The Lady of the Jeweled Necklace and the Lady Who Shows Her Love

by Harṣa

King Harsha, who reigned over the kingdom of Kanauj from 606 to 647 CE, composed two Sanskrit plays about the mythical figures of King Udayana, his queen, Vasava-datta, and two of his co-wives. The plays abound in mistaken identities, both political and erotic. The characters masquerade as one another and, occasionally, as themselves, and each play refers simultaneously to itself and to the other.

Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation

For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http: //www.claysanskritlibrary.org

Genres: India

514 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2007

Reviews

[Jane Masterson]

I wanted to read these plays after reading about them in Wendy Doniger's "The Woman who Pretended to Be Who She Was"

lady of the jewel necklace
harsha – reigned in the kingdom of Kanauj (near modern Kanpur) from 606-647

vasava-datta- wife
king udayana-
sagarika- soon to be second wife

This play written sometime in 600 AD addresses a standard story of the time. A husband who wants to add a second wife and a resisting first
wife. The end is always the same. The second wife is added with the
first wife's permission. The plot is therefore different than the standard plot of infidelity in a monogamous society. It also differs in the quoting of poems from the Rig Veda to help explain how the characters are feeling during the play. A somewhat similar tradition in some western literature might be quoting Bible verses but quoting the love poetry of the Bible is rare plus the Bible lacks poems discussing why making love to your mistress is more exciting than making love to your wife and poems discussing killing yourself because of unrequited love. These differences between our societies (polygamy and a more wide-ranging book of poetry to quote, Rig Veda vs the Bible, made
this play an interesting read.

Lovesickness

Anyone who has had a case of this OR perhaps more importantly
been a close friend of someone who has succumbed to lovesickness can remember with horror how your friend who used to be such a joy to talk to, can only talk about the object of their desire and can bring any other subject you bring up back to their special someone in a few minutes time. Often when they aren’t talking about that person, they don’t seem to be listening to you and often you feel that you
have lost that friend forever.. anyway, with the king and his
soon to be second wife desperately lovesick, it makes it easier to give them a pass when they don’t care about the feelings of others. If we let them off the hook then perhaps we should also realize that the queen when she chains sargarika up in the women’s quarters is acting under emotional distress of jealousy--- another set of feelings that most of us have felt and we may have wanted to act as vasava-datta did
if we walked in on our loved one making love (with words in this case)
to another. even though the king and jester worry about vasava-datta committing suicide, as far as we know she never considers it, but then we never see things from her point of view.

The prime minister wants the king to marry sargarika because it has been said that whoever marries her will be king of the world. the king does not fall in love with her because of that, but because she is drop- dead gorgeous. Not exactly why I would want to be loved but I think I would chose that over simply being a political pawn. Sargarika's father does not want to give her to the king and the prime minister says it is because her father, the king, does not “want to distress the mind of Queen Vasva-datta” or perhaps does not want his daughter to be in competition with an established powerful first wife. Either way it is nice to read that these men seem to care about the feelings of the women even though they are also using them to gain political power.

I also like that although the king does quote a rig veda verse puzzling about why a man so prefers to make love to his mistress rather than his wife. The fact that the king quotes this poem and other statements he makes in the play suggest that he does still love his first wife and they still enjoy each other physically.

“Strange that a lover, scorning the embrace of his own wife, should be so partial to a new person. For:
She is too nervous to cast a cheerful, loving glance upon his face.
When she embraces him with her arms around his neck
she doesn’t press her breasts hard against him in passion
she keeps saying, “I must go” even though he holds onto her with great effort and yet a lover at a rendezvous gives him the most intense pleasure.”

but when the king thinks his wife is trying to commit suicide:
“my life’s breath come to my throat
ve when the noose is around your throat
so my effort here is for my own sake
dear one, give up this rash intention.”

however in talking to sargarika, the king says about his wife:

“I trembled when her sighs made her breasts tremble
spoke sweet words when she was silent
and, when the brows on her face bent in a frown,
fell at her feet—in all of these ways we served the queen
because of her inborn good breeding
but the love whose emotion is heightened by the bonds of affection-
that is for you.”

of course this is nonsense because he has no idea whether he
really likes Sargarika at all because she has only spoken about 10 words
to him at this time and Sargarika is the one who contemplates suicide. She says:

“I love someone out of reach
shyness weighs me down
I’m in the power of someone else
my dear friend, this love is unequal
and death is the only and best refuge.”


I also liked the details about the natural world in this play:

Some characters find their way through the pitch dark by
the smells of the different kinds of flowering plants.

The king makes a flowering plant bloom out of season by marrying it
and knowing what plants want
It made me wonder what the king actually did to this plant.

and a mynah bird who gives away a woman in love by repeating what
she has said.

[Shaq · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'M CTFUUU i read this for an essay and I just looked at the ratings omfg......... HOW NOW