Author(s): Ratan Mahali

Abstract: This paper aims to analyse Bhasa’s Svapnavasavadattam through the lens of poststructuralist criticism. It reveals how the play itself constructs identity and truth as unstable and continually shifting. It seems, apparently, a conventional story of separation and reunion; but it is dramatically structured around acts of hiding, masking and withholding information. Drawing on Derrida’s concept of differance, his critique of binary opposition and Culler’s idea of boundless context, the study demonstrates that meaning in the drama is produced by difference, relationality and the interplay between absence and presence. Vasavadatta’s shifts from queen to disguised servant girl to image in a dream reveal a subjectivity that is determined by various contexts and perception. Yaugandharayana’s political maneuver collapses the distinction between truth and falsehood and reminds us that reality in the play is always mediated and contingent. Further, the ending of the drama contains remnants of uncertainty; the real Vasavadatta is inextricable from the roles she has enacted. This study, thus, situates Svapnavasavadattam as a classical text that has the traces of poststructuralist thinking. It argues that the instability of binary opposition and the endless play of meaning are not limited to modern literature but can be found in classical drama as well.

Keywords: Bhasa, Culler, Derrida, différance, identity, poststructuralism, Svapnavasavadattam

Article Info: Received: 28 Nov 2025; Received in revised form: 25 Dec 2025; Accepted: 28 Dec 2025; Available online: 31 Dec 2025

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.106.76