their courts. Yet Harsha is almost unique in claiming that he himself, rather than his court poet (in his case, Bana), wrote the three fine plays composed at his court. Moreover, ‘The Lady of the Jewel Necklace’ and ‘The Lady who Shows her Love’ are the sorts of plays a king might well write: the plots are full of political intrigue (which involve mistaken identities, both political and erotic, that are mirrored in the frequent use of paronomasia, extended double entendre). And though some of the poetry is quite good, refreshingly simple and straightforward (might one say commanding, or martial?), some of it—let’s be frank—is pretty dreadful (take a look at ‘The Lady of the Jewel Necklace’ 3.87 (verse ________
11)—worse than anything that Bana or any court poet of the first order would produce for the sake of the seventh-century equivalent of a MacArthur grant. But there is another, better argument for the royal author.
I have said he was almost unique, because another poet king, the Pallava ruler Mahendra·varman, wrote a delightful satire called the ‘The Comedy of the Madman’s Antics’ (Matta/vilasa/prahasana). These two are the only kings who wrote Sanskrit plays good enough to be frequently cited within the tradition or, as far as we know, to survive at all. (Other kings, of course, may have written plays, perhaps in vernaculars as well as in Sanskrit, but no one cared to preserve them by having them copied over and over again; in a climate like India’s, only the fittest texts survive.) Oddly enough, Mahendra·varman was a contemporary of Harsha and was defeated by the same Pula·keshin II who defeated Harsha. Mahendra·varman ruled Kanchi, on the other side, the southern side, of the same Vindhya stronghold that formed the southern border of the empire of Harsha as well as of the hero of his plays, the mythical King Udayana of Kaushambi. Pula·keshin II, therefore, surely appears in the Harsha plays as the king of Kosala/Vindhya·ketu, whom Udayana, unlike his author, succeeds in conquering in the battles of the Vindhyas. Pula·keshin II did not, apparently, write any plays worth keeping.
And if we assume that a ruling king really wrote these two plays, we gain access to certain suggestive insights into their plots. Clearly they owe a great deal to the ‘Kama Sutra’ (Kama/sutra), the ancient Indian textbook of eroticism, but the ‘Kama Sutra’ itself is closely based on the ‘Artha· ________
shastra’ (Artha/sastra), the ancient Indian textbook of politics. The fantasy of sneaking into the harem, for example, is part of a broader mythology of intrigue that the ‘Kama Sutra’ presents, a whole new erotic mythology that it creates by applying to sex the Machiavellian politics of the ‘Artha·shastra,’ composed perhaps a century, or less, before the ‘Kama Sutra’ (Doniger and Kakar 2002: xi–xiii). The ‘Kama Sutra’ explicitly refers to the ‘Artha·shastra,’ and the two texts have much in common. The ‘Kama Sutra’ tells you how to test married women, to detect a woman likely to commit adultery, in precisely the way that the ‘Artha· shastra’ tells you to test potential defectors, assassins, and so forth, how to detect suspicious characters. The list (in ‘Artha·shastra’ 1.14.2) of people in the enemy’s territory who are dissatisfied and can be seduced politically is the model for the lists (in ‘Kama Sutra’ 5.1.52–54) of women in their husband’s territory, as it were, who can be seduced sexually.
