SOURCE: "Heroine as Hero: Parvati in the Kumarasambhava and the Parvatiparinaya," in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 104, No. 2, April-June, 1984, pp. 219-36.

In the following essay, Tubb examines problematic alterations made to the plot of the Sanskrit play Parvatiparinaya and the poem upon which it is based, The Birth of the War-God.

The late sanskrit play Parvatiparinaya ("The Wedding of Parvati") has the same subject as that of Kalidasa's famous poem, the Kumarasambhava (Birth of the Prince): both works tell the story of the goddess Parvati's marriage to Siva and of the events leading up to that marriage. The play is so closely modeled on the poem, not only in the sequence of events it depicts but even in much of its actual wording, that the Parvatiparinaya may be regarded as the result of an attempt to transfer an epic poem into the form of a play...