plays an active role in other episodes in the cycle about Udayana, which begin with the same premise as the story of Kalinga·sena: for political reasons, Udayana must take a second wife (or wives). Before the encounter with Kalinga·sena, Udayana had become involved with:
Padmavati, the Lady with the Lotus
King Udayana, King of Vatsa, married to Vasava·datta, daughter of the king of Avanti, was so in love with her that he neglected his royal duties. His ministers decided to save him from himself by getting the King of Magadha, their enemy, to give his daughter Padmavati (“the Lady with the Lotus”) to the king and to make the king believe that Vasava· datta was dead. The ministers gave the queen a charm that enabled her to change her shape, and she disguised herself as a Brahmin woman, under the name of Avantika (“The Woman from the City of Avanti,” Vasava·datta’s kingdom), and went to serve Padmavati at the court of Magadha.
When the king of Magadha offered Padmavati to Udayana, he accepted her. Vasava·datta made garlands for Padmavati, using a special technique that the king had taught her. The bridal couple returned to Vatsa, and Vasava·datta followed in the rear. The king asked Padmavati where she ________
had gotten the garlands; she said she had gotten them from Avantika, and then the king knew that Avantika must be Vasava·datta. The minister told the king all, and the king and his two wives were reconciled (‘Ocean of the Rivers of Stories’ 15–16 [3.1–2]).
Udayana recognizes Vasava·datta by recognizing himself in her—through the art of making garlands that he had taught her.
But before Padmavati (and, therefore, before Kalinga·se- na), there had been:
Virachita and the Slip of the Tongue
King Udayana married Vasava·datta, but after a while, Udayana became unfaithful and made love with a woman in the harem named Virachita, with whom he had had an affair before. One day he called the queen by the wrong name, Virachita, and had to appease her by falling at her feet. Later, a beautiful princess named Bandhumati was sent as a present to the queen. The queen concealed her under the name of Manjulika, but the king saw her and secretly seduced her. Vasava·datta, who was hidden, witnessed this act; furious at first, she eventually relented and accepted Bandhumati, for she had a tender heart (‘Ocean of the Rivers of Stories’ 14 [2.60].64–75).
The king mistakes one woman for another, mistaking not the person but the name; when the queen conceals first the rival and then herself, the king finds the secret woman and the queen watches the secret act. In the end, all is revealed and all is accepted.
The Story in Bhasa’s ‘Vasava·datta in a Dream’
and Subandhu’s ‘Vasava·datta’
Bhasa’s ‘The Drama of Vasava·datta [who meets her husband] in a Dream’ (Svapna/vasavadatta), was composed early in the fourth century ce. This play shares with the first text from the ‘Ocean of the Rivers of Story’ the revealing sleep/dream; with the second, much of the plot and the name of the co-wife, Padmavati; and, with the third, more of the plot and the slip of the tongue:
Vasava·datta in a Dream
King Udayana was married to Vasava·datta and loved her too much to take a second wife, but there was a prediction that for the good of the kingdom he should marry Padmavati, the sister of Darshaka, the king of Magadha. To gain Darshaka as an ally when Udayana’s throne had been usurped, the king’s minister, Yaugandharayana, spread the rumor that Vasava·datta had perished in a fire at Lavanaka, but secretly he put Vasava·datta in the care of Padmavati, giving her the name of Avantika. Udayana married Padmavati, and Vasava·datta made a garland for her husband’s bride.
Padmavati was stricken with a headache and lay down in a room different from her own room. The king and the jester went to her own room to conciliate her, but the jester, seeing the garland that Vasava·datta had made, mistook it for a cobra and fled. The king, finding that Padmavati was not in fact there, fell asleep in Padmavati’s bed. Vasava·datta came in and, thinking that Padmavati was in the bed, sat on it and said, “I wonder why my heart rejoices so as I sit ________
beside her. And by lying on one side of the bed she seems to invite me to embrace her. I will lie down there.” And she lay down.
Then the king, dreaming, called out, “O Vasava·datta,” and the queen stood up and said, “It’s the king, not Padmavati! Has he seen me?” Again the king called out, “O, princess of Avanti!” and she realized, “Good, the king is just talking in his sleep. There’s no one here, so I will stay here for a moment and satisfy my eyes and my heart.” Udayana (continuing in his sleep): “My darling, answer me. Are you angry with me?”
V: “No, no, but I am unhappy.”
U: “Is it because you are remembering Virachika [sic]?”
V (angrily): “Go away; is Virachika here too?”
U: “Then let me ask you to forgive me for Virachika.”
V: “I’ve stayed here for a long time. Someone might see. I’d better go. . . ”
As soon as she had left, the king stood up and cried out, “Vasava·datta! Stay, stay!” And then, not sure if he had dreamt it or not, he said, “If it’s a dream, it would have been good never to wake up. But if it is a delusion, let me keep it for a long time.”
Messengers brought a portrait of Vasava·datta with Udayana, sent by Vasava·datta’s mother. The identity of Vasava·datta was revealed through the portrait.
There are three mistaken identities in this play: Vasava· datta masquerades as the minister’s sister; Vasava·datta at first mistakes the king for Padmavati in the bed; and the king mistakes the real Vasava·datta for the Vasava·datta in his dream. The content of the dream is most revealing: the king, ________
asleep (innocently) in the rival’s bed, remembers another occasion on which he behaved less innocently in another rival’s bed and was revealed by the shameful slip of the tongue (a subconscious act, just like a dream, hence a kind of dream within a dream). (Indeed, it is not clear whether the king in the play or the author himself has yet another slip of the tongue about the slip of the tongue, substituting Virachika for Virachita.) This conversation within the dream is particularly noteworthy because the traditional dream books usually analyze only the visual images of dreams, never the words (Doniger O’Flaherty 1984: 25).
In both of these stories about the co-wife Padmavati, the king loves Vasava·datta more than the other woman, and merely takes a second wife for political reasons. But in Harsha’s plays, the king prefers the second wife erotically as well as politically, and Vasava·datta’s quandary is not merely political, nor is it so easily resolved. Significantly, these co-wives do not have political pseudonyms, as Vasava·datta does when she calls herself Avantika, but, rather, natural pseudonyms, like Padmavati (“the Lady with the Lotus,” who is briefly mentioned as another co-wife in ‘The Lady who Shows her Love’): they are called “Sagarika” and “Aranyika,” the ladies of the ocean and the jungle. In Harsha’s plays, moreover, as in the third narrative text, it is the identity of the co-wife, not of Vasava·datta, that is concealed for political reasons, and the co-wife therefore suffers much of the loss of status and identity that Vasava·datta suffers in the other versions. To this extent, our sympathy is with the co-wife; but we also empathize with Vasava·datta, who suffers the loss of the king’s love.
A final version, that omits the co-wife but reshuffles other familiar elements of the plot, is Subandhu’s Sanskrit prose romance, ‘Vasava·datta,’
