Bhasa is perhaps the only poet in the history of our literature, who did not go into the oblivion inspire of his works being lost to the readers for centuries together. The literary world was suddenly taken by surprise with the announcement made by Mahamahopadhyaya T. Ganapati Sastri, the first curator of the manuscript library of Thiruvananthapuram that twelve plays of Bhasa and thirteenth one in an incomplete form had been discovered by his from amongst the manuscripts he was handling. There was great jubilation over this epoch making discovery combined with an element of doubt and disbelief in certain quarter. It be a superfluous attempt to bring all his plays under the prescribed definitions of the ten types of Rupakas since he himself has never tried to be true to a type.
This first volume of Bhasa's plays starts with Balacaritam which has got Krsnavatara as its theme and deals with the boyish adventures of Krsna ending with the slaying of Kamsa. The remaining six plays have drawn on different episodes of Mahabharata for their themes and could be generally classified as the Mahabharata Plays. Though the episodes have been taken from Vyasa's great epic or the Puranas dealing with Krsnavatara there have been deviations in their presentation and, in the case of the Mahabharata Plays, the characters are not always true to the type as depicted by Vyasa. Apart from this, there are some episodes that do not find any place in the epic and should be considered as inventions of the great dramatist for fulfilling his own objective.
The first volume second part of Bhasa's plays deals with some of the important episodes of Ramayana starting with the disturbed coronation in the first play of 'Pratima' and ending with the consecration of Rama along with Sita in both cases. Though Bhasa has drawn upon Valmiki for the themes he has made various deviations and introduced his own innovations.
The second volume of Bhasa's works starts with the twin plays or Pratijnayaugandharyam and Svapnavasavadattam centering round Udayana, the ruler of Vatsa kingdom who had become a legendary figure in Ujjayani as mentioned by Kalidasa. Avimarakam is a play with certain mythological and supernatural elements in it, though there are references to many of the kingdoms of the later Rigvedic period. The incomplete play Carudattam contains the same theme as dealt with in Sudrakas' Mrcchakatikam. It seems to be the work of a mature age and could very well be the last one left incomplete. |
