NCERT Textbook: Drama: Chandalika | Class 12 English Kaleidoscope - Humanities/Arts PDF Download

 Page 1


203/CHANDALIKA
Drama
INTRODUCTION
A drama is a composition in prose or verse
presenting in dialogue a story of life or character,
especially one intended to be acted on the stage.
The essence of drama is the make-believe by which
an actor impersonates a character of the play. The
element of make-believe in drama is much greater
than the average play-goer realises. For instance,
we must regard it as entirely natural that rooms
and houses have one wall ‘missing’ that enables
the audience to witness the action.
Drama is usually divided into tragedy and comedy,
but within this general framework a number of
types and subtypes have been developed. The
tragicomedy, for instance, mixes elements of both
tragedy and comedy; the modern ‘problem-play’
deals with neither of these but with middle class
life and problems.
Furthermore, drama is the literary form most
viable with the modern mass media; and film, radio
and television are producing a vast quantity of it,
ranging from ‘soap opera’ and farce to serious new
works and fine productions of old ones.
Two plays find a place in the section: Chandalika
by Tagore which describes the angst of an
untouchable woman; and an excerpt from Broken
Images by Girish Karnad, which is a monologue
by a celebrity writer that plumbs the depths of her
psyche and recreates her life for the TV viewer.
2024-25
Page 2


203/CHANDALIKA
Drama
INTRODUCTION
A drama is a composition in prose or verse
presenting in dialogue a story of life or character,
especially one intended to be acted on the stage.
The essence of drama is the make-believe by which
an actor impersonates a character of the play. The
element of make-believe in drama is much greater
than the average play-goer realises. For instance,
we must regard it as entirely natural that rooms
and houses have one wall ‘missing’ that enables
the audience to witness the action.
Drama is usually divided into tragedy and comedy,
but within this general framework a number of
types and subtypes have been developed. The
tragicomedy, for instance, mixes elements of both
tragedy and comedy; the modern ‘problem-play’
deals with neither of these but with middle class
life and problems.
Furthermore, drama is the literary form most
viable with the modern mass media; and film, radio
and television are producing a vast quantity of it,
ranging from ‘soap opera’ and farce to serious new
works and fine productions of old ones.
Two plays find a place in the section: Chandalika
by Tagore which describes the angst of an
untouchable woman; and an excerpt from Broken
Images by Girish Karnad, which is a monologue
by a celebrity writer that plumbs the depths of her
psyche and recreates her life for the TV viewer.
2024-25
204/KALEIDOSCOPE
Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika
Rabindranath Tagore was a poet, novelist, short-
story writer and dramatist. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore’s interest
in drama was fostered while he was a boy, for
his family enjoyed writing and staging plays. The
music in his plays is instrumental in bringing out
the delicate display of emotion around an idea.
The central interest in his plays is the unfolding
of character; of the opening up of the soul to
enlightenment of some sort.
INTRODUCTION
This short drama is based on the following Buddhist legend.
Ananda, the famous disciple of the Buddha, was one day
returning from a visit when he felt thirsty and, approaching
a well on the way, asked for water from a chandalika, a
girl belonging to the lowest untouchable caste. The girl
gave him water and fell in love with the beautiful monk.
Unable to restrain herself, she made her mother, who knew
the art of magic, work her spell on him. The spell proved
stronger than Ananda’s will and the spell-bound monk
presented himself at their house at night; but, as he saw
the girl spread the couch for him, he was overcome with
shame and remorse and prayed inwardly to his master to
save him. The Buddha heard the prayer and broke the
magic spell and Ananda went away, as pure as he came.
This crude plot of the popular tale, showing how the
psychic power of the Buddha saves his devotee from the
lust of a chandal girl, has been transformed by the poet
Rabindranath Tagore
1861-1941
1 1
1 1 1
2024-25
Page 3


203/CHANDALIKA
Drama
INTRODUCTION
A drama is a composition in prose or verse
presenting in dialogue a story of life or character,
especially one intended to be acted on the stage.
The essence of drama is the make-believe by which
an actor impersonates a character of the play. The
element of make-believe in drama is much greater
than the average play-goer realises. For instance,
we must regard it as entirely natural that rooms
and houses have one wall ‘missing’ that enables
the audience to witness the action.
Drama is usually divided into tragedy and comedy,
but within this general framework a number of
types and subtypes have been developed. The
tragicomedy, for instance, mixes elements of both
tragedy and comedy; the modern ‘problem-play’
deals with neither of these but with middle class
life and problems.
