Note 12 — VIII BHAVABHŪTI

We find, in fact, in Bhavabhūti, in a degree unknown to Kālidāsa, child of fortune, to whom life appeared as an ordered joyous whole, the sense of the mystery of things; ‘what brings things together’, he says, ‘is some mysterious inward tie; it is certainly not upon outward circumstances that affection rests’.12 Self-sacrifice is a reality to Bhavabhūti; Rāma is prepared to abandon without a pang affection, compassion, and felicity, nay Sītā herself, for the sake of his people,13 and he acts up to his resolve. Friendship is to him sacred; to guard a friend’s interests 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.14 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.15 The child completes the union; it ties in a common knot of union the strands of its parents’ hearts.16 Bhavabhūti was clearly a solitary soul; this is attested by the prologue of the Mālatīmādhava: