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English - II

Notes Arjuna is enthralled by her beauty when he sees her in the temple. She keeps him completely in the
grip of her bodily charms. She has made him her captive. His vow of exile for a period of twelve years
dissolves as the moon dissolves the night’s vow of chastity. In a mood of infatuation, Arjuna remarks
that she alone is perfect. He further states that she is the wealth of the world, the end of all poverty,
the goal of all efforts. Other women can be known slowly, but one single glance at Chitra is to see
perfect completeness.
Arjuna is ensnared by Chitra’s beauty and he has lost his reasoning power. Arjuna and Chitra together
drink the joys of sensuous love. Both get tired of it and their reactions are different. She enjoys absolute
happiness in his loving embraces.
She feels that she has degraded Arjuna by dragging him into the coils of physical beauty. But she
feels sorry that it is all in her disguise. Arjuna in the midst of his attraction. rouses to a sense of manly
duties and enquires of the warrior princess Chitra. She stops him asking him to drink the moment’s
pleasure to the fullest extent. He begins to get tired of the sensuous charm.
Arjuna soon realises that he must go back home. His attention is arrested by the sound of prayer-bells
from the village temple, which indicated that he should go back to his normal routine. His mind gets
occupied with the thoughts of hunting and longs for the peaceful security of a home. He desires to
possess something that can last longer than pleasure that can endure even through suffering.
Thus there is to be seen in Arjuna a transformation from what he is in the beginning and what he is
at the end. He is a lover who falls a pray to beauty, but is not blind to the realities. He is awakened to
his manly duties to be peformed from his earlier enchantment.
20.2 Characters of Madana (God of Love) and Vasanta (God of Spring)

Dr. Iyengar feels that “the supernatural machinery-Vasanta, Madana and their gifts to Chitra-is stictly
superfluous to the play’s uiner causation. The whole point of the play is that youth itself is a sudden
spring-time miracle, for it comes as it were suddenly and fades away as suddenly, as unaccountably.
The play is primarily about Chitra, about woman. Motherhood achieves the miracle of continuity,
the beyonding of “death” itself. Beauty and youth, although they may be transient and hence illusory,
are yet a part of our experience. Tagore has stated the symbols of mythological consciousness of
Madana and Vasanta and the beloved elves.
Madana (EROS or the god of love) and Vasanta (God of spring) play a very significant role in Tagore’s
play CHITRA. Madana, otherwise known as cupid, according to Hindu mythology, is the God of
love with five arrows. He is supposed to have been the first born in the heart of the creator. Whoever
is struck with his arrows, falls in love at first sight. Love sprinkles in their hearts untaught. He teaches
both man and woman the greatest lesson to know what they are. Chitra knows in the presence of
Arjuna, that she is a woman. She is struck with the impulse of passion of love for the first time.
Madana is represented in this play as a type. He is not drawn here as a man of flesh and blood. He
comes to the succour of those that way to him to grant the desire of their heart. Chitra begs Madana
to grant her one brief day of perfect beauty. He grants her prayer, not for one briefday but for one
whole year.
Madana appears thrice in the play-in the first scene, the third scene and the fifth scene. Chitra meets
Madana, in whose bonds, the lives of men and women, with their pains and bliss are bound closely.
She also meets Vasanta, the king of the seasons and the eternal youth. Vasanta is also the friend of
Madana. The gods ask her who she is and the reason for her in strict penance and mortification. She
replies that she is the daughter of the kingly house of Manipur. She further states that lord Shiva has
granted to his great, great grand-father a continuous line of male progeny, So she is always dressed
as a man and she is brought up carefully as a son by her father. She is not at all an expert in Cupid’s
archery, which is meant the play of eyes.
She explains to Madana that one day he (she) wanders alone in the forest on the bank of the Purna
river in search of game. She comes across a man lying on a bed of dried leaves. On seeing him she
feels for one first time like a women. She learns from him that he has taken a vow of celibacy. She

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