Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/108

Compared with Prakritira Pratisodha, Chitra is like a piece of sculpture set beside a sombre strangely-coloured painting. Chitra is in effect a lyric drama, based on the story of a king's daughter of that name told in Mahabarata. Chitra's father has no son, and he has trained his daughter not as a girl, but as a boy, and made her his heir. In the opening scene we find her conferring with the two gods, Madana (who is Eros) and Vasanta (who is Lycoris). She tells them how one day when wandering along the river-bank on the track of a deer, she came on a man lying under the trees on a bed of dried leaves. This proved to be Arjuna, the hero of his great race, who had long been the idol of her dreams. She knew that he had vowed to live a hermit's life for twelve years, and she had often wished, as a warrior-maiden, to meet him in her male disguise and challenge him to single combat. But now at sight of him she is overtaken, as it were, by "a whirlwind of thought"; she stands without a word of greeting or courtesy as he walks away. Next morning she lays aside her man's clothing and puts on bracelets and anklets and a gown of purple-red silk and a waist-chain, and, with