Note 42 — XI THE DECLINE OF THE SANSKRIT DRAMA

Another Jaina composition is the Prabuddharauhiṇeya42 of one Rāmabhadra Muni, pupil of Jayaprabha Sūri, of the school of Deva Sūri, the famous writer on Nyāya, who died in A.D. 1169. It was written for performance in a temple of Yugādideva, that is the Tīrthakara Ṛṣabha, on the occasion of a procession festival. It is in six Acts. In Act I Rauhiṇeya, who is a bold bandit, steals away Madanavatī, a married woman, while his helper, a Çabara, who speaks Māgadhī, keeps her lover at bay. In the next Act he dresses up as the mother of a youth Manoratha, and abducts him for the sake of his ornaments, terrifying the bystanders with a snake made out of rags. The next three Acts tell of the complaints of these robberies made to Çreṇika of Magadha, and the efforts of his minister Abhayakumāra to find the guilty man, ending ultimately in the arrest of the robber, who, however, stoutly maintains his innocence, though he fails in succeeding in winning his discharge. In Act VI women and musicians under the control of Bharata, a teacher of dancing, endeavour to deceive him into the belief that he is in heaven, and thus to win a confession of his misdeeds from him. But he sees through the play, for he remembers a verse which he had heard spoken by Vardhamāna Svāmin before his captivity, in which the characteristics43 of the gods, freedom from perspiration, unfaded garlands, and feet that do not touch the ground, were set out. The miscreant thus is pronounced innocent, but, liberated, manifests his penitence by taking the king and the minister to the mount Vaibhāra, in which are the treasures he has stolen and the missing boy and woman. The topic is one handled by Hemacandra in the matter illustrating his Yogaçāstra.