The ‘Artha·shastra’ advises the king to test his potential ministers of various departments to make sure they are impervious to the temptations of each of the three goals of life: dharma (religion), artha (power) and kama (desire) (1.10.3); he also tells him to test the candidate against a fourth power, fear. This then appears in the ‘Kama Sutra’ as just one test, the test of the guard for the harem, a four-fold test that also includes fear (5.6.40–42). The use of messengers in the ‘Kama Sutra’ parallels the employment of ambassadors and spies in the ‘Artha·shastra’ (1.16); the same word (duta) designates both messengers and spies. The internal debate of potential adulterers in the ‘Kama Sutra,’ persuading them- selves of the moral justice of their actions (1.5.4–20), mirrors ________
the similar meditations of spies in the ‘Artha·shastra’ and the self-persuasions and justifications for seizing power (1.16.29 and 6.2.38). Indeed, the list of reasons that justify adultery in the ‘Kama Sutra’ include many that are far more political than erotic (1.5.8–21). And surely the obsessively detailed timetable for the man-about-town’s day in the ‘Kama Sutra’ (“He gets up in the morning, relieves himself, cleans his teeth, applies fragrant oils in small quantities, as well as incense, garlands, bees’ wax and red lac, looks at his face in a mirror, takes some mouth-wash and betel,” etc., 1.4.5) is a satire on the equally detailed plans for the king’s day in the ‘Artha·shastra’ (judge cases, receive embassies, relax in the women’s quarters, etc., 1.19.33).
The ‘Kama Sutra’ shares with the ‘Artha·shastra’ (1.6, 1.17.35–8) its emphasis on the need for the control of the senses: both Vatsyayana and Kautilya would have loved Nixon, hated Clinton. The two texts tell the same myths about the same sinners in this regard: Dandakya, Ravana, Indra (‘Artha·shastra’ 1.15.55; ‘Kama Sutra’ 1.2.35–36). It is surely significant that the author of the best extant English translation of the ‘Artha·shastra,’ R. P. Kangle, also translated ‘The Lady who Shows her Love.’
Bearing this in mind as we return to the question of Harsha’s identity, we can see the coterminous influence of these two great textbooks that justify Henry Kissinger’s notorious insistence that power is the greatest aphrodisiac. Take, for instance, the mysterious prediction that is mentioned at the start of ‘The Lady of the Jewel Necklace’ but not explained until the end, the prediction that anyone who married Ratnavali would conquer the earth. Now consider ________
the map of India. A king in Kanauj who gets, first, nearby Avanti (from Vasava·datta) and then Simhala (from Ratnavali) doesn’t need a magic prediction to tell him what he will have: these two dowries are the whole world, the whole of India. (Consider, too, the political alliances formed by Harsha’s parents and siblings.) A marriage alliance with the ruler of Sri Lanka (Simhala) might not matter so much for, say, the king of Madras/Chennai, but for a north Indian king, Simhala is the end of the world.
Udayana’s conquest of another woman (Sagarika or Aranyika) is actually the conquest of another country, though he doesn’t know it at the time; he wants everything, of course, and he gets it. The jester, as usual saying more than he knows, explicitly compares an erotic conquest with a political one, when he says that the news of a forthcoming rendezvous with Ratnavali will give the king even more pleasure than “his acquisition of the kingdom of Kaushambi gave.” Appeasement is the key to both sex and politics; the same word is used for talking around an offended woman and conciliating a nervous potential enemy. The extreme instance of this comes in Act Four of ‘The Lady who Shows her Love,’ when the king is trying to find a way to get his girlfriend out of the prison that his wife has put her in, and the jester suggests that he simply attack the harem with his elephants and horses and footsoldiers. The king scorns this plan, preferring to do something that will appease the queen rather than, perhaps, kill her, but the jester is simply urging the king to use all the means at his disposal; all’s fair in love and total war. At the start of Act Three of ‘The Lady of the Jewel Necklace,’ Kanchana·mala remarks of the jester, with ________
bitter sarcasm: “Bravo, Prime Minister Vasantaka, bravo! You have surpassed even Prime Minister Yaugandharayana with this plot for war and peace.” The jester’s playful erotic machinations are a direct parallel to the serious political schemes of the real Prime Minister. The jester is the shadow not of the king but of the Machiavellian minister.
A final clue, I think, to the royal nature of the poet lies in the amazing final stanza of both plays, in which Harsha speaks so bitterly about slanderers, a rasa-sentiment of ressentiment coming out of nowhere. What could the slander be? Is it, perhaps, the rumor that the king did not write the plays himself?
History of the Plot
A complex cycle of classical Sanskrit texts surrounds the mythical figures of king Udayana, his queen, Vasava·datta, and a
