absence, but, in the end, she decides to join in the friends’ suicide pact by her self-immolation on a funeral pyre at the feast of burning. She does so because she rejects polyandry and out of concern for the future of her child, whom she wants to grow up not as the child of an abandoned mother but as an orphan and the son of a legendary mother, whose self-sacrifice assures her legend and commemoration through a monument.

Kali

Kali, the Hindu goddess of motherhood, destruction, sacrifice, and bloodshed. These contradictory attributes match those of her victims and followers, Shridaman, Nanda, and Sita. As a disembodied voice, she enters into a dialogue with Sita. In forceful terms, she expresses her displeasure with the disingenuous sacrifices of Nanda and Shridaman. She is willing to accede to Sita’s fervent desire to see the two restored to their former existence with Sita’s help.

Kamananda

Kamananda, a pious hermit. He agrees to settle the dispute between Shridaman, Nanda, and Sita. He has no difficulty in deciding that it is the head that is the decisive criterion in determining whether Shridaman with Nanda’s body or Nanda with Shridaman’s body is now the husband of Sita.

Samadhi

Samadhi, called Andhaka (the blind one), the light-skinned and nearsighted son of Shridaman and Sita. As the child of a famous mother, he is reared by “a wise and learned Brahman.” His progress is reported at the ages of four, seven, twelve, and twenty. At the age of twenty, he has become reader to the king of Benares.

The participants in this metaphysical work may be considered archetypal; in no sense does any of them possess those peculiarly individual qualities that require characterization in great detail. The characters are meant to represent the incarnation of much broader attributes. The dialogue, especially that between Shridaman and Nanda, also repeatedly reaches a rarefied philosophical plane where abstract values and categories are discussed in relation to observations and experiences.

In a sense, there is a sort of philosophical dualism that is exemplified in the qualities assigned to the two men, and the physical descriptions of each of them seem further to establish this relationship between character and appearance. Shridaman has the outward bearing of a scholar; his sharp nose and soft, gentle eyes are set above thin lips and a gentle spreading beard, and his head seems disproportionately large in relation to his body. The cogitation in which he is often immersed may at times have led him to underestimate the imperatives of his bodily urges; thus, his relations with Sita involve an abrupt awakening for him. Unlike the others, Shridaman is also prone to fits of melancholy. His tendency to elicit ultimate questions from the experiences of his life foreshadows the dark brooding that leads him first to suicide and then to a fatal duel with his opposite, Nanda.

Nanda is typified by other, simpler virtues, which are set off as well by the more obvious physical contrasts between him and his friend. Readily distinguishable from Shridaman by his darker complexion, thick lips, and goat like nose, Nanda has acquired characteristics which also seem evocative of his nature: His work as a smith has strengthened his arms and upper body to produce a harmonious effect of rugged masculine power. If he seems physically more imposing, he is not given so much to complex, troubled responses to the everyday issues of his existence. His manner of speaking is simpler and more direct than that of Shridaman; his merry laughter and forthright, unaffected manner contrast markedly with the moody, unsettled qualities evident in his friend. Nevertheless, his sense of honor and responsibility seems equal to that of Shridaman. He does not in the least recoil from the challenges to self-sacrifice and combat that are laid down by the other man.

Other vital principles are represented in Sita, although otherwise she seems less fully realized as a character than her two male counterparts. In her, there is a fusion of erotic and aesthetic elements to the extent that her being may be considered on both ideal and material levels. She appears first as an object admired and pursued by the men, but in due course, her own desires and aspirations are revealed. Another duality of sorts, which is grounded in Indian religious imagery, exists within her: the idea that divergent drives toward sexual fulfillment and motherhood are necessarily united in woman’s nature. Sita’s awakening joy in matters of the flesh is offset by a sense of self-sacrifice that differs from but is equally strong as that felt by the men. It would seem, however, that her thoughts and feelings arise in response to problems posed as Shridaman and Nanda grapple with moral concerns that must affect her also.

The antinomies of head and body, or intellect and substance, are resolved with mutual destruction, and the same fate is reserved for the opposition of male and female qualities. It is unclear whether the honor and status that are ultimately accorded Samadhi represent the reassertion of principles by which the inward-looking mind could again claim a place for itself in the world at large.