CC - I : Significance of the title Mrichchhakatika

            

        As Sukumari Bhattacharji argues, the play derives its name from a symbolic event. When Vasantasena finds Rohasena weeping, she asks his attendant the reason for his weeping. The attendant tells her that the little golden cart with which Rohasena was playing with the neighbour's son has been taken back home by the latter. Rohasena's attendant tries to soothe him by Bringing a little clay cart for him, but he is not satisfied with this feeble substitution for the golden toy cart. Vasantasena's eyes become full of tears on seeing the boy's tears. She takes off all her ornaments and places them in the clay toy cart of Rohasena, asking the boy to have a golden toy cart made with these ornaments.

             Bhattacharji sees this moment as containing a profound symbolic meaning. She says that the gesture of shedding off the ornaments-the tokens of her richness-brings Vasantasena close to her penniless lover Charudutta. At the same time, the golden ornaments, as it were, magically and dramatically transformed into the metaphor for the golden hearts of the honest and good characters in the play who are outwardly fragile and poor, like the little clay cart, the Mrichchhakatika. This moment, as if, symbolically conveys the message that the poor, socially vulnerable characters are quite rich so far their inner, ethics- spiritual resources are concerned. A golden heart is what energizes and dynamizes even a Mrichchhakatika, a little clay cart.