The Little Clay Cart

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The “Little Clay Cart” is, for Sanskrit drama, atypically romantic, funny, and thrilling, replete with love, humor, courage, and intrigues. As Wilson put it, the ten-act play is “in many respect the most human of all the Sanskrit plays. There is something strikingly Shakespearian in the skilful drawing of characters, the energy and life of the large number of personages in the play, and in the directness and clearness of the plot itself.” One of the earliest Sanskrit plays, “Little Clay Cart” was created in South India, perhaps in the seventh century CE. The plot unfolds in the city of Ujjain, but so secular and universal is the story that it can be situated in any society in any period.

The leading character Charu·datta, a married merchant reduced to poverty, is extramaritally involved with a wealthy courtesan, Vasánta·sena. The king’s vile brother-in-law, unable to win Vasánta·sena’s love, strangles her, and accuses Charu·datta in the court. Under the villain’s influence the court decides the case hastily and condemns Charu·datta to death. Fortunately, our heroine rises from the dead to save her beloved, and everyone applauds their love. At this culminating moment, there is regime change, and the rebel-turned-king makes Charu·datta lord of an adjacent city.

Charu·datta in despair:

Comfort following hardship shines resplendent, Like seeing a lamp in darkness deep, But a man reduced to need from fortune’s state Lives dead—alive only in keeping up his frame.
Vasánta·sena on the way to her lover’s in a rainy day:

Oh cloud, you are shameless! First you frighten me as I rush to my lover’s, And now touch me with your hands, your shafts of rain!
Libertine says to Vasánta·sena:

If you get angry, you have no love, But without anger how can passion arise? Be angry and make him angry, but very soon Be soothed and soothe your lover.

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ชื่อชุด

Clay Sanskrit library, 44.

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ผู้จัดทำ

New York University Press : New York University Press., 2009

ลักษณะวัสดุ

674 pp.

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ISBN/ISSN

9780814707296

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NONE

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