Manager (in distraction).
What! How! My two parents, leaving me, are gone to a sacred grove? What is now seemly to be done? (After thinking.) But how shall I remain at home, giving up the pleasure of attendance on my father? For, in order to perform the service of my father, I will quit the possessions fallen to my lot, and go off this day to the forest, as did Jímútaváhana.[1]
END OF PROLOGUE.
ACT I.
Then enter Jímútaváhana and the Vidúshaka.
Jímútaváhana
(in a tone of apathy towards the world).
O friend, Átreya, well do I know that youth is an abode of passion. I am certain that it is transient. Who in the world does not know that it is averse to investigation of right and wrong? Yet, worthless as it is, it may still be used for the attainment of the desired end, if it is thus spent by me, devotedly obeying my parents.
Vidúshaka (with vexation).
Alas, my friend, no wonder you are despondent, en-
- ↑ The Hindu dramatists always endeavour to connect the business of the prologue with that of the main action. The spectator thus gradually passes from the real world in which the actors live, to the imaginary one in which the personages of the drama move.