Furthermore, drama is the literary form most
viable with the modern mass media; and film, radio
and television are producing a vast quantity of it,
ranging from ‘soap opera’ and farce to serious new
works and fine productions of old ones.
Two plays find a place in the section: Chandalika
by Tagore which describes the angst of an
untouchable woman; and an excerpt from Broken
Images by Girish Karnad, which is a monologue
by a celebrity writer that plumbs the depths of her
psyche and recreates her life for the TV viewer.
2024-25
204/KALEIDOSCOPE
Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika
Rabindranath Tagore was a poet, novelist, short-
story writer and dramatist. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore’s interest
in drama was fostered while he was a boy, for
his family enjoyed writing and staging plays. The
music in his plays is instrumental in bringing out
the delicate display of emotion around an idea.
The central interest in his plays is the unfolding
of character; of the opening up of the soul to
enlightenment of some sort.
INTRODUCTION
This short drama is based on the following Buddhist legend.
Ananda, the famous disciple of the Buddha, was one day
returning from a visit when he felt thirsty and, approaching
a well on the way, asked for water from a chandalika, a
girl belonging to the lowest untouchable caste. The girl
gave him water and fell in love with the beautiful monk.
Unable to restrain herself, she made her mother, who knew
the art of magic, work her spell on him. The spell proved
stronger than Ananda’s will and the spell-bound monk
presented himself at their house at night; but, as he saw
the girl spread the couch for him, he was overcome with
shame and remorse and prayed inwardly to his master to
save him. The Buddha heard the prayer and broke the
magic spell and Ananda went away, as pure as he came.
This crude plot of the popular tale, showing how the
psychic power of the Buddha saves his devotee from the
lust of a chandal girl, has been transformed by the poet
Rabindranath Tagore
1861-1941
1 1
1 1 1
2024-25
205/CHANDALIKA
into a psychological drama of intense spiritual conflict. It
is not the story of a wicked girl roused to lust by the physical
beauty of the monk, but of a very sensitive girl, condemned
by her birth to a despised caste, who is suddenly awakened
to a consciousness of her full rights as a woman by the
humanity of a follower of the Buddha, who accepts water
from her hand and teaches her to judge herself not by the
artificial values that society attaches to the accidents of
birth, but by her capacity for love and service.
This is a great revelation for her, which she calls a
new birth; for she is washed clean of her self-degradation
and rises up a full human being with her right to love and
to give. And since her own self is the most she can give,
and since none is more worthy of the gift of her surrender
than the bhikshu who has redeemed, or, as she puts it,
created her, she yearns to offer herself to him. But Ananda,
detached from all earthly cares and immersed in his inner
self, knows nothing of all this and passes by without
recognising her.
She is humiliated, wounded in her newly awakened
sensibility, and determines to drag the monk from his pride
of renunciation to the abjectness of desire for her. She has
lost all religious scruple or fear, for she owed nothing to
religion save her humiliation.
‘A religion that insults is a false religion. Everyone
united to make me conform to a creed that blinds and
gags. But since that day something forbids me to conform
any longer. I’m afraid of nothing now.’
She forces her mother to exercise her art of magic on
Ananda. She refers to it as the primeval spell, the spell of
the earth, which is far more potent than the immature
sadhana of the monks. The ‘spell of the earth’ proves its
force and Ananda is dragged to their door, his face distorted
with agony and shame. Seeing her redeemer, so noble and
resplendent before, thus cruelly transformed and degraded,
she is horrified at the selfish and destructive nature of
her desire. The hero to whom she yearned to dedicate
herself was not this creature, blinded by lust and darkened
with shame, but Ananda of the radiant form, who had
2024-25
Page 4


203/CHANDALIKA
Drama
INTRODUCTION
A drama is a composition in prose or verse
presenting in dialogue a story of life or character,
especially one intended to be acted on the stage.
The essence of drama is the make-believe by which
an actor impersonates a character of the play. The
element of make-believe in drama is much greater
than the average play-goer realises. For instance,
we must regard it as entirely natural that rooms
and houses have one wall ‘missing’ that enables
the audience to witness the action.
Drama is usually divided into tragedy and comedy,
but within this general framework a number of
types and subtypes have been developed. The
tragicomedy, for instance, mixes elements of both
tragedy and comedy; the modern ‘problem-play’
deals with neither of these but with middle class
life and problems.
