A History of Sanskrit Literature c16.67

c16.67

The *Uttara-rāma-charita*, or “The Later Fortunes of Rāma,” is a romantic piece containing many fine passages. Owing to lack of action, however, it is rather a dramatic poem than a play. The description of the tender love of Rāma and Sītā, purified by sorrow, exhibits more genuine pathos than appears perhaps in any other Indian drama. The play begins with the banishment of Sītā and ends with her restoration, after twelve years of grievous solitude, to the throne of Ayodhyā amid popular acclamations. Her two sons, born after her banishment and reared in the wilderness by the sage Vālmīki, without any knowledge of their royal descent, furnish a striking parallel to the two princes Guiderius and Arviragus who are brought up by the hermit Belarius in Shakespeare's *Cymbeline*. The scene in which their meeting with their father Rāma is described reaches a high degree of poetic merit.