The Plot Structure of Vikramōrvaśhi Based on Aristotle’s Poetics

The play is one of the most important literary genres that has been underestimated in Iranian literature. Vikramōrvaśhi is an eastern play from the labyrinthine land of civilization, mysticism, and illumination philosophy of India, written by Kālidāsa, one of the most prominent writers in the Sanskrit literature of India. The authors of the present paper intend to study the plot structure of this play based on Aristotle’s Poetics by an analytical-descriptive method and using library instruments in order to answer the main question of this research: Are the structures of the old Indian plays comparable to the poetics of classical Greek plays despite their similarities such as the beginning and the performances of the plays, the presence of characters, conversations, etc.? The results of the present research indicate that, despite the inevitable similarities, Vikramōrvaśhi’s play has the story-in-story structure of the Eastern stories. The story plot includes side events with a climatic structure each of which has an executive independence, and accordingly, the Indian play has an episodic structure. The intervention of deities and the extraterrestrial forces have moved the play away from the Aristotelian cause and effect structure, and removed the wisdom of the classicalism from this play, and due to the Hindus’ belief in karma, there is no definite end to the play, and in some way the end of the events equals another beginning which gives the play a circular state.