Furthermore, drama is the literary form most
viable with the modern mass media; and film, radio
and television are producing a vast quantity of it,
ranging from ‘soap opera’ and farce to serious new
works and fine productions of old ones.
Two plays find a place in the section: Chandalika
by Tagore which describes the angst of an
untouchable woman; and an excerpt from Broken
Images by Girish Karnad, which is a monologue
by a celebrity writer that plumbs the depths of her
psyche and recreates her life for the TV viewer.
2024-25
204/KALEIDOSCOPE
Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika
Rabindranath Tagore was a poet, novelist, short-
story writer and dramatist. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore’s interest
in drama was fostered while he was a boy, for
his family enjoyed writing and staging plays. The
music in his plays is instrumental in bringing out
the delicate display of emotion around an idea.
The central interest in his plays is the unfolding
of character; of the opening up of the soul to
enlightenment of some sort.
INTRODUCTION
This short drama is based on the following Buddhist legend.
Ananda, the famous disciple of the Buddha, was one day
returning from a visit when he felt thirsty and, approaching
a well on the way, asked for water from a chandalika, a
girl belonging to the lowest untouchable caste. The girl
gave him water and fell in love with the beautiful monk.
Unable to restrain herself, she made her mother, who knew
the art of magic, work her spell on him. The spell proved
stronger than Ananda’s will and the spell-bound monk
presented himself at their house at night; but, as he saw
the girl spread the couch for him, he was overcome with
shame and remorse and prayed inwardly to his master to
save him. The Buddha heard the prayer and broke the
magic spell and Ananda went away, as pure as he came.
This crude plot of the popular tale, showing how the
psychic power of the Buddha saves his devotee from the
lust of a chandal girl, has been transformed by the poet
Rabindranath Tagore
1861-1941
1 1
1 1 1
2024-25
205/CHANDALIKA
into a psychological drama of intense spiritual conflict. It
is not the story of a wicked girl roused to lust by the physical
beauty of the monk, but of a very sensitive girl, condemned
by her birth to a despised caste, who is suddenly awakened
to a consciousness of her full rights as a woman by the
humanity of a follower of the Buddha, who accepts water
from her hand and teaches her to judge herself not by the
artificial values that society attaches to the accidents of
birth, but by her capacity for love and service.
This is a great revelation for her, which she calls a
new birth; for she is washed clean of her self-degradation
and rises up a full human being with her right to love and
to give. And since her own self is the most she can give,
and since none is more worthy of the gift of her surrender
than the bhikshu who has redeemed, or, as she puts it,
created her, she yearns to offer herself to him. But Ananda,
detached from all earthly cares and immersed in his inner
self, knows nothing of all this and passes by without
recognising her.
She is humiliated, wounded in her newly awakened
sensibility, and determines to drag the monk from his pride
of renunciation to the abjectness of desire for her. She has
lost all religious scruple or fear, for she owed nothing to
religion save her humiliation.
‘A religion that insults is a false religion. Everyone
united to make me conform to a creed that blinds and
gags. But since that day something forbids me to conform
any longer. I’m afraid of nothing now.’
She forces her mother to exercise her art of magic on
Ananda. She refers to it as the primeval spell, the spell of
the earth, which is far more potent than the immature
sadhana of the monks. The ‘spell of the earth’ proves its
force and Ananda is dragged to their door, his face distorted
with agony and shame. Seeing her redeemer, so noble and
resplendent before, thus cruelly transformed and degraded,
she is horrified at the selfish and destructive nature of
her desire. The hero to whom she yearned to dedicate
herself was not this creature, blinded by lust and darkened
with shame, but Ananda of the radiant form, who had
2024-25
206/KALEIDOSCOPE
given her the gift of a new birth and had revealed her own
true humanity. In remorse she curses herself and falls at
his feet, begging for forgiveness. The mother revokes the
spell and willingly pays the price of such revocation, which
is death. The chandalika is thus redeemed for the second
time, purged of the pride and egoism that had made her
forget that love does not claim possession, but gives
freedom.
