ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Raja Rao’s attraction to the ideal vision of humanity which both Sanskrit scriptures and European medieval history often embody in the person of a king or queen. In The Serpent and the Rope, Rama’s choice of topic for his thesis—a study of Cathar and Albigensian ideas—expresses his own personal search for purity and knowledge. Rao’s interest in kingship is inseparable from his examination of the Feminine Principle, which Rama coincides with the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II. Throughout this novel, and in other works by Raja Rao such as Comrade Kirillov and The Chessmaster and His Moves, Rao is drawn to examples of idealised human behaviour, though in the end there is a sense of predestined disappointment as the novelist realises the unattainability of perfection outside the divine. Writing amid great historic change in India and ambitious post-war reconstruction in Europe, Rao’s great novel looks towards hierarchical models as guides for conduct in the contemporary world.
