Sri Aurobindo
Early Cultural Writings
(1890 — 1910)
Part Two. On Literature
The Poetry of Kalidasa
Vikramorvasie. The Characters
Vikramorvasie. Minor Characters [16]
Manavaca on the other hand is an element of weakness rather than of strength.
I have already spoken of the progressive attenuation of the traditional buffoon part which keeps pace with Kalidasa’s dramatic development.
Gautama in the Malavica is a complete and living personality who has much to say to the action of the plot; witty, mischievous, mendacious and irresponsible 
he adds to the interest of the play even independently of this functional importance.
But in the Urvasie to have made the main action of the plot turn in any way on the buffoon would have been incongruous with the high romantic beauty of the drama and therefore a serious dramatic error.
The function of Manavaca is accordingly reduced to that of an interlocutor; he is there because Pururavus1 must have somebody to confide in and talk with, otherwise his only dramatic purpose is to give rise by his carelessness to the episode of Aushinarie’s jealousy and self-subdual.
Nevertheless his presence affects the composite tone of the picture.
He is other than the buffoons of the Malavica and Shacountala, far more coarse in the grain, far less talented and highspirited than Gautama, yet not a mere stupid2 block like [Mandhavya]3.
He has along with the stock characteristics of gluttony, ugliness and cowardice, an occasional coarse humour, infertile and broad, and even a real gift of commonsense and rather cynical practicality, to say nothing of that shadow of the purple flung across the speech of all those who associate habitually with Pururavus4; he is at the same time low in mind, unable to understand characters higher than his own.
His best virtue is perhaps his5 absence of all pretensions and readiness to make a gibe of6 himself.
Such a figure necessarily tends to set off by its drab colour and squat7 dimensions the lyric idealism of Pururavus8, the radiant charm of Urvasie and the pale loftiness of the Queen.
But it is by his place in the picture and not by what9 he is in himself that he justifies his existence.
He does not attract or interest, indeed he at times only just escapes being tiresome.
At the same time he lives.
Among all these minor figures who group themselves around the two protagonists and are of purely accessory interest there is one who stands out and compels the eye both by10 her nobler proportions and her independent personality.
Queen Aushinarie has no real claim by any essentiality in her actions11 to12 the large space she occupies in the play; her jealousy does not retard and her renunciation sanctifies rather than assists the course of Pururavus’13 love for Urvasie.
The whole episode in which she figures fits more loosely into the architecture of the piece14 than can be 
exampled elsewhere in Kalidasa’s dramatic workmanship.
The interest of her personality justifies the insertion of the episode rather than the episode that justifies the not inconsiderable space devoted to her.
The motif of her appearance is the same conventional element of wifely rivalry, the jealousy of the rose-in-bloom against the rose-in-bud that has formed the whole groundwork of the Malavica.
There the groundwork, here its interest is brief and episodical.
And yet none of the more elaborated figures in the earlier play, not even Dharinie herself, is as fine and deep a conception as the wife of Pururavus15.
Princess of Kashie and daughter16 of the Ushenors17, acknowledged by her rival to deserve by right of her noble majesty of fairness “the style of Goddess and of Empress,” we feel that she has a right to resent the preference to her even of an Opsara18 from heaven and the completeness of Pururavus’19 absorption in Urvasie gives a tragic significance to her loss which is not involved in the lighter loves and jealousies of Videsha20.
The character is more profoundly and boldly conceived.
The passion of her love strikes deeper than the mere heyday of youth and beauty and the senses in Iravatie as the noble sadness of her self-renunciation moves more powerfully than the kind and gentle wifeliness21 of Queen Dharinie.
And in the manner of her delineation there is more incisiveness and restraint22 with a nobler economy of touch.
The rush of her jealousy comes with less of a storm than Iravatie’s but it has a fierier23 and keener edge and it is felt to be the disguise of a deep and mighty love.
The passion of that love leaps out in the bitter irony of her self-accusal
Not yours the guilt, my lord. I am in fault
Who force my hated and unwelcome face
Upon you.
and again when in the very height of her legitimate resentment she has the sure consciousness of her after-repentance.
And yet the terror
Of the remorse I know that I shall feel
If I spurn24 his kindness, frightens me.
Anger for the time
sweeps her away, but we are prepared for her25 
repentance and sacrifice in the next act.
Even in her anger she has been imperially strong and restrained and much of the poetic force of her renunciation comes from the perfect sweetness, dignity and self-control with which she acts in that scene.
The emotion of self-sacrificing love breaks out only once at the half sneering reproach of the buffoon
Dull fool!
I with the death of my own happiness
Would give my husband ease. From this consider
How dearly I love him.
Putting gently but sorrowfully away from her the King’s half-sincere protestations of abiding love, she goes out of the drama, a pure, devoted and noble nature, clad in gracious white “and sylvanly adorned with flowers, her raven tresses spangled with young green Of sacred grass”; but26 the fragrance of her flowers of sacrifice and the mild beauty of the moonlight remain behind her.
She does not reappear unless it is in the haste of Urvasie to bring her recovered child to his “elder mother”.
This haste with its implied fulness27 of gratitude and affection is one of Kalidasa’s careful side touches telling28 us better than words that in spirit and letter she has fulfilled utterly the vow she made on the moonlit terrace under seal of
The divine wife and husband, Rohinnie29
And Mrigolanchon30 named the spotted moon.
The deepening of moral perception, the increase in power and pathos, the greater largeness of drawing and finer emotional strength and restraint show the advance Kalidasa has made in dramatic characterisation.
Grace, sweetness, truth to life and character, perfect and delicate workmanship, all that reveals the presence of the artist were his before; but the Urvasie reveals a riper and larger genius widening its31 scope, raising mightier vans before yet it take32 its last high and surpassing flight.