y
in bands, while the highest may rise to the rank and dignity of an
Aspasia. To the former class belong those referred to by Lowrie
(148)--a band of twenty girls, all unveiled and dressed in their
richest finery, who wanted to dance for his party and were greatly
disappointed when refused. "Most of them were very young--about ten or
eleven years old." Their course is brief; they soon lose their charms,
are discarded, and end their lives as beggars.

AN INDIAN ASPASIA

A famous representative of the superior class of bayaderes is the
heroine of King Cudraka's drama just referred to--Vasantasena. She has
amassed immense wealth--the description of her palace takes up several
pages--and is one of the best known personages in town, yet that does
not prevent her from being spoken of repeatedly as "a noble woman, the
jewel of the city."[273] She is, indeed, represented as differing in
her love from other bayaderes, and, as she herself remarks, "a
bayaderes is not reprehensible in the eyes of the world if she gives
her heart to a poor man." She sees the Brahman Tscharudatta in the
temple garden of Kama, the god of love, and forthwith falls in love
with him, as he does with her, though he is married. One afternoon she
is accosted in the street by a relative of the king, who annoys her
with his unwelcome attentions. She takes refuge in her lover's house
and, on the pretext that she has been pursued on account of her
ornaments, leaves her jewelry in his charge. The jewels are stolen
during the night, and this mishap leads to a series of others which
finally culminate in Tscharudatta being led out to execution for the
alleged murder of Vasantasena. At the last moment Vasantasena, who had
been strangled by the king's relative, but has been revived, appears
on the scene, and her lover's life is saved, as well as his honor.

The royal author of this drama, who has been called the Shakspere of
India, probably lived in one of the first centuries of the Christian
era. His play may in a certain sense be regarded as a predecessor of
_Manon Lescaut_ and _Camille_, inasmuch as an attempt is made in it to
ascribe to the heroine a delicacy of feeling to which women of her
class are naturally strangers. She hesitates to make advances to
Tscharudatta, and at first wonders whether it would be proper to
remain in his house. See informs her pursuer that "love is won by
noble character, not by importunate advances." Tscharudatta says of
her: