Abhijñānaśākuntalam

On the surface, the story of Sakuntala (as told in the Mahabharata and Kalidasa’s Abhijnanasakuntalam) and the Ramayana, both canonical texts in their own right, vary greatly in structure, substance, and length, but a closer examination reveals that both have some common, or at least similar themes and motifs, particularly with respect to attitudes towards women and the literal rejection of the female protagonist. It might be noteworthy that the distance in time between the texts is not negligible-