that he has no small grounds for his claims. The depth of thought and grandeur which can be admitted in the case of Bhavabhūti must be measured by Indian standards, and be understood subject to the grave limitations which are imposed on any Brahmanical speculation as to existence by the orthodoxy which is as apparent in Bhavabhūti as it is in the lighter-hearted Kālidāsa. When, therefore, we are told[5] that 'with reference to Kālidāsa he holds a position such as Aeschylus holds with reference to Euripides', we must not take too seriously the comparison. No poet, in fact, suggests less readily comparison with Euripides than does Kālidāsa. He has nothing whatever of the questioning mind of the
