king; but she has been utterly forgotten by him.  He angrily denies his marriage; and when she proposes to bring forth the ring, she finds she has lost it from her finger.  “It must have slipped off,” suggested Gautami, “when thou wast offering homage to Sachi’s holy lake.”  The king smiles derisively.  Sakoontala tries to quicken his memory:—­“Do you remember how, in the jasmine bower, you poured water from the lotus cup into the hollow of my hand?  Do you remember how you said to my little fawn, Drink first, but she shrunk from you—­and drank water from my hand, and you said, with a smile, ‘Like trusts Like,’ for you are two sisters in the same grove.”  The king calls her words “honeyed falsehoods.”  Sakoontala buries her face in her mantle and bursts into tears.

The tenderness of this scene, its grace and delicacy, are quite idyllic, and worthy of the best ages of the pastoral drama.  The ring is at length restored to Dushyanta, having been found by a fisherman in the belly of a carp.  On its being restored to the king’s finger, he is overcome with a flood of recollection:  he gives himself over to mourning and forbids the celebration of the Spring festival.  He admits that his palsied heart had been slumbering, and that, now it is roused by memories of his fawn-eyed love, he only wakes to agonies of remorse.  Meanwhile Sakoontala had been carried away like a celestial nymph to the sacred grove of Kasyapa, far removed from earth in the upper air.  The king, being summoned by Indra to destroy the brood of giants, descendants of Kalamemi, the monster of a hundred arms and heads, reaches in the celestial car Indra, the grove where dwell his wife and child, an heroic boy whom the hermits call Sarva-damana—­the all-tamer.  The recognition and reconciliation of husband and wife are delineated with the most delicate skill, and the play concludes with a prayer to Shiva.

E.W.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

DUSHYANTA, King of India.

MATHAVYA, the Jester, friend and companion of the King.

KANWA, chief of the Hermits, foster-father of Sakoontala.

SARNGARAVA, SARADWATA, two Brahmans, belonging to the hermitage of
Kanwa.

MITRAVASU, brother-in-law of the King, and Superintendent of the city police.

JANUKA, SUCHAKA, two constables.

VATAYANA, the Chamberlain or attendant on the women’s apartments.

SOMARATA, the domestic Priest.

KARABHAKA, a messenger of the Queen-mother.

RAIVATAKA, the warder or door-keeper.

MATALI, charioteer of Indra.

SARVA-DAMANA, afterwards Bharata, a little boy, son of Dushyanta by
Sakoontala.

KASYAPA, a divine sage, progenitor of men and gods, son of Marichi and grandson of Brahma.

SAKOONTALA, daughter of the sage Viswamitra and the nymph Menaka, foster-child of the hermit Kanwa.

PRIYAMVADA and ANASUYA, female attendants, companions of Sakoontala.