moment. KUDILA has such a constant dread eating into his very being. He thinks he has enemies all round and that he should move with great care and circumspection. He tells PALADEVA "வீதியிற்செல்லலை, வீணர்அபாயம்" and overhearing his name from the mouth of some soldiers he exclaims "கொல்வரே ஐயோ!" and hides himself. It is PALADEVA that drags him out and heartens him (IV. Iv. 268-9). The domineering KUDILA thus after all quakes like an aspen leaf before his own conscience which tells him that his schemes and acts have only secured him enemies all round. KUDILA himself bears testimony to this (III.i. 192-6). This cowardice brings in its train a spirit of servility and abject submissiveness. That KUDILA is a fawning and flattering knave as well, will be clear from the way in which he greatly demeans himself before PURUSHOTHAMA. His cry in V.i. 59 though it is scarcely becoming in a minister of standing is well calculated to soothe the ears of an autocrat who is always fed upon flattery and adulation. Like most who are skilled in flattery he is loquacious to a nauseating degree.

Sundara

SUNDARA is the very opposite of KUDILA. He is a man of very few words and reproves his Sishyas for their interminable talk. He says "உங்கள் பேச்சறிவோம் ஓயாப்பேச்சே". Though a man of deep thought, he was not averse to action. As befitting one who should act amongst diverse forces, he was blessed with a keen vision. He smells disaster even before JIVAKA had the least inkling of his coming trials and tribulations. "To be forewarned is to be forearmed" and SUNDARA accordingly prepared the Secret Way for saving the life of his helpless disciple JIVAKA. Though he appears to lead a sequestered life quite detached from the main characters of the story, he has evidently in his hands the threads of many events and episodes from which he judges coming events quite accurately. It was his abounding grace that shielded JIVAKA at the last moment from a fate the latter himself had tempted. Even more than an unclouded intellectual vision, the moral elevation of SUNDARA endears him to our heart. "முனிவரரென்றிடிற் கனிவுறுங்கல்லும்". The Poet has quite appropriately introudced this saintly character in the opening scene of the play and given us to understand that his is the force which steadily and secretly works to counteract the evil influence of KUDILA. In the desert waste of KUDILA'S artful designs SUNDARA'S acts of kindliness and compassion come as a few smiling spots of refreshing coolness. Without these, the tension of feelings in the reader of the play would indeed have been terrible, squeezed as he would then be within the coils of a dark power with no redeeming gleams from any quarter. In the battle that is being incessantly waged between the powers of light and of darkness, of good and of evil, we very often see that the dark powers are swift and overbearing and carry things before them in one sweep of apalling