English, asked by chandanmahanty27681, 1 year ago

The character of charudatta
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Answers

Answered by ance000
8
i think u didn't post the full question...
Answered by lusina50
11
Charudatta as a lover is different from the usual heroes of Sanskrit plays; his only vocation in the play is “love”; Vasantasena trades in “love” but unlike her he makes an inviolable association between love and money. Whilst Vasantasena, the courtesan abjures and denounces the commercial aspect of “selling” love for money and thus extricates love from a commercial domain; it is Charudatta who equates love with a commercial entity. Having been deprived of his wealth; he feels he has been deprived of his “buying capacity” and hence feels emasculated and defeated in the sexual rivalry with Sakara. In act I , he remarks “Ah, it is Vasantasena, the desire inspired by whom has with the end of my wealth, subsided within my body like the anger of a coward”.   Now, Vasantasena is his dream woman and he seems to be pinning for her ever since the nightly visit of Vasantasena to his home. He exhibits many conventional aspects of a typical love-stricken, amorously wounded protagonist of a Sanskrit play (the dheeralalita  hero) ; his language which exudes romantic ardour and is exuberant in sentiments of love, longing and worship are semantically opposed to those of Sakara whose language and coarse vocabulary, steeped as they are in jumbled up mythological metaphors and animalistic imagery of sexual violation betray the aggressiveness and violent lusts of his being. Charudatta’s evocative language on the other hand is deferential towards Vasantasena, he calls her a woman “fit to be worshipped as a goddess” (we might have reason to believe that this apostrophising of Vasantasena is less a homage to her charms as a skilled, professional courtesan skilled in the art of seduction but rather to her inherent nobility, virtues as a generous and talented woman).  Charudatta’s poetic exuberance and urban diction raises erotic potentialities and impresses Vasantasena who plans a strategy to meet him again, a meeting that takes place in Act V.
But there are certain limitations to Charudatta’s role as a conventional lover. In the play, Shudraka gives us ample evidence of the magnitude of Vasantasena’s erotic longings for Charudatta (she is absorbed in a love-portrait, she curses the stormy weather for prolonging her meeting with Charudatta, she keeps confiding in Madanika about the depth of her passion and finally she dies with his name on her lips) thus essaying the role of the abhisarika Nayika to a perfection in the play; but strangely Charudatta does not realise the fuller potential of a romantic hero.  Charudatta throughout subverts expectations as a male lover, he reveals a sensitivity to music’s erotic overtones in the night, one might expect this to lead to some recollection of Vasantasena’s meeting with him in the night but rather than expressing the typical restlessness and anxiety of a pinning lover he falls sound asleep permitting Sarvilaka to steal the jewellery. Perhaps, his inability to guard her jewels is a symbolic commentary on his ineptitude and inexperience as a lover. Moreover, he censures Vasantasena’s profession, he orders the Vidushaka to keep the Public woman’s jewellery away from the inner domestic chamber. Thus, mentally and psychically he fails to transcend the conventional social prejudices pertaining to an ill famed and disreputable woman of trade. He abides by social and cultural strictures and moral parameters; it is only Vasantasena who shows us that love has a morality of its own.
Moreover, Shudraka shows this love between the merchant and courtesan as part of a new reformed and radicalised social order, this love which would have been frowned upon in the old social regime of King Palaka finds institutional acceptance and recognition with the founding of a new social order under King Aryaka. This new political regime being established by the social outcastes delegitimises all old, entrenched and sedimented class/caste prejudices. Social hierarchies are broken and reconstituted, thus even the social hierarchy of legitimate, conjugal domestic love (Charudatta-Dhutta) over the outlawed, illegitimate, non-conjugal passion (Charudatta – Vasantasena) is undercut. The social rehabilitation of the fallen woman by her assimilation into the domesticated folds of matrimony happens only when the new regenerated and reformed political order comes into power under Aryaka.
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