Chandalika is a tragedy of self-consciousness over-
reaching its limit. Self-consciousness, up to a point, is
necessary to self-development; for, without an awareness of
the dignity of one’s own role or function, one cannot give
one’s best to the world. Without rights there can be no
obligations, and service and virtue when forced become marks
of slavery. But self-consciousness, like good wine, easily
intoxicates, and it is difficult to control the dose and have
just enough of it. Vanity and pride get the upper hand and he
who clings to his rights very often trespasses on those of
others. This is what happened to the heroine. Prakriti, in her
eagerness to give, forgot that Ananda need not take; her
devotion grew so passionate that she could not make her
surrender without first possessing. Yet it was inevitable that
it should be so; for a new consciousness, after ages of
suppression, is overpowering and one learns restraint only
after suffering. Hence the tragedy. The good mother who, so
unwillingly, worked the spell to please her importunate
daughter, and who so willingly revoked it to save Ananda,
dies in the process. The daughter, though chastened and
made wise by suffering, has paid a heavy price; for wisdom is
not happiness and renunciation is not fulfilment.
ACT I
Read and find out Read and find out Read and find out Read and find out Read and find out
How does Prakriti’s mother react when she hears of
Prakriti’s encounter with the monk?
MOTHER. Prakriti! Prakriti! Where has she gone? What
ails the girl, I wonder? She’s never to be found in the
house.
2024-25
Page 5


203/CHANDALIKA
Drama
INTRODUCTION
A drama is a composition in prose or verse
presenting in dialogue a story of life or character,
especially one intended to be acted on the stage.
The essence of drama is the make-believe by which
an actor impersonates a character of the play. The
element of make-believe in drama is much greater
than the average play-goer realises. For instance,
we must regard it as entirely natural that rooms
and houses have one wall ‘missing’ that enables
the audience to witness the action.
Drama is usually divided into tragedy and comedy,
but within this general framework a number of
types and subtypes have been developed. The
tragicomedy, for instance, mixes elements of both
tragedy and comedy; the modern ‘problem-play’
deals with neither of these but with middle class
life and problems.
Furthermore, drama is the literary form most
viable with the modern mass media; and film, radio
and television are producing a vast quantity of it,
ranging from ‘soap opera’ and farce to serious new
works and fine productions of old ones.
Two plays find a place in the section: Chandalika
by Tagore which describes the angst of an
untouchable woman; and an excerpt from Broken
Images by Girish Karnad, which is a monologue
by a celebrity writer that plumbs the depths of her
psyche and recreates her life for the TV viewer.
2024-25
204/KALEIDOSCOPE
Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika Chandalika
Rabindranath Tagore was a poet, novelist, short-
story writer and dramatist. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore’s interest
in drama was fostered while he was a boy, for
his family enjoyed writing and staging plays. The
music in his plays is instrumental in bringing out
the delicate display of emotion around an idea.
The central interest in his plays is the unfolding
of character; of the opening up of the soul to
enlightenment of some sort.
INTRODUCTION
This short drama is based on the following Buddhist legend.
Ananda, the famous disciple of the Buddha, was one day
returning from a visit when he felt thirsty and, approaching
a well on the way, asked for water from a chandalika, a
girl belonging to the lowest untouchable caste. The girl
gave him water and fell in love with the beautiful monk.
Unable to restrain herself, she made her mother, who knew
the art of magic, work her spell on him. The spell proved
stronger than Ananda’s will and the spell-bound monk
presented himself at their house at night; but, as he saw
the girl spread the couch for him, he was overcome with
shame and remorse and prayed inwardly to his master to
save him. The Buddha heard the prayer and broke the
magic spell and Ananda went away, as pure as he came.
This crude plot of the popular tale, showing how the
psychic power of the Buddha saves his devotee from the
lust of a chandal girl, has been transformed by the poet
Rabindranath Tagore
1861-1941
1 1
1 1 1
2024-25
205/CHANDALIKA
into a psychological drama of intense spiritual conflict. It
is not the story of a wicked girl roused to lust by the physical
beauty of the monk, but of a very sensitive girl, condemned
by her birth to a despised caste, who is suddenly awakened
to a consciousness of her full rights as a woman by the
humanity of a follower of the Buddha, who accepts water
from her hand and teaches her to judge herself not by the
artificial values that society attaches to the accidents of
birth, but by her capacity for love and service.
This is a great revelation for her, which she calls a
new birth; for she is washed clean of her self-degradation
and rises up a full human being with her right to love and
to give. And since her own self is the most she can give,
and since none is more worthy of the gift of her surrender
than the bhikshu who has redeemed, or, as she puts it,
created her, she yearns to offer herself to him. But Ananda,
detached from all earthly cares and immersed in his inner
self, knows nothing of all this and passes by without
recognising her.
She is humiliated, wounded in her newly awakened
sensibility, and determines to drag the monk from his pride
of renunciation to the abjectness of desire for her. She has
lost all religious scruple or fear, for she owed nothing to
religion save her humiliation.
‘A religion that insults is a false religion. Everyone
united to make me conform to a creed that blinds and
gags. But since that day something forbids me to conform
any longer. I’m afraid of nothing now.’
She forces her mother to exercise her art of magic on
Ananda. She refers to it as the primeval spell, the spell of
the earth, which is far more potent than the immature
sadhana of the monks. The ‘spell of the earth’ proves its
force and Ananda is dragged to their door, his face distorted
with agony and shame. Seeing her redeemer, so noble and
resplendent before, thus cruelly transformed and degraded,
she is horrified at the selfish and destructive nature of
her desire. The hero to whom she yearned to dedicate
herself was not this creature, blinded by lust and darkened
with shame, but Ananda of the radiant form, who had
2024-25
206/KALEIDOSCOPE
given her the gift of a new birth and had revealed her own
true humanity. In remorse she curses herself and falls at
his feet, begging for forgiveness. The mother revokes the
spell and willingly pays the price of such revocation, which
is death. The chandalika is thus redeemed for the second
time, purged of the pride and egoism that had made her
forget that love does not claim possession, but gives
freedom.
Chandalika is a tragedy of self-consciousness over-
reaching its limit. Self-consciousness, up to a point, is
necessary to self-development; for, without an awareness of
the dignity of one’s own role or function, one cannot give
one’s best to the world. Without rights there can be no
obligations, and service and virtue when forced become marks
of slavery. But self-consciousness, like good wine, easily
intoxicates, and it is difficult to control the dose and have
just enough of it. Vanity and pride get the upper hand and he
who clings to his rights very often trespasses on those of
others. This is what happened to the heroine. Prakriti, in her
eagerness to give, forgot that Ananda need not take; her
devotion grew so passionate that she could not make her
surrender without first possessing. Yet it was inevitable that
it should be so; for a new consciousness, after ages of
suppression, is overpowering and one learns restraint only
after suffering. Hence the tragedy. The good mother who, so
unwillingly, worked the spell to please her importunate
daughter, and who so willingly revoked it to save Ananda,
dies in the process. The daughter, though chastened and
made wise by suffering, has paid a heavy price; for wisdom is
not happiness and renunciation is not fulfilment.
ACT I
Read and find out Read and find out Read and find out Read and find out Read and find out
How does Prakriti’s mother react when she hears of
Prakriti’s encounter with the monk?
MOTHER. Prakriti! Prakriti! Where has she gone? What
ails the girl, I wonder? She’s never to be found in the
house.
2024-25
207/CHANDALIKA
PRAKRITI. Here, mother, here I am.
MOTHER. Where?
PRAKRITI. Here, by the well.
MOTHER. Whatever will you do next? Past noon, and a
blistering sun, and the earth too hot for the feet! The
morning’s water was drawn long ago, and the other
girls in the village have all taken their pots home.
Why, the very crows on the amloki branches are
gasping for heat. Yet you sit and roast in the Vaisakh
sun for no reason at all! There’s a story in the Purana
about how Uma left home and did penance in the
burning sun—is that what you are about?
PRAKRITI. Yes, mother, that’s it—I’m doing penance.
MOTHER. Good heavens! And for whom?
PRAKRITI. For someone whose call has come to me.
MOTHER. What call is that?
PRAKRITI. ‘Give me water.’ He set the words echoing in my
heart.
MOTHER. Heaven defend us! He said to you ‘Give me
water’? Who was it? Someone of our own caste?
PRAKRITI. That’s what he said—that he belonged to our
kind.
MOTHER. You didn’t hide your caste? Did you tell him
that you are a chandalini?
PRAKRITI. I told him, yes. He said it wasn’t true. If the
black clouds of Sravana are dubbed chandal, he said,
what of it? It doesn’t change their nature, or destroy
the virtue of their water. Don’t humiliate yourself, he
said; self-humiliation is a sin, worse than self-murder.
MOTHER. What words are these from you? Have you
remembered some tale of a former birth?
PRAKRITI. No, this is a tale of my new birth.
MOTHER. You make me laugh. New birth, indeed! Since
when, pray?
PRAKRITI. It was the other day. The palace gong had just
struck noon and it was blazing hot. I was washing
that calf at the well—the one whose mother died. Then
In the original, this play, unlike the others, is not divided into acts. There is no lapse of time
in the action. The divisions here suggested indicate the intervals which would be found
desirable in stage production.
2024-25